Scottish Learning Festival

Every year I book up with the intention of going to the SLF for two days, with great intentions and mostly bits and pieces turn up that mean I miss parts of the two days. I couldn’t get yesterday but managed along today and felt pretty inspired by some of the things I saw. Great reviews from people I met on Caroline Gibson and Jaye Richards sessions at the glowing lounge. Good on them flying the flag for SLC. Saw Liz Mercer doing her bit on persona dolls, which everyone was loving. Liz is one of the most dedicated and enthusiatic practitioners you could hope to meet. Caught up with Trevor Gray from LTS who will be doing an input at an event in our area on how to get to planning in CfE. He’s already done some really nice things on big question planning which are great starters for people. Was a bit embarassed to see my name on an ASG project at the SLC stall along with Caroline Gibson’s when all I did was bid for the money and she did all the fantastic work with a group of teachers across our Learning Community on rich tasks related to Africa and Malawi. I reminded her that I still feel like she’s a bit of an adopted daughter, its such a buzz to watch someone become increasingly skilled, confident and inspirational to others. That’s what this job is all about. Seeing leadership grow gives great hope for the future every time you see it.

Will have to go and catch up with some of the keynotes etc later on video links at LTS. As always so much to see and hear and time just disappears… I found it interesting to see how CfE impacted on the materials on display. It was heartening to see so much on outdoor play,  global citizenship, ASDAN  etc where a real sense of community is being worked on with our young people and the wider community.

I’m currently helping to organise a CfE visualising day for our area of Cambuslang/Rutherglen – I’m looking forward to this and we’re hoping to get several speakers including Trevor who can show how much of this we already do and how we can start moving forward making the connections and implementing CfE fully.

Last week we had our first 5-14 data meeting which hopefully the LC of Trinity found of some use. Now we have so much data available from the EA it is making tracking and monitoring and really digging deep much easier to do. Obviously there are questions as to what will replace this but in the meantime I’m keen that all our schools can be even more skilled in this area as it will become  even more crucial in many ways that we have excellent means of monitoring attainment and achievement as we move to CfE.