Scottish Borders Secondary School Parent Councils
Note of a meeting held on Wednesday 29th May 2013
Present
Fiona McQueen Earlston High School
Martyn parsons Hawick High School
Andy Maybury Hawick High School
Brian Anderson Jedburgh Grammar School
Lisa Anderson Scottish Borders Council (LA)
Christine Brown Scottish Borders Council (CB)
Jim Fraser Scottish Borders Council (JF)
Jackie Swanston Scottish Borders Council (JS)
Apologies
Chris Mowat Kelso High School
Kate Foreman Peebles High School
1. Welcome and Inductions
Jackie Swanston welcomed all those present and introduced Jim Fraser, Emergency Planning Officer for his overview of “The Bunker”.
2. Introduction to “The Bunker” and what it does
Jim explained his position as Emergency Planning Officer is a legal requirement of Scottish Borders Council (SBC) as a category 1 responder. He has delegated powers to make decisions on behalf of the Chief Executive if required. Day to day his work involves dealing with the emergency services.
He explained the communications available in the bunker, video and audio conference facilities, government radio communications, access to the met office systems, external camera monitoring systems and other technology monitoring river levels etc.
Jim receives severe weather warnings for the Scottish Borders 48 hours before they are broadcast on the TV. When an AMBER warning comes through, this is when the group comes together (representatives from all SBC services including education).
Jim gave a demonstration of the met office system, showing the ability to track rainfall, wind, precipitation (snow) across the region.
Jim, Jackie and Christine explained that it is important for them to make decisions on the closure of schools as soon as possible to allow parents to make alternative arrangements.
Jim showed the group how the system is used to make decisions about individual areas and gave the example of the tracking of the weather in Tweeddale last week when the High School pupils were out doing a sponsored walk, to ensure pupils safety throughout.
Q: Do you know what activities are coming up?
A: If we are aware of severe weather coming up we contact schools to find out, or schools will contact us to ask what the weather will be like. We use this system sometimes as intelligence for school sports days.
Jim, Jackie and Christine explained that they would like schools to be open as far as it is safe to do so. Where possible they try not to close all schools, they work with the schools individually to risk assess, but ultimately the council makes the decision as they have the information to hand.
Jim then explained the role of the gritters, their satellite control and how the council use them in severe weather to rescue stranded vehicles. SBC are never short of salt, they used more last year than ever before and still have reserves.
Radio Borders is a partner in spreading the information coming from SBC and are great at getting the news out as soon as possible.
Flooding is also monitored, when levels rise, alarms are raised and flood gates are activated.
Jackie and the group thanked Jim for his time. The introduction to the bunker was really interesting and informative as to how decision are made.
3. Resilient Schools
JS: Many head teachers haven’t had the opportunity to see the bunker, this would also be useful to them, seeing how we make decisions
CB/JS: Making decisions as early as possible is difficult, but we have decided, based on feedback from parents to make them in advance and not leave it to the last minute.
There followed a discussion about the impact on individual school and questions on how decisions were made with respect to year groups asked to stay at home/attend. Jackie and Christine explained that this depended on headcount of staff and numbers of children living within walking distance. This all had to be managed and assessed in terms of opening schools. They will issue more information on this to parents in Sept/Oct.
It was fed back that there had been some problems with the publicity, as many parents didn’t know what “resilient schools” is. But that now parents had experienced is, it would be easier to communicate in future.
Q: Why were decisions made to close schools when some parents have commented that they could attend work, so why couldn’t teachers?
A: We have to listen to the emergency services and if the police are telling us it is unsafe to travel we adhere to that.
Parents commented that they felt the region has done a great job in keeping roads gritted/open this year.
Q: How is resilient schools communicated?
A: Groupcall, radio borders, council website. We’re currently looking at facebook and twitter. We need to ensure the messages are correct.
CB/JS 10-12 schools were not open as part of resilient schools. We are looking at what we can do to open the schools as quickly as we can.
We have an action plan as to what we have learned this year, but this will always be changing.
Resilient schools is here to stay.
Q: Do you see any evolution on resilient schools in adding teachers who are on an open primary road that can safely get to work.
A: Not at the moment, this depends on safety and creates too may scenarios.
Parents need to realise that children will not receive the same education during resilient schools. We have moved forward from videos but we can’t promise to meet the curriculum.
Every school opened has a dedicated manager, 1st aider, key holder etc. Certain things need to be in place for a school to open.
Q: Do only secondary teachers go to secondary schools and same with primary?
A: Yes, at the moment that would be a step too far.
4. Budget and Workstream Updates
There have been no changes since the last budget update. SBC still need to make a saving of in excess of £11 million across education and ICS over the next few years.
There are 7 workstreams, Jackie hopes to bring developments in the secondary workstream to this group, but there may be aspect of the other workstreams that are relevant to secondary parent council chairs too.
Each of the workstreams now have a group of people allocated. And have created a draft plan to outline the areas they are going to look at. This is still at the early stages, identifying what we need to look at to save money.
The workstream leaders all report to Glenn Rodger’s project board (with heads of services) where these plans are challenged.
The focus of the next meeting with me on communication, as some school staff may still not know about the review.
The secondary review workstream have another two meetings before the summer break, so we hope to have something to share with you at the next meeting.
Q: Efficiency savings? What can actually be altered? If schools had more control over their budgets themselves….there are in/out budgets that can’t be touched, the saving doesn’t come back to the school..
A: In the secondary redesign, every head teacher is participating, head teachers are dealing with budgets day in day out so this will be covered.
5. Feedback from NPFS / Education Committee
Martyn had no update since the parent council chairs forum two weeks ago, but will have items to feed back on at the next meeting.
Kate had sent her apologies.
6. Introduction to Lisa Anderson
Lisa gave a quick update about plans to update the parental involvement pages on SBC website to be more accessible to all parents and have examples of good parental involvement in out schools. Lisa is looking for all parent councils to put forward areas of partnership work with schools that they feel has benefited their role in supporting their children’s learning. Lisa to send e-mails out nearer the time to request this information but would like parent councils to start thinking about this.
Lisa also gave an update on plans to support schools and parent councils to jointly develop facebook pages. We hope to have a starter pack ready at the beginning of the next school year.
7. Agenda Items
The attendees enjoyed this session and found the information useful. It was agreed that we would have a single topic agenda for each meeting in 2013/14. General updates would be included in each meeting.
8. Date and Venue for Next meeting
Lisa would like feedback on dates and will send an e-mail to confirm dates for the next session.