Fàilte!
RECENT UPDATES:
New CfE Films – Impacts and Benefits
18 months on since the official introduction of CfE into Scotland’s public funded schools, The Scottish Government recently produced several short films documenting how it is making education more engaging for Scotland’s learners.View them here www.engageforeducation.org/cfefilms
Get the latest updates on the @EngageForEd twitter or Facebook page.
Engage for Education is a platform for Scotland’s education community to engage directly with the Scottish Government about the issues important to them.
Do you have views and suggestions about how Education in Scotland could be even better? Comment online or attend our public events.
Have your say and we will listen. That’s Engage for Education.
Subscribe to Engage for Education in an RSS reader
What's being said
Teachers and parents alike raised concerns and
questions about areas
such as assessment, the timetable and detail of
implementation of the new
qualifications, the period of learning from S1 to
S3 and the senior phase.
Some questions have been
answered directly by
ministers here on Engage
for Education.
It was clear, however, that there was a need to make more detailed information widely available.
What's being done
A Question and Answer document on the implementation of the Curriculum for Excellence is available now on the CfE Communications Toolkit and Parentzone websites, this includes information on assessment and qualifications.
Feedback is welcome on this wider support work for implementation of Curriculum for Excellence.
Visit our outcomes section and find more resources on understanding the new curriculum at the Education Scotland website.
- A right blether
- Curriculum for Excellence in action
- Education Scotland
- Getting It Right For Every Child
- Glow
- National CPD Team
- National Parent Forum of Scotland
- Parentzone
- Review of Teacher Education in Scotland
- Review of Teacher Employment in Scotland
- Scottish Government
- Scottish Qualifications Authority
- Skills Development Scotland
- Young Scot
Latest:
On the blog
-
Language learning in Scotland’s schools
Chair of the Languages Working Group discusses the group’s report on a new approach to language learning.
-
Celebrating success at the Young Scot Awards
Nominee Ruairidh Tait blogs about this year’s Young Scot Awards.
-
Support for Foster Care Fortnight
Children’s Minister welcomes the start of Foster Care Fortnight, the annual initiative from the Fostering Network (Scotland) to raise awareness of fostering and encourage even more people to become foster parents.
Your ideas
Review of Teacher Employment
Now that the Government has asked Prof McCormac to look at the teachers agreement they surely must complete the picture by carrying out a similar review for Early Years Staff who are not teachers. This group of staff represent over 90% of staff who deliver CFE in the nursery sector. Surely the governement has a moral obligation to ensure that they too have employment conditions designed to secure improved educational outcomes for our children and young people. The fact is that at the moment they do not. Many Local Authorities require Nursery staff to spend their whole working week in direct contact with children with no built in cover for planned non contact time to provide opportunities for planning, recording, assessing or developing the curriculum in the way that teacher colleagues do. This sector is too important to be left to the vagaries of Local Agreements. Such an arrangement leads to a post code lottery for scotlands nursery children. It simply is not good enough.
I call on the Scottish Governement to implement a National Review of Nursery Staff terms and conditions with the same remit as the McCormac review. Our Nursery Staff and our Nursery Children deserve no less.
Review of Teacher Employment
Once we get the teacher issue sorted I hope the Government will turn its attention to Early Years staff in nurseries who are not teachers. Since they make up over 90% of staff who deliver CFE in this sector surely the government has a moral obligation to ensure that they too have apropriate terms and conditions which allow them to contribute to the creation of a flexible, creative, learner-centred profession that can support Curriculum for Excellence?
The unfortunate thing is that at the moment they DO NOT. This sector is too important to be left to the vagaries of individual councils to decide local terms and conditions when it is clear that their overriding principle is to get as many contact hours with children for the cheapest possible price and never mind time for planning, preparation and assessment or even DEVELOPMENT.
I call on the Government to instruct a Review of Nursery Staff Employment with the same remit as the McCormac review as soon as possible.
Sustainable Schools
Link Community Development supports Scottish schools to deliver CfE sustainable education outcomes by establishing educational partnerships with schools in sub-Saharan Africa. By participating in the Link Schools Programme pupils learn about important global issues from a local and global perspective, develop the values and attitudes of global citizens and are inspired to take action to make the world a better place. Link’s staff on the ground in Africa and in Scotland support the development of meaningful partnerships and provide training and curricular resources on themes such as the Environment.