The Scottish Government

Focus: All school children in the Highland Council area.

Objective: The Highland Promise - An Gealladh Mòr is a pledge to young people in schools within the Highland Council area that during 2007 they will have the opportunity to take part in activities they might not otherwise have access to, focusing on 'six strands of culture': arts, sport, heritage, language, science and environment. National cultural bodies are engaged in delivery of certain opportunities. Young people will play a key role in shaping the options for their school in 2007, with 30 bespoke sets of 'promises' available covering all community schools groups - with an officer assigned to support each group. Legacy options beyond 2007 will be considered.

REPORT FROM HIGHLAND PROMISE PATHFINDER PROJECT - MAY 2007

Introduction

The Highland Promise is a cultural pledge from the Highland Council to children and young people in Highland as part of Highland 2007, the Year of Highland Culture. The Highland Promise is a year long plan of specific cultural activities in which school pupils will participate.

Each Promise is designed and delivered via each Associated School Group (ASG) - the local secondary school and the primary schools associated with it, i.e. whose pupils go on to attend that secondary school.

Each Promise is made up of a mix of activities chosen from a menu of opportunities available during 2007 Highland wide; some of these are free of charge, others are available at a specified cost. Each ASG has a budget of £20,000 for their Promise, adjusted according to whether a school has particular requirements - e.g situated in a remote area or number of schools/pupils within the ASG. Many schools have drawn down additional external funding to supplement this fund.

The Highland 2007 team's involvement in the Highland Promise has been/is:

• the content of the Highland Promise - researching and developing the menu
• process and delivery
• budget - exploring funding opportunities
• marketing and website
• support for cultural co-ordinators and other HC staff
• monitoring of plans and processing of invoices
• evaluation

Planning and Process

A Steering Group was set up to develop the Highland Promise (the name was chosen via a schools' competition). The Steering Group comprised Highland Council and Highland 2007 officers, representatives of major cultural providers in Highland (whom we knew would be instrumental in contributing to delivering the Promise), Quality Development Officers and Head Teachers from the primary and secondary sectors. The involvement of Head Teachers was vital to the success of the planning process, in terms of getting the product and approach right regarding deliverability and in terms of advocacy with colleagues and engendering enthusiasm for the Highland Promise amongst school staff.

A questionnaire was developed and distributed to 30 school pupil councils. This was designed to gauge school pupils opinions on the kind of things they would like to see available within the Promise and how they would like it to work, e.g. would they prefer travelling to cultural events and sights elsewhere, or have things happening in their school and community?

Eden Court Theatre's "Young Questers" Focus Group and Highland Youth Voice were also consulted.

An individual Quality Development Officer (QDO) was appointed to each of the 29 ASGs to quality assure their individual, local Highland Promise. Whilst each ASG had autonomy to select what actual activities they wanted to be part of their local Promise, clear guidance was issued on the criteria that the overall Promise had to achieve. Each Promise was quality assured against these criteria by the nominated QDO before being signed off and the ASG given permission to proceed with finalising and arranging their Highland Promise.

The criteria stipulated was that each Highland Promise had to

• Involve young people in making choices from the menu of activities and suggesting other activities
• Involve all young people in the ASG - in every school and at all age stages
• Include activities across the six strands of culture as defined by Highland 2007 - Arts, Heritage, Sports, Science, Environment and Language
• Integrate with A Curriculum for Excellence and each school's development plan
• Demonstrate how young people will know they are taking part in the Highland Promise

It was also a requirement that each school development plan for 2007 included the Highland Promise, enabling the Promise to add value and contribute to curriculum and main stream school based learning.

By adopting this process, and providing training for QDOs and Head Teachers, we were effectively evaluating and ensuring quality control from the outset of the process, at the development stage of each Highland Promise.

Delivery and Implementation

The Menu

The menu, drawn up to assist schools to develop their plans, contained over 100 choices of activities from a variety of sources including national agencies and local providers to reflect the six strands of culture. This was an opportunity for national agencies to demonstrate their 'national' image by operating away from the Central Belt and usual outlets and they welcomed the opportunity that the Highland Promise provided. Local providers were included if they were doing special or enhanced projects for 2007 rather than 'normal' activities which happened every year.

Schools had the choice to source their activities from the menu or to develop alternative options. Some preferred to enhance cultural projects which they were already developing independently, often drawn from existing relationships with cultural providers or from particular local interests or aspirations.

The menu was an aid to assist with sourcing a range of activities and for pupils to see what was available. In practice most schools used the menu for the majority of choices.

Pilots

One of the issues we had to tackle was that schools and pupils didn't know what they could do or what the activities would involve and so a range of 'pilots' or taster sessions were arranged in a few schools across the Highlands in 2006 including film workshops in Sutherland with Scottish Screen and the Scottish Youth Theatre in Badenoch.

The Website

The menu was accessed through the Highland 2007 website. The 'front page' was a one-line description of the activity and its provider. A password, 'failte 2007' was issued to the schools which enabled them to access all the information about the activity including cost, age-range, contact details etc.

Added-value Highland Promise activities

Some activities were linked with other Highland 2007 projects. With the combined resources, much larger projects were made possible.

