Archive for the 'Joint Parent Councils' Category

Feasibility Studies – The Results

Published by Billy on April 14, 2010 in Bucksburn Community, Bucksburn Nursery, Bucksburn Parent Council, Bucksburn Primary School, Helpful Publications, Joint Parent Councils, Parental Assistance and Parental Involvement. 2 Comments

The feasibility studies are available to download! Yay, I hear you cry…

It’s in three parts, the first is an overview, the 2nd(Bucksburn) and 3rd(Newhills) concentrate on the individual sites(yes, only 2 sites were considered, yes I know we weren’t involved despite promises that we would be…*rolls eyes*).

Part 1 (.doc[4.1MB] | .pdf[549kB])
Part 2 (.doc[11.5MB])
Part 3 (.doc[10.1MB])

There are no pdf versions of 2 & 3 because they become insanely huge(over 60MB each)

Because these are fairly large documents I’ve converted them to html and put them on this site so you can read them online, direct access at

http://bucksburn.info/FR

but please note some formatting is lost in the automatic conversion.

Happy reading, comments below!

APCLG Meeting Oct 5th 2009 – Summerhill

Published by Billy on September 22, 2009 in Bucksburn Parent Council and Joint Parent Councils. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I’ve received this email inviting a representative to the Aberdeen Parent Council Liaison Group meeting…

The Aberdeen Parent Council Liaison Group would like to invite you to their first meeting for all the City Parent Councils for this academic year to be held at Summerhill Education Centre on Monday 5th October. The meeting will start at 7:00pm and we would expect to be finished by 9pm.

This meeting is for Parent Council representatives from Aberdeen City schools only. If you have received this invitation and it does not apply to you it may be that this is the only contact address we have for your Parent Council and I would ask that you forward it to the appropriate person as soon as possible. Thank you for you assistance.

We would like to cover two broad areas during the meeting which are;

1. APCLG itself – why is there a Group, what it hopes to achieve, who is a member and what is its mandate?

APCLG was set up some 18 months ago, however, we believe it is time to revisit the Group, its mandate, its make up, its participants and how we decide collectively who is to sit on it?

We recognise it may be time to ensure that people who participate on this Group are more formally selected. It is, therefore, out intent to seek your collective approval and if appropriate election of people to serve on the Group. Ideally if you should wish to be considered for nomination and selection we would ask that you attend this meeting. If for any reason you are unable to attend but still wish to be considered please let me know and provide a very brief (one paragraph maximum) statement on why you wish to be considered and what you would hope to achieve by participating in APCLG.

2. Major issues with respect to education in the city over the coming years.

Aberdeen City Council is contemplating having to make substantial further cuts year on year in education spend (along with cuts in other key public services spend). These cuts have the potential to have a profound effect on our children’s education and may well result in, amongst others, staff reductions, school closures and a likely consequent re-zoning of those that remain. At the same time as these reductions of service a general restructuring of teaching methods and the curriculum (curriculum for excellence) is also being embarked upon.

APCLG is trying to represent the broad interests of Parent Councils across the City and of your Parent Fora. To help understand where each Parent Council sits on the above issues we have developed a very brief questionnaire regarding APCLG and Parental Representation which I ask one person from each Parent Council to complete. The questionnaire is attached to this Email and ideally should be completed on-line by following the link in the attached document (also included below) or, if necessary, by filling in the responses on the Word document and Emailing it to the address indicated. IT is intended to provide feedback on the responses to the questionnaire at the meeting on 5th October.

Link to Parent Council Questionnaire (Key Ctrl + Click to follow link): APCLG Survey[link removed - Billy] Please note the questionnaire will be live on-line from 08:00hrs Wednesday 23rd September – help us by completing this as soon as possible.

The agenda that we wish to follow for the meeting to cover the two areas I have outlined above is as follows;

1. Introduction

2. APCLG Background / Status

3. Feedback on APCLG Survey

4. Nomination and election of representatives onto APCLG

5. Nomination of representatives to the National Forum

6. Education Committee Representation

7. Aberdeen City Education Issues

8. AOB

I cannot stress strongly enough that we are very interested in hearing your thoughts on APCLG and more generally on education in the City of Aberdeen. We therefore need you to come along to this meeting to make your views known.

Please attend.

Regards,

Paul.

