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

Subject: City appoints Director for Education, Culture and Sport
Information forwarded from Rhona Jarvis
City appoints Director for Education, Culture and Sport

Aberdeen City Council has appointed Annette Bruton – a Chief Inspector
with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education – as Corporate Director
for Education, Culture and Sport.

Mrs Bruton, who has a distinguished career in the field of education,
will take up her post in a few weeks’ time.

City Council Chief Executive Sue Bruce said: “I am delighted that we
have appointed someone of Annette’s calibre from what was an extremely
impressive set of candidates. She came through our very robust
assessment centre with flying colours and will bring a wealth of
invaluable experience to the post.”

City Council Leader Councillor Kate Dean said: “Providing excellent
education and delivering top-class sports and culture for our citizens
are among this administration’s highest priorities. Annette has all
the qualities we were looking for in the person who will lead these key
services.”

Deputy Leader Councillor Kevin Stewart added: “I could not be happier
with this appointment. Annette has the gravitas that comes from being a
Chief Inspector with HMIE and the extensive hands-on knowledge of
education that we need in order to make Aberdeen a beacon of
excellence.”

Mrs Bruton commented: “I am thrilled to have been offered the job. It
is an exciting challenge to run such important services in a major city
like Aberdeen. I will be working for a city council that is dedicated to
providing its citizens with the very best in learning, culture and sport
and I cannot wait to be part of that.”

The 54-year old joined HMIE as an Inspector in January 2001 and became
a Chief Inspector in 2005, with responsibility for the inspection of
education, community learning and development, and psychological
services across Scotland. Her directorate is also responsible for
following through on school inspection and school improvement.

Before joining HMIE, she was a service manager for quality assurance in
Stirling Council’s children’s services. She has also worked as a
senior manager in the Higher Still national development programme and
was involved in the National Curriculum assessment programme from
1996-99.

Prior to that Mrs Bruton worked in the field of learning support and
special needs in the former Lothian Regional Council, dealing with
vulnerable children and their families.

She began her career as a geography and economics teacher in Dundee.

Mrs Bruton is married to Douglas, a principal teacher of guidance in
Dalkeith, and has three sons aged 16, 19 and 21, the eldest of whom has
been studying at the University of Aberdeen.

The current Corporate Director for Culture and Learning, John
Tomlinson, opted not to put himself forward for the post and will retire
from the service.

Mr Tomlinson said: ”I warmly welcome Mrs Bruton’s appointment. She
will be a first-class director and will be working for a city council
that is firmly on its way to realising its potential.

“For my own part, after a great deal of thought I decided not to put
myself forward for interview for the post for which I have had
responsibility over the past nine months. I have thoroughly enjoyed my
13 years with Aberdeen City Council but I decided that now, at this time
of change for the local authority, was the time to explore new
challenges.

“I will greatly miss all the many excellent people with whom I have
worked over the years at the city council. I wish them all the best for
what will undoubtedly be an exciting future under the new management
structure.”

Mrs Bruce paid tribute to Mr Tomlinson’s long service in local
government, commenting: “John has been an exemplary officer and a
valued colleague and I wish him well in whatever he chooses to do
next.”

Councillor Dean added: “I have known and worked with John for very
many years and know well what a talented director he is. He has given
first-rate service to the people of Aberdeen and I am sure he will go on
to make his mark elsewhere.”

Councillor Stewart commented: “I respect John’s decision to move on
to pastures new. He is an extremely able senior officer with a vast
knowledge of a whole range of services. He will be a credit to any
organisation he moves on to join.”

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…

Dear All,

At our Parent Council meeting last night the planned reduction in PSAs was discussed at length. We will lose 250 hours of PSA support a week. You may know that Cults Primary School has a special needs unit and at present we have 26 full-time equivalent PSAs and this will be reduced to 16 in August. This reduction probably contravenes the Education (additional support for learning) Act 2004. We are going to lobby the council and MSPs but before we do so, please could I test the water and see if other PCs are considering similar actions? There is probably greater strength in numbers.

I would be grateful if you could get back to me if you are interested in taking further action.