The Caithness Science Festival, with a primarily schools audience, was enhanced by the presence of an astronaut from NASA and workshops from Edinburgh International Science Festival.

The BBC SSO performed with the Highland Regional Youth Orchestra at Aviemore Highland Resort making an orchestra of 170 musicians in total.

In a Highland-wide SAC P artners Funded project, pupils are identifying a new constellation for Highland 2007 with the Royal Observatory and an artist-, bookbinder- and writer-in residence.

The Grantown Highland Garden Party launched the Highland Garden at Grantown School and also the Strathspey in May Festival. Developing the Highland 2007 Community project submitted by the PTA, school pupils were invited to draw up plans for a Highland garden which were then realised by the Strathspey Heather Centre (run by a former pupil), including water feature and sculpture made from recycled waste . All pupils were involved in the Garden Party development and performance, including those with disabilities. The celebration involved traditional music, a climbing wall, stalls of local produce, Bubbles the Clown, etc and attracted approximately 900 people- in a community of some 4, 000 population. The project also had funding from the Cairngorm National Park and Leader+.

Marketing

Although the Highland Promise is part of the development plans for schools, it was felt that some marketing was required to engage the enthusiasm of school pupils. Highland Youth Voice were brought in to act as (2)007 agents to promote the Promise in schools, communicating about and advocating for Highland 2007 and the Highland Promise within their respective schools via presentations and displays.

Wristbands and a 'Top Secret' letter were issued to all school pupils. The reward for the agents was a pair of free tickets to a Highland 2007 event - music festivals have been the most popular choice!

Monitoring

Highland 2007 holds a copy of all the school plans and as invoices come in they are matched with the plans and budget and any discrepancies or developments discussed with schools. In numerous cases, ASG plans have developed since the original Promise was submitted in November 2006. Therefore, where new activity has been developed that fit the Highland Promise criteria, the ASG is asked to submit details of that additional activity and it is appended to the originally submitted plan. Thus, at the end of 2007, a full and precise record of each Highland Promise will exist.

Each of the appointed QDOs will also meet with the ASG at the end of the year and again evaluate the local Promise that was actually delivered against the stipulated criteria.

Schools will be doing their own monitoring in some cases as one of the opportunities on the menu is recording equipment and training from BBC Scotland to create 'Broadcast Teams' within each associated school group to create radio programmes documenting aspects of pupils lives and activities. Other options include film or photography projects so, in addition to the paperwork there will be tangible evidence of the Highland Promise.

In addition photo opportunities are also being set up to fill any gaps to provide a representative record of the year.

Highland Lives is a related community project, submitted to HLF for funding, to record contemporary life in the Highlands.

Independent Evaluation

In addition to the quality assessment at the 'front end' of the process, CCPR/Christine Hamilton will also evaluate the Highland Promise as part of the overall evaluation of Highland 2007

Her approach has 4 strands. There will be a separate chapter/section in the final report which it is anticipated can 'stand alone' - although it is a bit early to say how this will work. The deadline for completion of everything is the middle of next year.

• documentation review/interviews with Highland Council staff; visit to Spring Forum in Fort William in 2006: to look at how the whole project developed; how it fits with other initiatives; how it is being managed; what the expectations are etc
• review of the plans submitted by schools - to see what they propose to do
• questionnaire to all school groups (October/November 2007) - to find out what happened - questions not clarified yet but it will be to 'test' what they said they were going to do and what they got out of it (remembering it will be the person who fills in the form who will give their view).
• interviews with head teachers, relevant staff and with groups of pupils in the following schools: Inverness Royal Academy; Lochardil Primary School; Drummond School; Kingussie High School; Maillaig HS, Mallaig PS; Muck PS and Eigg PS. All have been visited once during 2006 and will be visited again in 2007. In addition she will be speaking to pupils and staff from Rum and Canna next month.

Lessons Learned - Keys to Success

At a very early stage it became unequivocally clear that schools had to have some autonomy about their local Promise and a considerable element of choice in what it actually comprised. It would have been misguided to create a "one size fits all" pledge, comprised of a number of universal activities.

The main reasons identified for choice being the preferred way forward are

• Deliverability- choice aids ability to deliver over 213 schools in an area the size of Belgium, over the 10 calendar months of the school year
• Fostered buy-in, ownership and enthusiasm of school staff and of pupils and parents
• Added value to what is already going on in schools, both in terms of curriculum and learning delivery and the wider school social context

New Resources

To be meaningful and attractive, and therefore successful, the Highland Promise required new resources to be available to create new opportunities. It would not have been sufficient to simply package and brand opportunities that already exist to create the Highland Promise - people spot that very easily and it would have been interpreted as disingenuous. Part of the role of Highland 2007 has been to identify potential sources of funding and to seek sponsorship to enhance the budget. Lifescan Scotland Ltd and Morrison Construction have both contributed generously. Leader+ are also funding the project.

The Legacy

In addition to the increased activity, awareness, encouragement and experience of schools of culture, an important practical element of the legacy will be the relationships which have been developed between schools, national agencies and local providers (national agencies often work local providers to assist them to deliver their events on the ground) which all parties currently seem keen to develop.