Grown-up debate: meeting to discuss cuts to adult education classes

CCHS

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.

petition

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

Education Scotland: CLD survey now open

Working with Scotland’s communities is a national study to find out more about the diverse range of paid workers and volunteers that provide community learning and development (CLD) across Scotland.

The online survey aimed at the organisations that employ these workers and volunteers is now open until Friday 10 April.

We know that community learning and development approaches are used by workers and volunteers with a variety of job titles in a range of different organisations in the community, voluntary and public sectors.

We want to hear from as many of these organisations as possible to build a current national picture of how many workers and volunteers there are, what they do, and what their training and development issues are.

Please be aware that we’re only looking for one response on behalf of each organisation or service.

The findings from the survey will be used to inform national community learning and development policy and planning.

Working with Scotland’s communities is being carried out by Education Scotland on behalf of theScottish Government, in partnership with the following national partners – Youthlink Scotland;The Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC); The Workers Educational Association(WEA); The CLD Standards Council for Scotland; and CLD Managers Scotland.

For more information and to access the survey, please go to the Working with Scotland’s communities page on the Education Scotland website.

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New Year, new skills for free?

Make learning new computer skills at

Royston Wardieburn Community Centre your New Year resolution!

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FREE Computer Classes (Beginner Level) 

Learn a new skill in the New Year

 Tuesdays 10 – 12 (from 13 January)

Thursdays 12.30 – 2.30 (from 15 January)

Our classes are friendly and relaxed.

You can work at your own pace.

                Free tea/coffee

We also offer SQA qualifications.

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 Royston Wardieburn Community Centre, Pilton Drive North

Telephone 0131 552 5700 – ask for for Karen or Donna

Community classes starting soon at Craigroyston

New classes starting at Craigroyston

CCHSWe have some free classes aimed primarily at local people in our community at Craigroyston:

Cook your tea
Sometimes the hardest thing about cooking is deciding what to make!

It is all too easy to run out of ideas for offering something delicious, healthy and within a tight budget. The friendly tutor for this class has a wide range of ideas which can be made quickly and cheaply making this the highlight of your culinary week.

Favourite dishes range from Thai curry, to mushroom risotto as well
as home made lemon chicken. If there is anything you really want to learn to make, the tutor will be able to help.

Come along, cook your tea and take it home to surprise all the family and friends!

Please bring £1.50 each week towards the ingredients.
The class is *FREE.

Saving Money (and the Environment)
Small steps = big changes!

This practical maths course takes everyday situations and shows you how to make the maths work for you!

Work out the running costs of many household appliances, decipher your
energy bill, compare special offers while out shopping and even find out how to make the most of a square foot garden!

Don’t worry if you didn’t get maths the first time round, this course allows you to start small and build up at your own pace. It uses examples from everyday life that affect everyone, from recipes to recycling
and will help you quickly gain confidence in handling your finances!
Not only that, we are running this course in partnership with Edinburgh’s
very own Science Museum at Dynamic Earth and several sessions will take place there (all transport & entry fees provided).

Creative Expressions

Bringing together creative writing, photography and other forms of creative expression, this class offers a range of combined art forms. The informal setting means that everyone can take part in different forms of self expression and gain a satisfying experience.

*(This class is FREE)
And also some classes that we hope will be of interest and are very good value:

Fee is £50 for the standard 10 weeks of 2 hours per week courses – £25 for a senior citizen or student – £14 for anyone receiving benefits. (half of this for the 5 week course or a 1 hour course)

These can be booked online as well as by phone or in person – www.joininedinburgh.org​

Make and Mend
Creative Upcycling Projects (5 weeks)

Upcycling is about converting old or discarded materials into something
useful and beautiful for your home or to give as a personalised present. Join this weekly course to learn all sorts of original ways to refashion and redesign things you have at home already, with a friendly tutor full of inspiring ideas and different craft techniques.

Pottery
This class teaches the basics of hand building and wheel throwing in clay and introduces different artistic styles & methods of creating successful ceramic pieces.

It also offers an introduction to the use of the potter’s wheel and stone
wear firing. There is an additional £10 to pay towards materials used.

Creative Writing
Do you feel you might like to have some guidance in developing your creative writing skills, to express ideas and show you how to overcome writer’s block?

A very friendly tutor can help you develop characters, transform experiences into storylines and encourage you to share your writing with
the group. The class is supportive and will look at wide ranging in creative styles.

NOW STARTING SEPTEMBER:

Computing for Not Quite Beginners
This course is ideal for people who can create a word/text document and would like to start experimenting with pictures and tables in order to create a poster, newsletter, invitation or flyer.
Potential students should be able to create a simple document with some
text in it.
The course will cover:
Inserting pictures from clipart, inserting photos from a memory stick, downloading pictures from the Internet, arranging text size, colour etc, using Wordart, designing page layouts and using columns and inserting tables.

Scots History through Scottish Novels

This enjoyable course will to explore the relationship between 20th and early 21st century Scottish literature, history and the culture and politics of contemporary Scotland.
The books the course will be looking at will be James Douglas Brown, The House with the Green Shutters; Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song; Jessie Kesson, The White Bird Passes; Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; James Robertson, And the Land Lay Still.

There will be a small amount of advised reading to support a deeper understanding of the texts and their historical and cultural background.

and there are many more – language, music and others – and it it would be great to have some local people take advantage of these great classes! 

 

Fiona Henderson

 

Craigroyston’s adult education programme launched

Craigroyston Community High School Adult Education Programme September 2014

CCHSTerm starts w/c 22 September 2014 for 10-week term and enrolments will start from 6 August (see below for programme).

People can enrol in person at the school, by phone or online – it is the launch of City of Edinburgh online enrolments, where people will be able to enrol for any class in the adult education programme – with the main prohramme and all the community high school programmes: Craigroyston, Castlebrae, Balerno, Leith Academy, Currie, Drummond, Wester Hailes Education Centre and South Queensferry all in one place together!

Online enrolments can all be made through www.joininedinburgh.org where a comprehensive list of classes can be found and online bookings can be made from home or a library, anytime after 6 August.

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Fiona Henderson / Monica Nall
Community Education Team
0131 477 7801

Craigroyston community programme courses start next week

CCHS classes

Monica Nall, Community Programme manager at Craigroyston Community High School, has been in touch to remind us that courses start next week – see attached document. The writing group is FREE and fee waivers for the other classes may be considered. For further information call 538 7285.

CCHS