Education Scotland: News for Parents and/or Carers
While physical school is suspended for most Education Scotland is producing a newsletter for parents and carers packed with lots of ideas for keeping the family happily engaged and learning whilst having fun. You can read the first newsletter and find out how to subscribe to it below. We would encourage you to do so and to benefit from it. Amongst other things this issue includes helpful suggestions for supporting a child with autism to engage with learning at home.
At CVE Scotland we are always keen to encourage reading with discernment. As Richard Coton said in his helpful introduction to suggested summer reading in 2018: Make no mistake, every story you read, everything you watch on TV, is written with an agenda, a worldview into which it seeks to enlist you. Working with children and young people, there are few more important challenges than giving them the tools to spot what is going on and make their own decisions.
The same has to be said for reading the newsletter from Education Scotland. For example, consider line 3 in the newsletter we advertise below: “The health and wellbeing of your family is the most important thing.”
It’s not high marks, not academic achievement, not sporting achievement, not conformity or non-conformity that is the most important thing. I am glad that Education Scotland considers none of these to be the most important thing. But would I agree that the health and wellbeing of my family is the most important thing? No. Ask the Christian mother of a sick child: What in your view is the most important thing for your family? She will say:
“In our family what matters most is knowing King Jesus. We love Him and want to know and love Him more. His glory and honour matter even more to us than our health and comfort . We know there are a lot of suffering people in the world . Our family is learning how to honour the King through our tears. The most important thing isn’t our health and wellbeing, but it is knowing Jesus.”
Also when we think of the phrase “my family” we straightaway think more broadly than our blood relations. For us our family is the church, the body of Christ. That means we have brothers and sisters all over the world; we teach our children the implications of being part of that wider family.
Do subscribe to the Education Scotland newsletter for parents but do read with discernment, understanding that like everything else it is written from a perspective and not one that CVE Scotland will share entirely.
Megan Patterson
Vice-Chair
From the Education Scotland newsletter:-
Education Scotland are pleased to let you know that we are sending a weekly newsletter, specifically for parents and carers, which will support learning at home. You can see the first copy of this newsletter here but you will need to sign up to receive this directly to your mailbox on a weekly basis.