The East Lothian Council Education Service Local Improvement Plan for 2018/19 outlines how we aspire to be an Education Service that provides the best opportunities and outcomes for our children and young people across the County, as a result making us the best Education Service in Scotland. The Plan provides clear direction on how we will do this. We aim to achieve these goals through the actions outlined for the Education Service, our schools and our partner organisations.

As we see more and more expectations placed upon our schools than ever before to address the poverty related attainment gap, we have to ensure that our partner organisations across the county support the Education Service and our schools to achieve this goal.

The most important role of this document will be to provide our schools and early learning and childcare centres with a framework to support their work. Therefore, we all have a shared understanding of the actions that we have to take to ensure that we meet the outcomes for our children and young people and the way that we will measure success. As outlined in the Standards and Quality Report 2017-18 through the self-evaluation activities we know we have many strengths in our schools across the County that we can share and we also know where improvement is required.

The Education Service Local Improvement Plan will help us to deliver on the collective commitment that we have made to “believe, achieve, strive for excellence and care for all” through the actions that we take in our schools and services.

In 2018, Police Scotland launched their first dedicated Facebook page for young people along with re-designing their digital platforms to ensure information is available when they need it.

At the heart of the design was the voice of young people from throughout Scotland and we used their views to provide information to promote better life choices and help keep them safe.

But did they get it right?

Police Scotland is once again calling on the young people of Scotland to review these resources to ensure we have the appropriate material and platforms.  This will guarantee we improve communication methods, ensuring our information is available and relevant to a modern society in the new and ever changing digital age.

You can access both platforms here:

• YouthHub online
• YouthHub Facebook 

and a very short survey is available via Survey Monkey to give your thoughts on them.  This is open to young people aged up to 19 years old as well as parents, professionals, etc to provide general comments based on their experience.  Share with friends, family, neighbours – pretty much anybody who will benefit from how Police communicate with young people and what information is available for them.

The survey is open until 31 MARCH 2019 and the feedback will help shape future changes.

It feels natural to continue the theme of planets this week as the night sky has been so clear and in the early morning at 0600 when I am walking my dog on the beach I have been able to see the waning crescent moon and Saturn (the bringer of old age), Venus (the bringer of peace) and Jupiter (the bringer of jollity).

Pupils staff and I had fun on Tuesday when I took the German Masterclass and the theme was animals. I found a useful and amusing video that explained how some of the animal names are put together: Hund – dog, Seehund – sea dog = seal; Fisch – fish, Tintenfisch – ink fish =  squid. But my favourite was Schnecke – snail and Nacktschnecke – naked snail = slug J All pupils responded very well to my lack of expertise and Mr Gilmour chuckled on his return and explained that he was going to teach domestic animals! It’s a perpetual learning curve for me! Read more here...Newsletter 01.02.19

The Course Choice Booklet for S4 pupils moving into S5 and S5 pupils moving into S6 is now available.