Many thanks and best wishes
Steve Turner – Cults Primary School PC

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the message. At Stoneywood the PSA reduction is from 157 hours to 67 hours (57%). It will have a devastating effect on school life. We fully support any action that you may take and we are also planning our own lobbying efforts.

Best regards
Bill Harrison – Stoneywood PC

Hi Steve,

At a meeting last week I raised this subject with Rhona Jarvis. Rhona assured us that if any school feels that, using the prescribed national formulae, (see below) they have been wrongly assessed, then an appeal can be lodged directly by the Head Teacher, to the Council.

Kind regards
Tony Rafferty – Airyhall PC

Here is the formula and the table showing Bucksburn and Newhills’ allocations.

Thanks Tony. Is it a coincidence that this national formula is being applied now or are budgetary pressures the sole driving force?

My sense is that a one-size-fits-all policy is being applied with more weighting on school roll and deprivation and relatively little weighting on individual needs. The fact that a child in group D is only eligible for 0.66 PSA is a surprise.

I appreciate that Rhona is obliged to implement these cuts and she has to do as she is told from above but this seems drastic and not in the best interest of children with and without special educational needs.

Best wishes

Steve

Hi Steve,

This was part of budget cutbacks, first put to the committee for Policy and Strategy (Education) on 2nd December 2008

I agree with your rational totally, but the first step I guess is to measure it against the (very sad) formulae first and if that’s correct then action does need to be taken for the formulae to be revisited on a national level.

The following is the situation at Airyhall (Just received)

“Yes! We are going from 208 hours to 120 hours and, depending on our new structure, we will probably lose at least 3 PSAs and keep 6 on reduced hours – this is still being discussed but the allocation of 120 hours is set.

The formula was done on catchment area and numbers of children so schools in areas such as ours are badly hit. Numbers of children with Additional Support Needs in the school did not figure in the calculation.”

It is worth noting that the Aberdeen Parent Council Liaison Group will be hosting a meeting for all PCS in Aberdeen, at the beginning of March. Details will be out in a day or so. An ideal opportunity for us all to meet.

Kind regards

Tony.

We held our Parent Council meeting last night at Kincorth Academy and
were advised that our PSA’s will be reduced from 14 to 9. Effectively
from 408 to 245 hours per weeks which is approx 40%. As yourselves, we
will also be lobbying against this proposal and essentially questioning
the criteria set around the calculation for the reduction.

We’re happy to support a group effort.
Lois Duncan – Kincorth Academy

Many thanks Lois. We are going to contact MSPs on this issue since the local council is stuck between a rock and a hard place. We hope to set up an on-line petition.

I will be in touch

Best wishes

Steve

Many things can happen during the timescale.

However I believe both councils should turn attention to a more pressing matter That will directly effect the education of children.

The reduction of Psa Staff, both schools have been given the number of hours allocated for Psa per school.

Dependant on current number of staff and new hours allocated this will determine the staff reduction.

This action puts tremendous pressure on teaching staff to carry out their vocation in the professional way they trained for.

Some say this cut contravenes the contractual aspect of teaching.

I would say it infringes on the human rights of every child affected irrespective of ability to have the chance of an education.

Therefore as a Parent I ask Newhills Pc to look into this matter urgently and inform the Parent body of the risk and current status to newhills pupils and staff.

And I trust Bucksburn PC will follow suit.

Regards
Steve McCall – Newhills

Aberdeen City Council yesterday rejected our request to keep our school open. They decided to close both Newhills and Bucksburn schools. They are going to then place both school rolls into a building, not yet built, to continue their education.

There is no timescale set for this and no site has yet been chosen for this building.

Angela and Sarah (+1) will be (hopefully) going in front of the full council to present/appeal/plead/beg on our behalf.

There is no more we can do after this so it’s imperative that if you can possibly venture out in the (hopefully dry by Monday) weather please do.

We need to make absolutely sure we have a coherent argument for them to take us seriously. It’s the last gasp effort. Really.

“We propose to go to consultation on a new school for Bucksburn and Newhills, a suggestion that has fairly widespread support within the local community. Neither of these two schools are fit for purpose and a new school will complement the new Bucksburn Academy giving the area two new schools fit for the 21st century.”

The words of Councillor Kirsty West.

Is this true?