And now their best practice is set to change how councils interact with communities all over Scotland.

The local authority forged a unique collaboration with Tapestry Partnership to help employees work with learners to plan and engage in their learning, and assist them to talk about their learning which will contribute to the Curriculum for Excellence.

The two combined with Dylan Wiliam to produce a programme that suited community learning and development staff in their work with young people, adult learners and community groups to enable learners to become more involved in setting and reflecting on their learning.

Education Scotland has seen the value of the approach and worked with East Renfrewshire Community Learning and Development team, Tapestry Partnership and Dylan Wiliam to host a masterclass at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall for CLD colleagues.

Alan Armstrong, strategic director for lifelong learning at Education Scotland, said: “We want to work with everyone in education to understand and use approaches to assessment in ways that will improve all learners’ experiences.

“Through Assessment for Learning, Community Learning and Development practitioners will be able to build on the ways they currently engage with each other, and with young people and adult learners themselves, to involve them in understanding more about their own learning, how well they are doing and what they can do next.” Tapestry Partnership teamed up with a number of developers to put the system in place.

And Dominique Carlisle-Kitz, evaluation and improvement manager who worked with Tapestry Partnership to develop the materials, added: “We needed our learners to be able to reflect on their own learning and talk about that. Our use of ‘assessment for learning’ now gives us the tools to be able to do that more systematically and effectively.” She added: “We are the first community learning development service to take this approach and are now leading the sector.”