Community annexe at High School under threat
Members of Craigroyston Community High School’s Community Centre management committee have e-mailed politicians to seek support to save the school’s community wing. Continue reading Craigroyston Community Centre faces closure – again
How many of you thought we lost our community centre when the old school and community centre was demolished around 5 years ago? Well, we did not – but recent events made us realise you thought you had (writes Vanessa Cousins)! Continue reading Craigroyston Community Centre: Alive and Kicking!
It’s never too late to learn something new!
Craigroyston Community High School Adult Learning
• Creative Writing Wednesday 6.30-8.30pm
• Woodwork Friday 2-4pm
• Yoga Tuesday / Thursday 10-11.30am
• Pottery Friday 2-4pm
• Genealogy Thursday 2-4pm
• Photography Wednesday 2-4pm
• Guid for a Laugh (Scottish Humour) Tuesdays 2-4pm
• History of Scottish Music Fridays 10am-12 noon
• Computing Monday nights / Tuesday mornings
Book now for classes starting this week – ring 477 7801
or pop in to the school
or book at www.joininedinburgh.org
Programme offers something for everyone
Drawing for Graphic Novels, Wall Building, Decluttering your Home, Paint a Scene at the Lyceum Theatre and Criminology are just some of the new courses being offered in the City of Edinburgh Council’s Adult Education Programme.
With hundreds of day, evening and weekend courses available for adults aged 16 and over, the programme really has something for everyone.
So if you’re looking to learn something new, brush up on your skills, meet new people or improve your job prospects then check out the courses which can be booked NOW! Booking on line is the best way to secure a place on your chosen course.
Among the numerous classes being offered are art, crafts, creative writing history, computing, cookery, health and fitness, languages, music, drama, walks and talks and much more.
Councillor Cathy Fullerton, Vice-Convener for Education, Children and Families, said: “The amount of classes and subject matter on offer this year is absolutely fantastic. It’s a really varied and interesting programme which has been designed by our adult education team to meet the needs of people of all ages and abilities.
“Learning should always be enjoyable, and we hope these courses will inspire people to learn something new or more in-depth. Taking up a class can help people develop confidence and keep mentally and physically active as well as acquiring new skills.
“Research shows that people who are in lifelong learning are more likely to be employed, to remain in work and to be involved in their communities. It truly is about learning for life and it’s never too late to start.
“Plenty of flexibility is built into the programme as to where and when people can study, with opportunities to take classes at different schools and community centres across the city and they can also be a stepping stone on to further education or indeed into a new career.”
A full list of Adult Education Programme classes are available online or by phoning 0131 556 7978 to get a brochure or pick one up from your local library, community centre or GP surgery. Classes can still be booked by post, phone or in person as well as online.
Also on offer are Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) courses at Higher and Unit levels, run by Edinburgh College. Many other classes are held all over Edinburgh in schools and community centres.
You can find full details at www.joininedinburgh.org/enrol/
Local young people short-listed for learners award
Late last year I spent time with a bright and enthusiastic group of young adults at Royston Wardieburn Community Centre to plan a piece of work. Their mission? To choose a subject of relevance to young people, research and then write an article on that subject for North Edinburgh News.
The group has now produced their article (see below) – and all their hard work is to be recognised too!
Community Learning & Development tutor Karen Riddell, who supported the group during the project, explained: “They really were a vibrant group of young people with strong opinions and it was great to see them engage with the topic and undertake the various activities related to building their skills and putting the article together.
“The group was nominated for an Edinburgh Adult Learners Achievement Award and I’m delighted to say that they have been short-listed for an award in the Young Adults Category.”
The Tomorrow’s People team will learn their fate at an event at the City Chambers on 20 May. Fingers crossed for you, guys – and here’s your article …
LEGAL HIGHS: Is It Worth It?
Local young people speak out against ‘legal highs’
We are a group of young people from Pilton who have just spent 16 weeks on the Tomorrow’s People employability programme. Part of our course helped us brush up on our literacy and critical thinking skills through a weekly CLD Practical Journalism course held at Royston Wardieburn Community Centre.
Dave Pickering, the editor at the North Edinburgh News, very kindly gave us the opportunity to write an article for his paper, so after much debate we decided to research and write about Legal Highs.
We compiled a local survey and found out that most of the young people who responded to the survey had either used Legal Highs or knew someone who had. The main reasons cited were: they were easy to get, friends were trying them, they’re cheap – at least half the price of illegal drugs, they give you a really good high, taking them gives you something to do, boredom and peer pressure.
Even although a high percentage of young people surveyed had used them without any serious long term consequences, we did find out that at least 68 people died last year as a direct result of using them, so they are not quite as harmless as some people think.
We found that their name made them quite misleading and people thought it meant they were pretty safe to use. The truth is that drugs councilors now advise their clients to stick to their heroin as legal highs are even more dangerous, burning the skin as it is injected and causing blistering and serious infection.
Most people who completed the questionnaire had also tried illegal drugs and strongly felt that these were safer than Legal highs. As a group, we definitely agreed with that.
We also feel that the government are failing to make drug taking safer. No matter what you might feel about drugs, a lot of people from literally all walks of life use them and are going to continue to do so. David Cameron dodges the issue for fear of losing votes and insists that ‘What is in place is working’ despite the fact that over 2500 people died from drugs-related causes last year in the UK.
Is it not time to follow Portugal and make drugs a health issue rather than a criminal one so that people are offered more protection? In Portugal they found that de-criminalising it didn’t bring about any increase in the level of drug use by people and also that millions was saved on the essentially ineffectual enforcement of drug laws.
Across Europe clubs have drug-testing facilities so that people can test substances before they take them – surely that must offer people more protection than kidding on that ‘what is in place is working’!
