The Journey to Excellence – My Journey

The five-part HMIE resource How good is our school? The Journey to Excellence is one of the most extensive and creative educational projects in Europe, and is firmly focused on improving children’s learning.

Right from the start, the development team actively engaged practitioners from schools, early years centres and local authorities and drew on a wide group of critical friends to refine its ideas and engage the profession.

The very first ideas of ‘what makes an excellent school’ came from children themselves who contributed thoughts and pictures which, together with the views of teachers and parents, the findings of UK and international research, and the outcomes of HMIE inspections were then distilled into ten key dimensions of excellence.

In this workshop, participants will hear from practitioners themselves about the journeys to excellence undertaken by their own schools, the challenges they faced, the successes they achieved and where they are going next.  With HMIE, they will demonstrate how they have used The Journey to Excellence as a key resource in making those journeys.

Elisabeth Ritchie, HMIe
Michael Wood, HMIe,
Sally Fulton (Secondment)

Elisabeth Ritchie, HM Assistant Chief Inspector, has overall responsibility for additional support needs, inclusion, inspections of secondary and special schools and the development of the five-part The Journey to Excellence project. 

She joined HMIE in 1998 and has been responsible for a range of different projects including international links; evaluation and improvement of HMIE’s work; oversight of the How good is our school series of self-evaluation guides; and work on frameworks of quality indicators for different sectors of the education system.  She was appointed HM Assistant Chief Inspector in 2004. 

Elisabeth started her education career teaching English and became English Adviser for Grampian Regional Council and then Secondary Adviser and Education Officer for Aberdeen City Council.

Michael Wood, HM Inspector, leads the team responsible for the development of the digital resource The Journey to Excellence. 

He joined HMIE in 1997 and has been responsible for aspects of HMIE’s work relating to primary education, HMIE evaluation and improvement and development of quality indicators for schools.

He became HM District Inspector in 2006.  Before Michael joined HMIE, he was a primary headteacher.

Sally Fulton, National Development Officer, has been seconded to HMIE and Learning and Teaching Scotland to support The Journey to Excellence development.

Sally works with education authorities, schools and early years centres in promoting and supporting the use of the five-part resource, and demonstrating its relationship with the Curriculum for Excellence and other national programmes. Sally’s substantive post is Education Officer for Stirling Council. 

Before joining Stirling Council Sally was a primary headteacher.  Sally has also been an Associate Assessor with HMIe for over five years. The Journey to Excellence team will deliver these seminars in collaboration with staff from schools.