Education authority lacks leadership and vision, say inspectors
Annette Rawstrone
Wednesday, February 21, 2001
The education authority in East Dunbartonshire has been criticised in its first inspection report for lacking vision and leadership. The authority has been given eight weeks to produce an action plan for improvements following the publication of the report last week. The authority is responsible for nine secondary and 36 primary schools, two special schools and seven special units/bases, one Gaelic-medium unit, 16 nursery classes, one Gaelic-medium nursery class, one special educational needs nursery class and one nursery school.
The authority has been given eight weeks to produce an action plan for improvements following the publication of the report last week. The authority is responsible for nine secondary and 36 primary schools, two special schools and seven special units/bases, one Gaelic-medium unit, 16 nursery classes, one Gaelic-medium nursery class, one special educational needs nursery class and one nursery school.
The report was one of the first two inspections by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools on education authorities. The other report, on Highland Council, had more favourable comments.
East Dunbartonshire's report stated, 'The authority had been particularly slow in establishing a clear and distinctive vision for education. The area of the authority's work was unsatisfactory. At the time of the inspection, over four years after its establishment, many school staff and almost all school board chairpersons were unable to identify a vision, values or aims for education.'
However, the report found pre-school education to be one of East Dunbartonshire's rare 'strengths'. The report said, 'Starting from a low threshold, pre-school provision had been expanded rapidly through building up the authority's own nursery provision and through making effective partnership arrangements.
'Good support had been provided for quality development in partnership centres such a playgroups. Improvements were evident in centres which had experienced difficulties in registration by HM Inspectors of Schools. Staff reported that training was effective in priority areas such as the use of performance indicators for evaluation, early numeracy and free play. There was now a need for better links in the work of pre-school and early years support officers and teams to bring about more continuity of policies from pre-school to early years in primary schools.'
Council leader Keith Moody said, 'We welcome the audit which recognises our achievements in areas such as nursery provision, where we have the best position of all councils in Scotland, and exam attainment levels, but also identifies that there are a number of excellent initiatives, policies and procedures.'
