Scottish Borders Parent Council Forum
Note of meeting held on Thursday 16th May 2013
Present
Parent Council representatives
Vicky Hammersley Channelkirk Primary School
Lyeona Anderton Clovenfords Primary School
Dougie Turner Coldsteam Primary School
Fiona McQueen Earlston High School
David Gordon Earlston Primary School
Ednam Primary School
Sharon Abrahame Heriot Primary School
Wendy Scott Howdenburn Primary School
W B Anderson Jedburgh Grammar School
Chris Mowat Kelso High School
Louisa Marston Kirkhope Primary School
David Peace Lauder Primary School
Sarah MacDonald Lilliesleaf Primary School
Ruth Magowan Melrose Primary School
Martyn Parsons Hawick High School, NPFS
Ann Lamb Parkside Primary School
Kate Foreman Peebles High School
Iain Burke Selkirk High School
James Denne St. Boswells Primary School
V Leckie St. Ronans Primary School
Danielle Betts Swinton Primary School
Sarah Cross Yarrow Primary School
Scottish Borders Council
Cllr Sandy Aitchison Executive Member for Education
Glenn Rodger Director, Education and Lifelong Learning
Colin Easton Policy, Planning and Performance Manager
Stella Everingham Head of Integrated Children’s Services
Lisa Anderson Policy, Planning and Performance Officer
Amanda Cronin Early Years Collaborative Programme Manager and Allyson McCollum Joint Lead NHS Health Improvement Team
Apologies
Toby Watts Kingsland Primary School
Angela Donohue Chirnside Primary School
Louise McIntosh Philihaugh Primary School
Simon Bennett Ednam Primary School
Melanie Barrow Denholm Primary School
Lisa Scott Trinity Primary School
Barry Hughes Halyrude Primary School
Gillian McFadyen Morebattle Primary School
Robert Fairburn St.Marys Primary School (Gala)
Valerie Makepeace Newtown Primary School
Andrea Walker Cockburnspath Primary School
Jim White Greenlaw Primary School
Suzanne Simpson Eyemouth Primary School
Niall Campbell Hobkirk Primary School
Darren Thomson Hawick High School
Barry Smith Reston Primary School
Michael Pryor Peebles High School
Jacqui Bennett Duns Primary School
Anne-Theresa Lawrie Senior Education Officer
Helen Ross Senior Education Officer
Christine Brown Senior Education Officer
1. Welcome
Cllr Sandy Aitchison welcomed those present.
2. Update on Service Review and redesign
Glenn Rodger gave an update on the status of the service review since the last meeting. Previously he had presented the budget overview, which identified a need to save money across all services provided by the council. Within education there are 7 areas of review: school estate, support staff in schools and central resources, Integrated Childrens Services (ICS), primary, secondary, early years and cultural services.
Project teams are now set up for each review and project management is in place. Key people have been invited to join the projects (HT’s, finance etc). Some teams have had their first meeting to scope areas of work, but it is still in the very early stages.
The key challenges for the teams are whilst recognising the need to save money (not negotiable), how do we, as a council develop services and improve quality whilst meeting the national agendas of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), GIRFEC etc. This will all be part of the debate over the next 3-4 years.
The council wants to engage widely throughout this process and part of this will be by engaging with the parent reference group and wider parent forum. The first meeting with the parent reference group has been set for the 13th June and 9 parents have volunteered their time to be involved in this.
The timescales for each project team will differ as work progresses and depends on the area of change. This will be fed back regularly. The council is committed to engaging as many people as possible in this process of transformation.
As well as the project teams there has been a restructuring of the Education Committee (with 2 parent council representatives) that will explore other areas of concern. The Education Committee will scrutinise the issues in supply teaching, an area for concern for both parents and the council. This is an example of some of the targeted work that is happening at the moment.
Questions and Answers
Q: Will the review be done internally or will the council use consultants?
A: This depends on whether we have the expertise. I think we have untapped expertise in our system, but we may also be looking beyond for external support. We will also be looking at what is happening elsewhere in other local authorities, and for early years, what’s happening in other countries.
The council will prepare papers in draft form to be presented to the Education Committee. We need to use forums in each area of work, please make inputs when you get the opportunity.
3. Child Healthy Weight Project – report from NHS Health Improvement
Presentation attached. Allyson McCollum requested that parent councils consider the two questions on the last slide and invited thoughts/comments.
This was followed by a short discussion led by Cllr Aitchison on a team who visited from Finland to look at health and nutrition in the Scottish Borders.
Questions and Answers
Q: East Ayrshire council is running a scheme where local produce is used for school meals. Is this something you are looking at?
A: We are looking at it as part of a wider plan, to develop a local food plan, using local produce.
Q: I think advertising is an issue for children, especially adverts on kids TV. What did the Finnish colleagues think of this?
A: (GR) In Finland they took a national decision for all children to eat school meals, all free where portions sizes vary on age and stage of the child. This consists of a protein, a carbohydrate and two veg. The culture in Finland is to conform, this would be harder to implement in the UK. e.g. the back lash against Jamie Oliver’s healthy school meals, with parents providing burgers in the playground.
(DG) Earlston PS has a policy that there are no sweets or fizzy drinks at any of their events. Only bottled water is available, so far there have been no objections from children or parents.
(AMcC) Tackling advertising is also about educating children about the tactics used for marketing these products.
Q: Channelkirk pupil committee checked lunch boxes of the whole school. They found that generally p1-3 had healthy lunch boxes but by P5-7 it was all going wrong. Is this an opportunity to explore the change? Also the school has a fruit stop at 2pm where children are to eat a piece of fruit, one parent objecting, wants their child to have a chocolate biscuit as they will eat nothing else. We can’t do anything about this, it’s parental choice.
