You never know what you are letting yourself in for when you help to organise an international conference. So it was that Margaret Sutherland, who leads the Scottish Network for Able Pupils, found herself in Asda at the end of August buying 25 pairs of flip-flops to make a delegation of South Korean educationists feel at home.
It seems slippers are provided in Korean hotel rooms as standard and only eight of the group had brought their own. It brought a whole new meaning to additional support needs, which is Margaret’s other job.
Only kidding
That great annual gathering of bib-liophiles, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, must have a peculiar view of teachers. Its programme this year included a talk by confidence booster Carol Craig which, it told us, was aimed at “teachers and adults”.
Don’s angels
It was heartening to see from his blog that Don Ledingham, who has a day job running East Lothian’s schools when he is not writing for The TESS, had a good summer. He tells us that his trip to Harvard to learn more about the mysteries of leadership was not all hard work. For, in his company were “five beautiful, highly intelligent, vivacious, drop dead gorgeous headteachers”. Clearly he had no option but to accept his mission... Readers can log on to edubuzz.orgblogsHarvardcategory don-ledingham to check out this crew and see if Don’s hyperbole is justified.
HAS been
The Headteachers’ Association of Scotland is clearly having fun with its plans for a name change. The second-ary heidies union has a majority of deputes, so it believes now is the time to reflect that. Its Scottish Headlines journal offers some options School Leaders Scotland (SLS), the Scottish Association of School Leaders (SASL), the Scottish Educational Leaders’ Association (SELA), the Educational Leaders’ Asso-ciation of Scotland (ELAS), the Scottish School Leaders’ Association (SSLA). One suggestion has been ruled out the Royal Association of School and College Leaders of Scotland (RASCLS).
By George!
The “Big Four” in education have been transmogrified into the Famous Five by Judith McClure, convener of the school leadership group SELMAS. Introducing the respective heads of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Edu-cation, Learning and Teaching Scotland, the Scottish Qualifi- cations Authority and the General Teaching Council for Scotland at the association’s annual conference, she mused that she had thought of naming them after Enid Blyton’s child detectives, with Graham Donaldson as Julian and herself as Timmy the mongrel.
