Campie Primary School Board

The end of term has come and with it my stint on Campie School Board. It's tempting to look back but I think I've probably done enough of that, then again... The last event was a 'Thank you' cheese and wine hosted by Patricia McCall and Cathy Clarke on behalf of the school for the PTA and Board and I think I can say with reasonable certainty that it was valued by all present. There too it seemed the focus was on things done, changes brought about, acheivements acheived. But not just that; there was talk of what the Parental Involvement Bill might bring, of 'cluster working', of not changing too much. I know the Board has long recognised the benefits of getting togrther as a cluster but in the last several years has only managed to do so on a few of occasions maybe because of the unsettling feeling that doing something new provokes and maybe it's for that same reason that it seems like a particularly good idea to me now! Whatever the reason I hope it comes about. I also hope that my freinds and fellow parents on Campie School Board rescue the PC from their children and start blogging here. I know my contributions have been small in number but they have prompted me to think more and longer about the the role of the Board and my role within it. Like many activities the process is often more rewarding than the outcome.

One last thought; did you know that prostate cancer effects one man in eleven. To find out what you can do visit http://www.justgiving.com/runStewart

I started writing this last week after attending a 'Parental Involvement' meeting at Musselburgh Grammar School. The meeting was very poorly attended and although the presenter, Susan Guy was extremely optomistic and encouraging, when I tried to put my thoughts into words for this blog it became a bit of a whinge about the difficulty in getting parents to turn out to meetings then I tried to add link to Susan's questionnaire and the whole piece disappeared. Upon reflection this was the best outcome (I just hope it doesn't reappear in some incongruous place!) because what I really wanted to record is the satisfaction I get from my involvement. I joined the PTA and then The School Board for lots of reasons but the overarching one was to make my son's experience of school as good, in the broadest sense, as it could be. By that measure it has worked - he has had a very good experience of school. I know that doesn't demonstrate a causal link but that is surprisingly unimportant to me. My involvement has impacted on my experience which is, I suspect, where the satisfaction comes from and it seems entirely credible that that has also benefitted Calum. But it is also entirely credible that other parents gain that same positive experience and satisfaction from entirely different forms of involvement so to get caught up in doing headcounts at meetings may be easy but is probably a bit pointless and I'm goimg to try not to do it anymore. I've got a final meeting at Campie tomorrow, I'll let you know if I manage.

The last Board meeting will be my last. Calum is off to The Grammar next term and we don't expect to meet as a board in June, emergencies excepted. So my thoughts have turned to those things that have changed during the seven years I've been a board member. And lots have but it was a piece on the news recently about boys' attainment being poorer than girls' that brought to mind a topic that has long been close to my heart and one which I brought to the Board a number of years ago, September 2001 to be precise, and it has been reported on, more or less annually, ever since.

Attainment at Campie is high but boys always do less well than girls in reading, writing and maths and in 2001 I wondered why. In 2006 I still do! Lots of plausible explanations were considered and various stategies implemented but still the gap rermained and then we focussed on the school's results: were the figures robust? did they show convergence? were they statistically significant? could they fairly be compared? What eventually dawned on me was that the original question, the difference between boys and girls, is far beyond the scope of a 90 minute monthly meeting, even if we discussed nothing else, so it was inevitable that we turned our attention to the figures as a kind of short hand and in that process learnt very little. Now, you may think this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs, for a long while I certainly did, but for me it was resolved at a meeting last year when we were discussing this topic again and mooted the notion that the really important thing about attainment is its use as a measure of personal develpoment and the really important thing for a school to do is to promote personal development . It was a real turning point for me though looking back now I find it hard to imagine something similar not being said right form the begining. I think that what made a difference is the way in which that kind of thinking fits so well with the broader picture where the school's Development Plan is conceived as a plan to enable children to become 'successful learners, confident individuals, resposible citizens and effective contributors' and not a list of quality indicators, even if the aim was the same. So I am satisfied that while boys will be boys Campie PS is helping them to become the best boys that they can be.

Welcome to our very first blog entry.

The morning after the night before. There was plenty of hot debate at last night's School Board meeting. And this is your chance to have your say!

First of all holidays, a subject dear to people's hearts. The timimg of the Easter break for 2007/2008 was mulled over. Two proposals were discussed - one to have the break wrapped around Good Friday/Easter Monday, the other to just take these two days, come back to school and then take the first two weeks in April. The Board was in favour of the latter. What do you think?

More to come later.