Scottish Learning Festival 2009

Last week John and I attended the 2009 Scottish Learning Festival which mainly attracts the school sector in Scotland with an occasional scattering of FE and HE. However this year the main focus was the Curriculum for Excellence and I'm not sure if the later sectors of education were present or not as you never get see a list of who is attending. In addition the sessions I attended were primarily focused on literacy across learning and the primary and early years sector as this is the area I am about to start some work on for the Curriculum for Excellence Literacy Team - ‘Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level)

I attended the following sessions and keynote over the two days and will simply provide a link to the programme just now but will do some postings from my notes later:

• Improving Scottish Education 2: Pre-school to Early Primary - Kate F Cherry, HMIE


• Achieving a Smarter Scotland: Transforming our Education System to Deliver the Best Outcomes for Every Child and Young Person - Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Fiona Hyslop MSP, Scottish Government

The keynote speeches including the Cabinet Secretary's were videod and are online for viewing / listening to.

• Engaging with Curriculum for Excellence - Small Steps to Success in Primary Schools - Susan Quinn, Educational Institute of Scotland


• Interactive Approaches to Literacy Learning and Teaching - East Dunbartonshire Intervention Team


• A Single Curriculum 0-18: The Same Quality Approach - Keynote Speaker: Professor Ferre Laevers, Director of the Research Centre for Experiential Education, University of Leuven


• Literacy across Learning in the Primary School: The Experiences and Outcomes in Practice 


• Early Years - Making Connections across the National Landscape - Jean Carwood-Edwards, Early Years Team Leader, LTS
  Jane Stirling, Early Years Development Officer, LTS

The work I saw taking place in early years and primary schools was truly inspirational and I will try to take on board / incorporate what I saw into the work I'm about to embark on.

Like most conferences there were sessions that I would loved to have been able to attend but you can't be in two places at the one time. Sessions like:

• Largs Academy Virtual School Library - Theresa  Newbury the  Librarian is doing some wonderful engaging and interactive work and is included as an exemplar for the National Information Literacy Framework (Scotland)


•  Curriculum for Excellence Outdoors in Primary Schools


• Curriculum for Excellence – Making the Change with Critical Skills


• Improving Learning – Improving Literacy