Update

I attended the last meeting of the Scottish Baccalaureate Design Team at the end of January. The team looked at the proposed Assessment Support Pack for the Interdisciplinary project. There was a great deal of discussion and constuctive feedback. I have been asked to do some work on the generic skills which are a very important part of the project and also to help at the launch event in the Spring. It will be very interesting to see how many early adopters there will be for the qualification in its first year (2009 - 2010). I am trying to find out how many Colleges will be delivering either alone or in conjunction with a school or schools.
Unfortunately the training events for the ESOL for Work units apart from the Glasgow one were cancelled. This was really disappointing. I had registered for the Edinburgh event but SQA have said they will send out packs to all people who are interested. I think there is difficulty at the moment for people to get release from college. In my own department there are cutbacks on staff development in anticipation of the current financial situation getting worse.
It's great to see so many Gaelic colleagues registering for Practitioners Plus - I really hope they will find this a useful means of communication and sharing.
I am in the process of setting up an online resource sharing repository through COLEG for Languages, ESOL and Gaelic. It may take a while to get it established but I am hopeful that this will something colleagues will find useful.

What's happening in 2009?

The new year has started with the introduction of Gaelic to the network. This came about as a result of a meeting I had with Morag Campbell at the Scottish Funding Council in November. She indicated that Gaelic practitioners would really appreciate a forum where they could share and access information and take part in online discussions. We have started in a small way by adding some information to Practitioners Plus and signposting the online discussion forum. The response so far has been really good and I am hoping that word will spread and there will be more activity.
I am in the process of discussions with COLEG to set up an online resource repository for all subjects in the network - I think this could be useful for our new Gaelic colleagues too. My hope is that practitioners would be able to contribute and access resources in a fairly straightforward way. It is in response to feedback I have received from colleagues.
I attended the fourth meeting of the ESOL Curriculum Working Party last Friday and we are now moving ahead with the Framework in time for the launch of the ESOL Curriculum in April.
SQA have published Exemplars for HN Spanish for Work: Basic Operational which should be really helpful for people delivering this relatively new unit. It can be accessed via the secure site.
The final meeting of the Scottish Bacalaureate Design Team is next Thursday where exemplars for the Inter-Disciplinary Project will be considered. This should be a very interesting session.
SQA are also organising events for the ESOL for Work units in February. These will be take place in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Dumfries and are probably aimed mainly at FE. Information is on the SQA website.