A: (GR) We have the same issue with the idea of a “lock-in” for secondary pupils, such that pupils have no choice to go down the street. This is viewed as a breach of human rights.
This is where we need to encourage change via education.
Q: Is this a long term project?
A: It has been going for 2 years with a team of 2, we hope to continue, this is one part of the bigger effort to raise awareness, build support. We plan to roll out what has been done by bringing in extra capacity to find a way to bring the project into the mainstream.
Q: (DB) Swinton PS parents have been supporting staff to run a green team for the last 2-3 years. The children grow things and cook them, we call it playgroud to table. This is good for promoting healthy eating, some of the children hadn’t tried some of the food we grew, some parents can’t afford it.
A: It would be good if you could take this discussion back to your parent councils, ask the question, how can parent councils support this agenda in their schools?
(AmcC) Perhaps we could gather together some examples of good practice and share them.
(SA) Please send examples to Lisa Anderson. Lisa will find an area for sharing good practice (possibly GLOW, perhaps website) – needs to be investigated.
Q: Do you have pictures of a healthy plate? Could we have a picture of a healthy lunchbox, for schools to link to in their handbook?
A: Yes, this is an idea that I will look into.
Cllr Aitchison thanked Allyson McCollum for her input and requested she return in 12 months to provide an update.
4. Social, Emotional and Behavioural Needs (SEBN) report feedback
Amanda Cronin gave a brief summary of the draft report and explained that this report will feed into the project teams for primary and secondary on transformational change.
Key themes:
We still need a centre to support children with SEBN but it needs to be more central (The current Wilton Centre is a support centre based in Hawick).
The report recognises that more needs to be done to support young people in their own community and the way to do this is by improving services in schools. The proposal is to create hub and spoke systems in schools and to upskill teachers in dealing with SEBN in the classroom. This is a long term strategy.
All comments are welcome on the report, please forward to Amanda Cronin, or Lisa Anderson who will pass them on.
Q: The report is a bit above me, will you accept feedback from individual parents who know more about this?
A: Yes, any input is welcome.
Q: There needs to be a more consistent form of referral, at the moment each locality has different ways of referral.
A: Yes, this will be looked at.
Q: Are you working with other agencies, as with the child’s plan?
A: Yes, we are trying to make sure all staff have skills and are trained.
Q: What is the Wilton Centre?
A: (SE) It’s a “Spark of Genius” centre for children who struggle in mainstream education where they get more individualised support, this suits some children better.
Ideally we would like to reduce the number of children accessing the Wilton Centre but upskilling the 9 High Schools. We plan to use the expertise of the staff in the Wilton Centre to support other teachers.
CfE offers more opportunities to deal with children on a wider level and allows the flexibility to meet the needs of more children in the classroom.
Q: Is that feasible? Cutting resource, everyone has to do more with less and children are still being removed from the classroom, told to go to the hub.
A: There has to be a balance, we need to give teachers the tools to cope better.
(GR) It costs a huge amount of money to place children in the Wilton centre, to make the equation work we need to look at what we can do. Early intervention, additional resources in the school and support staff skills, teachers need to be able to pull down bad behaviour before it escalates. The challenge will be in moving from one model to another.
(SE) We have ANA’s in the classrooms, but teachers need to make sure they keep the skills for dealing with difficult behaviour. We need to look at simple things to assist the ethos in the school to accommodate children to feel more comfortable and settle quicker.
(SA) This should be discussed with parent councils and feedback submitted before the 17th June.
5. Feedback from the National Parent Forum of Scotland
Martyn Parsons gave an overview of the NPFS and his role as Scottish Borders representative. (Presentation attached).
Martyn is keen for parents to forward their views to him, so he can give a good representation at national meetings of the needs/thoughts of parents in the Scottish Borders.
Martyn invited parents to provide him with their contact e-mail so he can keep them updated. Scottish.borders@npfs,org.uk
One of the topics Martyn has been asked to feed back on is the use of mobile technologies in schools.
Q: How do we communicate better within Scottish Borders?
A: There is nothing at the moment, I’d be happy to support a website or an area to share information.
(IB) we have a GLOW site. It was set up but it’s not being fully used. Can we use this?
Lisa Anderson to look into this.
Cllr Aitchison thanked Martyn for his presentation.
6. Social Media (discussion groups)
Lisa Anderson introduced herself as Gillian Simmons replacement.
The parent representatives were asked to form small groups to discuss social media in the context of communication with parents, both by schools and parent councils. (See attached slide).
Please share this with parent councils, and send any feedback to Lisa Anderson.
There was some discussion around starter packs for school to support the use of social media. The feedback from the discussion groups will be used to inform SBC strategy in supporting parents/school if they choose to use social media as a communication method.
There was some discussion about parent councils struggling to recruit new parents.
There was also a discussion about the language used in the documentation sent out by SBC for feedback. Parents felt that information that SBC provides for feedback needs to be in plain English, to make it more accessible to all.
7. Dates of meetings for 2013-14 school session
Thursday 19th September 2013
Venue: Council Chamber, Council Headquarters, Newtown St Boswells
Time: 6.00 for 6.30pm
Thursday 20th February 2014 Venue to be confirmed
Thursday 22nd May 2014 Venue to be confirmed
8. Agenda items for next meeting / future meetings
Next meeting
· Update on respectful relationships policy
· Parental involvement policy review
Future meetings (please submit any suggestions to Lisa Anderson)