Firstly, a very Happy New Year to all Parents & Carers at Oxgangs Primary. It’s the start of a new calendar year, fresh jotters, pencils sharpened, and a real desire to make some great progress on areas such as playground improvements this year. Your help in collecting blue tokens in Tesco to help us potentially raise up to £4000 for this is greatly appreciated. More of that to come in another post soon.
However for now, apologies for opening 2018 on a very dry topic, but equally, it is a very important one to allow everyone the opportunity to have a voice on how the education of your children will be shaped over the coming years.
The Scottish Government is currently in consultation for setting out the content of the Education (Scotland) Bill which is being introduced later in this parliamentary year in June 2018. The consultation closes on 30th January 2018. The stated aim of the new Bill is to give more choices over learning & teaching to the Headteacher, to improve parental & community engagement, and to strengthen the voice of children and young people.
The Bill can be found here : https://consult.gov.scot/learning-…/education-scotland-bill/
The Parent Council is happy to gather any thoughts or inputs that the Parent Community may have and formalise a response ahead of the deadline on the 30th January. Any individual is also free to consult on this bill themselves using the above link, and I do encourage you to all do so to ensure your voice is heard.
The first 3 items of the Bill are probably most relevant for reading & consideration. I encourage you all to take a read of these yourselves and form your own opinions. I am deliberately not providing any commentary or opinion as would like all parents & carers to form their own views and opinions.
- Headteacher’s Charter.
- Parental & Community Engagement.
- Pupil Participation.
I have added this Bill as an agenda item for discussion at the PC meeting on the 23rd January 2018. I am also happy to take comments on email from anyone. Send them to oxgangspc@gmail.com.
The summary of the Bill is as follows :
The Education (Scotland) Bill that is being introduced later this parliamentary year is to create a school and teacher-led education system. The Bill will establish a Headteachers’ Charter which sets out the right and responsibilities of the headteachers, empowering them to be the leaders of learning in their schools. The Bill will also improve parental and community engagement in school life and in learning outside of school, and strengthen the voice of children and young people, by actively promoting and supporting pupil participation. In addition the Bill will provide the legislative underpinning for the establishment of Regional Improvement Collaboratives which will provide professional learning and leadership, support in both curriculum and specific sectors, sharing of good practice, and peer to peer collaboration, among other responsibilities. The Bill will also enable registration of other educational professionals with the Education Workforce Council, taking on the responsibilities of the GTCS and Community Learning and Development Standards Council. This will establish professional standards for other education professionals within the workforce.
If you’re still with us, another useful read is this from the National Parent Forum of Scotland : https://www.npfs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Final-E-versionpdf.pdf. This is a review of the effectiveness of the Parental Involvement Act (2006) which summarises some of the good & bad of how Parent Councils have operated over the last 10 years.
Apologies for what is a lot of reading!
Richard Imlach
Chair – Oxgangs Parent Community Council