Scottish schools, pupils and teachers celebrated their achievements at the ‘Scottish Education Awards’ event in Glasgow last week. This annual awards programme recognises excellence in many categories of school life, and the judges saw a great deal of innovative and impressive work. I’ll pick out just a few of the winners which are relevant to this blog:

St Ninian’s High School in Bishopbriggs (East Dunbartonshire) won the ‘International Schools Award’ category;

Three Primary schools in North Lanarkshire jointly won the ‘Active Citizenship Award’ - St Helen’s primary, Condorrat primary, and Baird Memorial primary.

And Shawlands Academy (Glasgow) won the ‘Greener Schools Award’.

The full list of winners will appear on the Awards website shortly. Congratulations to all that participated.

A one-day ‘Symposium on Transformational Leadership’ will be run in Stirling on 23 June 2008. It features Dr.Avis Glaze, Education Commissioner for Ontario, and Janet Gless, Associate Director of the New Teacher Center, Santa Cruz, California, as the key presenters.

Learning and Teaching Scotland intend that this free CPD event will become an annual feature in the Scottish education calendar, offered as part of the Scottish Continuing International Professional Development (SCIPD) programme. To apply please download the Registration form.

Last year LTS ran very successful SCIPD Group Study visits to Ontario (on the theme of School Leadership) and Santa Cruz, California (on Mentoring of teachers). The Scottish Continuing International Professional Development programme supports international learning experiences for Scottish school education staff.

We have organised new visits to both centres, on the same themes, for the week beginning Monday 13th October 2008. Full details and the specific application forms are on our International Education website ’study visits’ pages.

The final of the annual ‘Euroquiz’ competition, run by Scottish European Educational Trust and sponsored by Standard Life, took place on Monday 12th May, in the Scottish Parliament’s Debating Chamber. One hundred Scottish primary school children took part in the finals, and after a very close final round the winning team was from Edinburgh Academy and the runner-up from West Kilbride Primary, North Ayrshire.  

The finals were broadcast on Holyrood TV, and the video can be viewed on their website ‘events’ section.

The Edinburgh ‘hub’ Confucius Classroom was launched at St.George’s School for Girls last week. St George’s will work in partnership with City of Edinburgh Council schools and others to support teaching and learning about China.�

The Scottish Parliament debated International Education on Thursday 24th April 2008. An ‘official report’ record is now available.The debate was shown live on Holyrood TV, and you can watch the video on the Holyrood TV website ‘film archive’ area.

Visitor registration for the Scottish Learning Festival 2008 is now open. This free CPD event in Glasgow in September 2008 offers keynote presenters, seminars led by teachers and other experts, and lots of opportunity for professional networking. There’s a particularly strong line-up of seminars on themes to do with International Education, Citizenship and Sustainable Development Education.

You can pre-book a seat to all keynote addresses plus two spotlights/seminars per day. Tell all your contacts, peers and friends about the festival and take some time to explore the content on the website.

 We’re expecting hundreds of International visitors to the show, and look forward to meeting you.

The Scottish Parliament is to hold a conference on 9th May (Europe Day) at which fifth and sixth year school students from across Scotland will set out their views to MSPs on the issues they think should be ranked as International Development priorities.

A new CPD course on International Education will be available to Scottish teachers from April 2008. Learning and Teaching Scotland supported the development of this module, through the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen, and it has been accredited by the General Teaching Council Scotland. The course can be completed as part of a Chartered Teacher programme. The course will be launched at Glasgow University on Saturday 26th April.

This opportunity offers teachers the chance to gain external accreditation for their work in the development of International Education, to learn about current programmes, and to be supported in further development.

For further information, contact Dr Margery McMahon at the University of Glasgow or Leila Holm at the University of Aberdeen.

An ‘online hub’ for the Confucius Classrooms programme is now live. It forms a key part of the Confucius Classrooms vision in Scotland, to extend access to teaching and learning about Chinese language and culture and support growth of a learning community.

The hub has a public web side, with information about the programme, resources and examples of current practice in Scottish schools. It also has a dedicated area within Glow, the broadband intranet service for Scottish education professionals and pupils, for collaboration, sharing and interaction in a secure environment.