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Headmaster's Blog
13 February 2019 Dear Parents It is with a heavy heart that Clifton Hall School has decided to terminate its Pre-School Partnership with the City of Edinburgh Council, effective from the academic session 2020 onwards,... I’m very proud of Scotland; I’m proud of its history and its heritage. I’m proud of its innovative past. And when we look at our great inventors I am struck by something which caught me... As many may have noticed my tolerance level of political interference in education is at an all-time low. However, it is easy to criticise those in power (actually, very, very easy at the moment!) so... For more than 30 years, primary schools have been in the habit of grouping children according to ability. So, in almost every primary up and down the country we find spelling groups, reading groups and... We live in strange times, particularly in the political sense. We are undergoing a period of upheaval and, for many, upheaval and change instigate fear. That is a perfectly normal and human reaction to facing... When taking part in teacher training days, I often pose the question, ‘What is the most important aspect of being a teacher?’ That’s a tricky question because most will look for a professional, academic response... Did you know that a child in the United Kingdom spends 16.2% of the year in school? That means a staggering 83.8% away from the education a school seeks to offer. In our school curriculum,... We are all guilty, to varying degrees, of over-protecting our children, aren’t we? We are a society that has become consumed by being safe, not just physically but emotionally. We fight our children’s battles for... As with many things happening in education in Scotland, the implementation of National Standardised Tests is deeply flawed. I listened, with considerable interest, to yesterday’s entire debate, occasionally shouting at my screen as politician after... I’ve been teaching for almost 30 years and in that time I’ve come across tens of thousands of students. I’ve listened to their dreams, their fears, their misconceptions and their ‘voices of doubt’. I’ve done... 