A recent Home Office report that we looked at said that having tough drugs laws didn’t make any difference to the level of drug use but Home Secretary Teresa May had this part of the report removed and it was only found out about when Norman Baker revealed the findings after he resigned! This just goes to show that governments make useless drug laws to kid on they are in control of the problem when they’re really just doing it as a vote catcher.
Present policy bears no relation to the reality of people’s recreational drug use and it’s time for the government to introduce some new policies to protect its citizens and not put their own vote-catching first.
We need much better drug education to help us keep ourselves safe, and the obvious place for this to take place is in schools. We felt strongly that a peer to peer support programme in schools would help young people make informed choices about drug use and help keep them safer.
Our research found that young people felt there needed to be far more opportunities for young people in the work-place and much better affordable or subsidised recreational facilities to offer them the chance to experience other kinds of ‘legal highs’, their own ‘natural highs’ like ski-ing, skating, abseiling, snow-boarding, canoeing, dirt-biking, go-karting etc. Risk-taking is part of brain-development for young people and we need to offer them the opportunity to explore this in a safer environment.
Drugs become a problem when there is little else in the drug users lives. We found out that in an experiment, mice which were separated from other mice kept going back to drink the drug-laced water whereas mice that lived in groups didn’t. The experiment showed that lack of strong emotional bonds in your life can drive you to bond with legal highs or drugs instead.
They say it takes a community to bring up a child so that’s why it’s very important for us to work together to stop the reckless experimentation that can lead to addiction, to value the young people of Pilton and provide them with the support they need to keep their use of drugs and alcohol to an acceptable level and help them realise their potential.
It seems to us that one of the worst thing about legal highs is the hypocrisy of supposedly ‘respectable’ shop-keepers who are prepared to stock them in the full knowledge that people, especially young people, buy them to consume them. We feel a local campaign should be set up to stop these shops from selling them.
Good websites:
(1)Anyone’s Child; Families for Safer Drug Control – www.anyoneschild.org
(2) Release.org
Craigroyston Classes poster April 2015
Our adult education classes at Craigroyston Community High School start back from 27 April and if we do not have enough numbers, the council will cancel classes, so please do encourage people to sign up -use it or lose it!
Also some Lone Parent Scotland cookery classes ongoing at the moment :
Cookery class at Craigroyston Community High School
67 Pennywell Road, Edinburgh EH4 4NL
Run by Lone Parent Scotland
Wednesday 15 April 10am-12.30pm
Making healthy burgers and coleslaw (ingredients all provided) for vegetarians and beef burgers
Thursday 16 April 10am -12.30pm
Making chocolate birthday cake (ingredients all provided)
All lone parents welcome with their children
Fiona Henderson
Campaigners have organised a public meeting to oppose cuts to adult education classes at Craigoyston Community High School. Adult education has always been a key element of life at the local high school – indeed, it’s seen by many as the ‘community’ in ‘community high school’ – but budget cuts now see adult education classes under threat (writes Dave Pickering).
The meeting takes place at the school on Tuesday at 3.30pm.
An online petition at www.change.org has already attracted almost 200 signatures and campaigners now hope to broaden that support.
The change.org petition reads:
‘Day Time Adult Education classes are under threat across the City of Edinburgh. We at Craigroyston Community High School are campaigning to save our day time classes.
There has been a change in the way money raised through lets and classes is allocated. Rather than the money going to the school it will now go directly to The City of Edinburgh Council.
This undermines the incentive for schools to run Adult Day Time classes and this will have a profound impact on Adult Learners.
Please support our Campaign to save Adult Education Day Time classes not only at Craigroyston Community High School but city wide as well.’
Vanessa Cousins, who initiated the local campaign, said: “Thank you everyone for signing up to our campaign – the response has been really encouraging. I am also setting up a Facebook page called Adult Learners Unite and I hope that this and our public meeting at the school will highlight our concerns even more. It’s important that we get the message about as widely as possible – we are short of time as changes could be taking effect as soon as April.”
Dave Pickering
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We have a great cookery course at Craigroyston Community High School – the focus is on inexpensive, nutritious cooking for families – using only own brand items – and they make really delicious rissottos, thai curries and other tasty dishes all for a weeny weeny amount of money.
The course is free but we do ask for a £1.50 fee to pay each week towards ingredients. The idea is that participants come with containers and take away a substantial meal for a family of four – if there are more in the family, I am sure there would be enough food!
The tutor is very friendly, patient and helpful and very enthusiastic about cooking. If people can get here they will really enjoy and benefit from the class – and be assured of a good dinner on Wednesday nights!
Unfortunately we do not have a creche.
Craigroyston Community High School is on good bus routes – along Ferry Road or the 27 which comes down Pennywell Road.
If you would like to enrol, it can be done anytime online by clicking onto www.joininedinburgh.org and use the search box – put in Craigroyston Cook – and then just go through as with any online purchase, or you could telephone the school on 477 7801 to book.
The new cookery class starts on Wednesday 24 September, 6 – 7.30pm
The Joininedinburgh site has information about all the other classes all round the city as well – take a look, there are lots of new things to try!
Fiona Henderson, Craigroyston Community High School
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN EDINBURGH – ADULT EDUCATION OPEN EVENING
Tuesday 2 September, 6 – 8pm
Conference Room, 20A Inverleith Row
We run weekly classes and weekend workshops in many subjects from botany and horticulture, to herbology, garden history, art and wellbeing so why not come along and meet our tutors to discover our latest range of courses? We have everything from one-day workshops to professional qualifications.
Let us help you find out which path is the right one for you.
Refreshments will be provided.
No booking required
