Past, Present and to Come. Some Reflections on Teacher Education in Scotland

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COVID-19 Guidance : Student Teacher Professional Placements in Scotland

In the context of a severely interrupted year for students undertaking initial teacher education (ITE) programmes, this guidance sets out the procedures to ensure that student teachers are supported to complete their initial teacher education programme, allowing a recommendation to be made to the General Teaching Council for Scotland that the Standard for Provisional Registration (SPR) has been met and evidenced, and the student teacher can progress into probation. This guidance has been agreed by all bodies set out above and has been shared with key partners including the Scottish Government’s Covid-19 Education Recovery Group (CERG)

COVID-19 Guidance Student FAQ : Student Teacher Professional Placements in Scotland

This document is intended to answer questions which student teachers in Scotland may have about their placements during session 2020/21 in the context of Covid-19 following the publication of the national COVID-19 Guidance | Student Teacher Professional Placements in Scotland. Please note that university and local authority partnerships will now plan to put the 19 February 2021 guidance into practice and universities will advise their students of specific arrangements at the earliest opportunity; time will be required, however

COVID-19 Guidance on Student Teacher Professional Placements for Teacher Education Institutions in Scotland - August to December 2020

Initial discussion took place within the Education Recovery Group (ERG) Workstream 7 (Workforce Planning) on which ADES, GTC Scotland, and SCDE, were all represented. ERG Workstream 7 was coordinated by Scottish Government, Education Scotland, and COSLA, and had membership (in addition to the aforementioned) from: Co-Chair Teacher Workforce Planning Advisory Group; Educational Institute of Scotland; National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT); National Parent Forum of Scotland (NPFS); School Leaders Scotland (SLS); Scottish Catholic Education Services (SCES); Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA); and Voice. Shared agreement was reached between these organisations on the following points: ● Placements are to be planned to take place from October 2020; ● All reconfigured placements are to be managed through SPS; ● [That there would be a] careful consideration by each TEI and GTC Scotland as to which student placements take place for undergraduate years 1, 2 and 3 in session 2020/21; ● GTCS Council is to approve an Addendum to respond to the exceptional circumstances of COVID-19: the acceptable parameters for adjustment for ITE programmes; ● TEIs are to approve changes to placement patterns and associated assessments through quality assurance processes

Challenging the 'New Professionalism': from managerialism to pedagogy?

In recent years there have been changes made to the conceptualisation of continuing professional development for teachers in both the Scottish and English systems of education. These changes have been instigated by successive UK governments (and more recently, by the Scottish Executive), together with the General teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) and the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE). This paper argues that these changes have not provided a clear rationale for CPD, but instead have introduced tensions between the concept of teacher education and that of training. The need for a less confused understanding of CPD and its purposes is underlined, as is the need for school based approaches to continuing teacher education. Arguably, teacher education must move from technicist emphases to a model which integrates the social processes of change within society and schools with the individual development and empowerment of teachers

Giving Miss Marple a makeover : graduate recruitment, systems failure and the Scottish voluntary sector

The voluntary sector in Scotland, as across the globe, is becoming increasingly business like. Resultantly, there is an increasing demand for graduates to work in business and support functions. In Scotland, however, despite an oversupply of graduates in the labor market, the voluntary sector reports skills shortages for graduate-level positions; a leadership deficit was also reported in countries such as the United States. Through exploratory, mainly qualitative, case study and stakeholder research, this article proposes that one reason for this mismatch between the supply of and demand for graduates is a systems failure within the sector. Many graduates and university students remain unaware of potentially suitable paid job opportunities, in part because of the sector's voluntary label. To rectify this systems failure, thought needs to be given to the sector's nomenclature and the manner in which voluntary sector organizations attract graduate recruits, for example, through levering value congruence in potential recruits

From accountability to digital data: the rise and rise of educational governance

Research interest in educational governance has increased in recent years with the rise to prominence of transnational organisations such as the OECD and the importance attached to international comparison of educational systems. However, rarely do educational researchers consider the historical antecedents that have attended these developments. Yet to more fully appreciate where we are now it is necessary to examine the national and global events that have shaped the current policy context. This paper presents a review of educational governance in the UK from the 1970s seeing in this a trajectory from the emergence of accountability to today’s overriding concern with digital data. In doing this, the paper aims to go beyond providing a historical account, rather its purpose is to shed light on educational change; and further, to analyse the contribution of educational research to an understanding of events as they have unfolded over the past five decades. While it is necessarily rooted within the particular historical context of the UK it can be read as an analysis of the factors influencing educational change in the context of globalised policy spaces more broadly. A recurrent theme is the appearance of the ‘unanticipated consequence’, one of the most important issues the social sciences has to contend with. Thus a tentative theory of ironic reversal as a source of policy failure emerges which is not only of relevance to educational policy but of wider significance

Quality improvement of community pharmacy services:a prioritisation exercise

Funded by NHS Education for ScotlandPeer reviewedPublisher PD