“62% of new teachers cannot secure full-time permanent jobs yet teacher training numbers are at their highest level in a decade. Scottish education must wean itself off cheap probationers before more damage is done.”
Articles
Time to deliver
“The failure to reduce demand in acute services through prevention is evident in the increasing proportion of Scottish budget spend on the National Health Service. This has had many consequences. Money required for acute services means less for other services.” A member of the Christie Commission on delivering public services in Scotland looks back/forward in sorrow
Risk and blame of vaccine politics
‘The curious nationalism we see displayed in claiming credit for cures and casting blame for ailments has a long history and we need to recognise it in ourselves and in our leaders and try to see beyond it as we coordinate an international response to the global pandemic. ‘
Win or lose – enjoy the games
Craig Angus takes a moment to dream. But whatever the result, Euro2020 reminds him how good it is to be there, among the crowd.
Poems for the dawn
Here is truth that we need to hear and confront in this viral age. Gordon Munro finds it in new work by Ben Okri and Marianne Faithfull
An unsustainable paradox
‘So, whilst the rhetoric may have softened, the constitutional paradox remains. Scotland can leave if it has a lawful vote to do so, but there is no way of having a lawful vote. For now, anyway. And there is no plan to have a plan.’
NATO’s future
‘Progressives often criticise increased European co-operation on defence because they fear the construction of a European army on the superpower model. But if we understand European defence co-operation as contributing to multilateral missions, this could be a positive development.’
A proper underdog story for Scotland’s Euro 2020
Having lived with Coronavirus and all that comes with it for almost 18 months, can Scotland’s Euro 2020 campaign bring the nation together? Fresh from St Johnstone’s historic domestic season, Craig Angus see reasons for optimism.
Blame Westminster but Holyrood has powers
Councillor Gordon Munro. was suspended from the Labour group on Edinburgh City Council after refusing to back the SNP-Labour coalition budget in May. He makes his case in the week Scotland’s Accounts Commission released a strongly worded report about the fiscal challenges facing all councils.
Where’s the great transformation?
‘If the 2021 Holyrood election is remembered as a turning point it will be because it was the catalyst for a referendum. The manifesto and style of politics adopted by the SNP do not suggest that Scotland is about to be transformed in any way comparable to critical elections of the past in terms of public policy.’