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Working with Early Years, Children and Families, a magazine published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, has reported on the Storytime Soldiers project, run by Sure Start Canterbury. The project helps parents in the local Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders regiment to record stories onto CD for their children. Twenty-five fathers and one mother made recordings of themselves telling bedtime stories before being posted to Afghanistan. Sure Start project manager Jo Treharne said: "These parents are expected to be in Afghanistan for eight months, which is a long time in the life of a two-year-old. The children would miss out on this time of closeness without the project."
(Working with Early Years, Children and Families, summer 2008)
Trinity Academy in Edinburgh has become the first school
to independently enlist Skill Force, the initiative that uses
former Armed Forces instructors to provide an alternative
curriculum for challenging students. Trinity will join four
education authorities: South Lanarkshire, Moray, Stirling
and Falkirk, which have also drafted in the service, next
month. South Lanarkshire, Stirling and Falkirk are to follow
the pattern set in North Lanarkshire, where a successful pilot
funded by the Scottish Executive and the Ministry of Defence
has been running since 2001, with the Skill Force teams working
across clusters of three or four secondary schools.
Skill Force will provide an alternative vocational-based
option to a Standard grade in secondary years S3 and S4, mostly
for pupils who have become, or are at risk of becoming, disengaged
from school.
The pilot period, and the Scottish Executive's funding, in
North Lanarkshire has now finished, but its success has led
the authority to incorporate the initiative into mainstream
education. Of those pupils participating, 100% achieved an
ASDAN vocational bronze award, 83% silver, 82% the Duke of
Edinburgh bronze award, 92% St Andrews first aid and 78% junior
sports leader.
(TESS, 8 July 2005)
A report by the Adult Learning Inspectorate has concluded
that a significant failing of many Army induction programmes
is that they do not reliably identify recruits' literacy,
numeracy or language problems. No modifications are made to
training for those who speak English as an additional language,
it says. More and more establishments are introducing literacy
and numeracy at the start of phase 1 and phase 2 training,
but the full benefit will not be felt until better records
are kept of learning needs, the help given and the progress
made. Effective basic skills training depends greatly on comprehensive,
well-informed encouragement at reviews.
The report recommends the introduction of a standard set
of guidelines for induction, including the use of follow-up
sessions and tests to check that everything necessary has
been understood, plus much more systematic approaches to be
adopted to testing for literacy, numeracy and English language
problems, and to rectifying them.
(Basic Skills Bulletin, May 2005)
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