BA Childhood Practice Members
At a Special Council meeting in June 2020, convened to overtake AGM business, the EIS agreed to change its Membership Rules to include ‘Persons employed as graduate Early Years Practitioners’.
In Inverclyde we have eight members registered in that category so far and have started to build network links – hosting meetings and encouraging our newest members to come along.
The local association Secretary met the network early in the 2021/22 session to discuss the structure of the union, the benefits of joining EIS, to make a bid for a rep (well done to Gaynor on her ‘election’!) and to answer any questions the ELC team may have had.
Inverclyde’s ELC members are clear about their reasons for joining EIS – they realised over two lockdowns that EIS were the biggest influencers on decisions made for education and that joining a union whose sole focus was the education workforce would be in their best interests. They knew there were clear lines of communication between the local directorate and the LA Secretary and felt that, in being included in the EIS membership, their professionalism was finally being recognised.
Over the coming session, the plan is to meet with the EY teachers’ rep and the ELC members’ rep to discuss how we move forward as an Early Years team – we may have different terms and conditions, but we work under the same Council policies and have the same goal – the promotion of sound learning in our Early Years establishments.
Paula McEwan, Local Association Secretary for Inverclyde
BBC opens up digital archive and launches schools storytelling project to mark centenary year
The BBC has made two significant education announcements as part of its centenary celebrations in 2022.
Next year, the entire digitised BBC broadcast archive is being made available to students in formal education in the UK. It includes millions of TV and Radio programmes, including interviews and features with almost every major cultural, artistic, political and sporting figure of the last 100 years, as well as iconic dramas and landmark comedy programmes.
All students and educators will be able to access the rich digital archive including programmes from Planet Earth and Tomorrow’s World, to Radio Four’s The History of the World in 100 Objects and the latest dramas to aid their studies and fuel their passions – whether that’s natural history, history, the arts, or sciences.
In addition, BBC stars and staff are to visit 250,000 students in schools across the UK during 2022 to inspire the next generation of storytellers, in a project called Share Your Story.
Both projects meet the second public purpose in the BBC’s Royal Charter, by supporting learning for children and teenagers across the United Kingdom. BBC Director-General Tim Davie said: “The BBC has played a vital role in education throughout the last century – from Children’s Hour broadcasts in 1922, introducing the Micro computer to schools in the eighties, to supporting an entire nation of home learners during the coronavirus pandemic.
“In 2022 – our centenary year – we will harness the unique power of the BBC to provide educational support to inspire millions of children and students across the UK.
“Hundreds of thousands of school children will be visited by BBC stars and staff, and all educators and students will gain access to cultural treasures in our digitised archive to aid their studies.”