Informed Scotland Dec 17/Jan 18 – Collaborating for improvement & innovation
.
There used to be a festive-season ‘lull’ in Scottish learning & skills activity. Not any more! As a result, we’ve just published another bumper edition, packed with must-read items.
The words collaborate, collaboration and collaborative(s) crop up over 20 times in the latest issue of Informed Scotland. Organisations are working together for improvement, innovation, learning and leadership; to transform skills and productivity; and across sectors and borders. Music to our ears!
Plans were announced for a new National Manufacturing Institute for Scotland, and a new Northern Innovation Hub is to be led by Highlands & Islands Enterprise, including a focus on technology and young people.
The Economic & Social Research Council set up a new Productivity Insights Network involving Strathclyde, Glasgow and Glasgow Caledonian Universities among others. And a new Teaching Innovation & Learning Enhancement (TILE) network was created at the University of Dundee, with interesting events already planned.
As well as the annual raft of school, college and university statistics, there are numerous key reports to highlight. These include Skills Development Scotland’s first Skills Investment Plan for the Early Learning & Childcare sector; Gathering views on probationer teachers’ readiness to teach from the Scottish Government; and the first progress reports from the Commissioner for Fair Access, the Making Maths Count Group, and on the Scottish Funding Council’s Gender Action Plan.
Thanks to Scotland’s Learning Partnership for drawing our attention to What Works Scotland’s thought-provoking ‘Hard to reach’ or ‘easy to ignore’? review of equality in community engagement. @SLPLearn tweeted: ‘We had to stop using the term hard to reach learners as our adult learners’ forum members told us, “we’re not hard to reach – it’s the services we need that are hard to reach”‘.
The fifth annual Informed Scotland Learning & Skills Hottest Topics list, plus a round-up of last year’s activity, are included in an Annex to the digest. You can also listen to an interview on Radio EDUtalk, when Angela and David Noble explored the stories behind the list, and looked at what’s on the horizon for 2018.
What are you waiting for? Become an Informed Scotland subscriber and keep on top of all the developments. Email [email protected] to request a sample copy.