Our Early Years Workstream Lead, Ruth Reid is a qualified Scottish Improvement Leader (ScIL) and is sharing her expertise with colleagues across the Northern Alliance through the Scottish Improvement Foundation Skills course.

Twelve Digital Depute Head Teachers funded by the Northern Alliance to work with e-Sgoil to further the digital agenda and eleven Excellence and Equity Leads, Lead Practitioners and members of Highland Council’s Early Years team are currently on track to complete the course this year. This is the second cohort Ruth has led through the training and practitioners have benefited from completing improvement projects on a wide range of topics.

The Scottish Improvement Foundation Skills course helps participants to more effectively measure the success of improvements. Work undertaken to date has helped to demonstrate the impact of interventions in areas including Improving Block Play Provision, Family Learning – Capturing the Child’s Voice, Improving Participation in Online CLPL, and Ensuring Personalised Children’s Care Plans.

Current projects include work to support family engagement, development of virtual learning offers and improvements within Gaelic Medium education and Early Learning and Childcare.

“We had started doing this improvement pre-SIFS and I didn’t know about many of the tools we have been taught about. I hadn’t planned measures in the way taught and in future projects this would be a priority.”

Principal Teacher based in Aberdeenshire

The course is delivered through an online virtual learning programme over a 7-week period. Its aim is to support individuals to develop the skills, knowledge, and confidence within teams to apply standard improvement methods to test, measure, and report on changes made.

Each online session lasts for 60-90 minutes and participants will spend practical time each week on their own improvement project.   Successful completion of the course does not require grading or assessment and will be delivered in the ethos of ‘All Teach, All Learn’ with plenty of opportunities for professional dialogue and reflection.

Ruth is hoping to deliver training for a new cohort of practitioners next session. If you would like to find out more, email ruth.reid2@argyll-bute.gov.uk