Director Of Education addresses the club
Our speaker on 4th August 2015 was Douglas Hutchison, Director of Educational Services at South Ayrshire Council.
Interestingly Douglas was familiar with Rotary having been a group study exchange student in 1990 enjoying a trip to Australia sponsored by the Rotary Club of Kilwinning.
He was a teacher and after some time with HM Inspector of Schools began his current role with South Ayrshire Council.
Top table relaxing in the Savoy gardens
The service provides education to more than 14,000 pupils from greatly differing family backgrounds and he illustrated through government statistics how deprivation can impact on educational achievement.
Part of his department’s remit is to pull up the performance of those at the bottom and push those at the top and he illustrated the performance of South Ayrshire schools relative to the national average.
He considers Rotary can play a part in this through events such as youth speaks and young musician although emphasised that the key to gaining support was to build relationships with contacts in each school and he would be supportive of the club engaging in this process.
A series of well considered questions followed the talk leading to further interesting debate on the education system and Rotary youth projects.
The vote of thanks was given by Alistair Tyre.
