DHT/PT Conference 2025

Our popular event for Deputes and PTs returns this year with a difference! There are no workshops to choose from, we have three different whole-conference keynote/workshop sessions which will allow us to get into more depth on three key themes highlighted by members.

Starting at 9.30am the conference will run until 3pm with lunch included. 

The three sessions are (full descriptions below):

• Emerging literacy: James Cook and James McTaggart
• Improving Pupil Attendance in schools: Kylie Watson, Senior Regional Advisor & Jane Gray, Attainment Advisor, Education Scotland and Karen Emmett HT & Joanne Hampson PT, Downfield Primary School, Dundee
• ASN “I don’t know what I don’t know…”: Sam Nicholson, Education Officer, ASN and Inclusion, Education Scotland
  

Costs:

AHDS Members - £59+VAT
Non-Members - £150+VAT

New member offer - Join AHDS and receive a free place at this conference. To be eligible for this offer, book your place at this conference here and complete your membership application within a week to get a free place. Invoices will be sent at the non-member rate if a completed membership application isn't received within the timeframe expressed.

Emerging Literacy

Following delivery of this session as a workshop at Annual Conference, we are responding to positive member feedback by offering the session during our DHT/PT conference this year.

A Principal Teacher, eager to ‘get it right for every child’ in their school sat down with an educational psychologist, occupational therapist, and speech and language therapist and asked the following questions:

Why, despite using tried and tested commercial literacy programmes, are some children not making the promised progress?

And why do some make good initial progress, but then have later issues with comprehension or more extended writing?

The answers all lie in the way children come into school with varying levels of different key developmental skills that underpin literacy learning. These include phonological awareness, but also less well-known aspects of motor cognition and working memory. If we adapt literacy instruction to the developmental skills of each child, then they make better progress at the start and build firmer foundations for future learning too.

But how to make this do-able and sustainable? Over the next ten years, collaborative working with thousands of children and hundreds of practitioners across 8 local authorities in Scotland, created practical assessment, tracking and teaching tools with a demonstrable impact on learning for all children.

Whether your focus is initial instruction or seeking to make a whole school’s literacy programme as effective as possible, there is something for you in this session as we explore both the research behind the Emerging Literacy model and try out some of the tools and resources.

There will be resources to take away and try. Those wanting more on how we can simultaneously raise attainment for all and tackle the poverty related attainment gap will have access to discounted copies of the recently published book, ‘Emerging Literacy: Unlocking Instruction for Every Child’.

Delivered by two of the book’s authors, James Cook and James McTaggart, this session is the springboard for improving literacy in your school.”

Improving Pupil Attendance in schools

There is system wide concern about reduced levels of pupil attendance, particularly since the C19 pandemic. In 2023, Education Scotland led a deep dive into the issues that impact this. As a result, Education Scotland are currently working with a number of schools and local authorities in wave 1 of the ‘Improving Attendance Quality Improvement Programme’, which focuses on testing changes, delivering results and sharing learning with the wider system.

This Keynote will share key themes of the national programme which is delivered to school teams through a blend of training and quality improvement coaching, helping them to achieve a deeper knowledge of improvement methods and supporting participants to understand their system, gather and organise information, understand variation and identify changes to support implementation.

This session will be delivered by the strategic leads for the project. They will give an overview of the barriers to good school attendance, debug a few long-held myths, as well as outline the improvement processes used within the national project. The keynote will close with school leaders from one of the initial schools participating in the project, sharing their journey with you, as well as sharing some tried and tested ideas and success stories to take away.

Kylie Watson, Senior Regional Advisor & Jane Gray, Attainment Advisor, Education Scotland

Kylie started her primary teaching career in Fife, working in three schools, all of which are in areas of deprivation. Following her role as headteacher in Pathhead Primary School, Kirkcaldy, Kylie moved to a central role within Fife Council: Closing the Gap Development Officer.

In 2019, Kylie was appointed as an attainment advisor in Education Scotland, where her work focussed on supporting local authorities to address poverty-related barriers and achieve equity. In February 2024, Kylie took up an interim position as Senior Regional Advisor (SRA). As well as being the SRA for eight local authorities, Kylie’s strategic remit is leading the work on improving attendance and engagement.

Jane has been in education for over 30 years. She worked in primary schools in Fife and Renfrewshire. She was a joint headteacher of 2 schools in West Fife before taking on a secondment to Education Manager. Much of her experience has been in areas of deprivation and she has been closely involved in the Scottish Attainment Challenge since 2015.

Following her secondment, Jane was appointed as an attainment advisor in Education Scotland, where her work was targeted in the Southeast, predominantly in Midlothian. She has been involved with local authorities and schools to address poverty and the poverty-related attainment gap with a focus on using data. She is currently attainment advisor for Dundee City.

Karen Emmett HT & Joanne Hampson PT, Downfield Primary School, Dundee

Downfield Primary School is a double stream primary, with a ELC setting which is open 50 weeks of the year. The school is situated within the area of Kirkton in Dundee and has social work services co-located within the school. Kirkton is denoted as an area of severe deprivation, hitting the national headlines recently due to riots and social unrest.

Karen Emmett has worked within schools for 30 years, working most of her career as a middle leader in schools within areas of deprivation within Perth & Kinross, and latterly as a HT in Dundee. She has been HT of Downfield Primary School since Dec 2015 and is an executive member of AHDS.

Joanne Hampson has been teaching for 12 years, in Downfield for 11 of those! Joanne’s current leadership remit is Support for Pupils and Improving Pupil Attendance, whilst juggling a significant teaching commitment within the school’s highly successful nurture provision.

ASN: ‘I don’t know what I don’t know..’

This is a phrase that I hear all the time, especially when discussing ASN and all that supporting learners brings with it.

The world of ASN is statutory, complicated, never predictable but can also be the subject of some of the most rewarding moments in our teaching careers.

In this interactive session, I plan to your test your knowledge and thinking around ASN and supporting others to meet all learner’s needs. We will debunk some of the myths and I’ll signpost you to how Education Scotland can help build you and your team on their professional learning journeys.

Sam Nicholson, Education Officer, ASN and Inclusion, Education Scotland

Having worked my way through just about every role in a Primary school at one point or another, I can truly state I can understand what it’s like from most angles. After returning home from time working in a private school in England, I applied for a Support for Learning Teacher post. I had lots of experience with learners in my class of differing abilities and difficulties, how hard could it be!? Looking back, the 7 years I spent in this role were some of the toughest but most rewarding of my career to date.

Moving through the management ranks, then after 5 years as a Primary HT, I moved onto a role as an Inclusion Officer within a Local Authority. In 2021, I officially left teaching and became a civil servant as an Education Officer within Education Scotland’s Inclusion, Wellbeing and Equities team. I have a number of specific remits within the organisation (including leading the National Complex Needs Network) but my passion to support educators of learners with additional support needs continues to be my main motivation to continue to do what I do.

9 May 2025 - Cumbernauld

AHDS Members: £59 + VAT • Non Members: £150 + VAT