Of course the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed this meeting is to be held at the same time as our own PC meeting so if anyone would like to represent Bucksburn at this please email me at secretary@bucksburn.info and I’ll warn them let them know. ;oD

Meeting With Lorraine Sanda

Published by Billy on August 31, 2009 in Joint Parent Councils and Parental Involvement. 0 Comments

I received this in email today from the Aberdeen Parent Councils Liaison Group. Please reply directly to Anthony at the email address at the bottom should you be interested in this event.

Subject: Meeting with Lorraine Sanda, the National Parental Involvement Coordinator, Aberdeen 29th September

Repeat flier for those who missed the first prior to the holidays

Dear Parents/Parent Council Members,

On behalf of the Aberdeen Parent Council Liaison group, I have arranged for Lorraine Sanda, the National Parental Involvement Coordinator, to come and visit us in Aberdeen.

We would like to invite you to attend an open discussion on Parental Involvement, Parent Councils, Curriculum for Excellence and The National Forum.

The event is planned to take place at the New Airyhall school, at 7pm on Tuesday 29th September 2009.

Format for the evening will be follows: -

Introduction

Lorraine will share with us: -

· What has been happening around the country in relation to Parent Councils, Curriculum for Excellence and the National Forum.

· The latest developments in relation to these 3 areas.

· How her role as National Parental Involvement Coordinator promotes parental involvement generally, as well as supporting the development of Parent Councils.

The remainder of the meeting will be your opportunity to ask Lorraine questions and put forward valid points to be taken forward at a National level.

This invitation is open to all parents and an opportunity not to be missed. To reserve places at this most worthwhile event please contact me direct at Anthony.Rafferty@nhs.net

Please pass this information on to all parents in your school.

Looking forward to meeting you

Tony Rafferty

Member Aberdeen Parent Council Liaison Group/Chairman Airyhall Parent Council

Bucksburn Set To Lose Out In Pupil Support Assistant Cuts

Published by Billy on February 17, 2009 in Bucksburn Parent Council, Bucksburn Primary School and Joint Parent Councils. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

(*Edit – 18/02 – I’ve now uploaded the psa allocation report from ACC where this was decided.)

Our school has been placed in the firing line yet again with the announcement that PSA hours are to be cut. Another cut that will affect those who rely on it most. The information I received the other day verbally was something like 50% of our PSA hours will be lost. This will result in more work for teachers who will have to make up for the cut. That of course means that they will be teaching less!

There is massive condemnation of this by EVERY ACC school in Aberdeen, some of which I’ll publish here…

Comments or Questions are welcome below.

What other schools are saying…

Continue reading ‘Bucksburn Set To Lose Out In Pupil Support Assistant Cuts’

Update!

Published by Billy on February 3, 2009 in Bucksburn Community, Bucksburn Nursery, Bucksburn Parent Council, Bucksburn Primary School, Joint Parent Councils, Parental Assistance and Parental Involvement. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

The parent council, PTA, Newhills PC and other interested individuals have been very active recently as the final chance for our school is approaching.

Aberdeen City Council meet on 11th February at the Town Hall to make their final vote on the proposition as set out by the Culture and Learning, Neighbourhood Services (North) department of the council.

Public attendance at this meeting is offered if you turn up before 2PM. We are in the process of seeing if we can get a group of parents together to make a more formal representation to the council at this time before they vote. This really is the final opportunity to show the councillors that they need to disregard the case as produced and recommended by Culture & Learning, something that they are unlikely to do even with this representation.

Newhills PC have drawn up a petition which I encourage all parents to sign and I will endeavour to make this available to all parents ASAP. I would encourage parents at Bucksburn to communicate with Newhills at this time, we are both working very hard at achieving a common goal. Both schools serve their communities in the way required by those communities, neither favour the merger and the amalgamation will be the death knell of that special something which cannot be measured that I know Bucksburn, and am sure Newhills, has.

So this is it folks. Can we show the council that they need to listen to the huge public opinion on this matter and do what they were voted in to do – represent their constituents? OR, do we just let THEM tell US what’s going to happen instead?

It’s your school, YOU DECIDE!

Aberdeen Parent Councils Meeting

Published by Billy on November 27, 2008 in Joint Parent Councils. 0 Comments

I’ve been sent the minutes of the joint parent councils meeting, which covered the budget plans for the next couple of years as well as the looming 4-day-week proposal. Please download the minutes and associated files below.

The minutes in particular make interesting reading, especially the question and answer section.