“Scottish students at Scottish universities pay no tuition fees! It’s great! The Scottish Government pays them! Except of course, the Scottish Government DOESN’T pay anything like the real amount per head, leaving universities like Edinburgh and St Andrews to recruit the vast majority of their students from the rest of the UK and from abroad.”
Education
Being a woman writer/leader in Scotland – the imposter syndrome
“No matter the topic, in Scotland all roads lead back to the constitution and Scotland’s relationship with England. Of course, politics matters but not to the exclusion of seeing other important things that are also going on. The dominant political analysis excludes so much of life – the way we feel about ourselves, how we relate to others, our values, the dynamic within families and most importantly how we raise children.”
Swinney a shoo-in? Nae thanks
‘My idea is that one tries to exit this quagmire by staging Scottish (and maybe Welsh and Northern Irish) and UK elections on the same day – or perhaps staggered over several days like the upcoming European Parliament elections on June 6-9. The campaigning could last several weeks or months, enabling a full-scale, profound debate on the UK’s future to take place. Constitutional, socio-economic, geopolitical.’
Lies, damn lies and education stats
“For the Scottish government to claim that this supersedes PISA – as they do in their statement today – is either disingenuous or evidence of dismaying statistical ignorance.” (Prof Lindsay Paterson)
Lost opportunities to last a lifetime 1
“We can sum all this up by concluding that current Scottish policy is not working, whereas current policy in England – whatever its faults – seems to have had some positive effects on attainment when compared over a decade,” writes Lindsay Paterson in a damning conclusion for Scottish policy-makers.
Lost opportunities in Scottish education 2: lack of leadership
“Bringing forward new proposals to improve literacy and numeracy, in response to the PISA results, may produce some improvement, but there are deeper, systemic problems that require to be addressed. Are politicians, administrators and senior professionals capable of demonstrating the boldness that is required?” asks Walter Humes in his latest broadside against a mutually self-supporting educational bureaucracy
Gulliver’s foot and art’s redemptive power
“One by one aspects of what the CFS did were closed down or were taken back under the aegis of the council. The times changed. Austerity, unemployment, and drugs bit hard here. The Festival Society gradually declined, and so did the sense of community.”
Sunshine on Rachel House
Fund-raising is a constant fact of life for a charity providing high quality, multi-disciplinary “life and death affirming” care for a growing number of children and families facing the reality of life with life-shortening conditions. Medical advances mean longer lives for more children with terminal illnesses (recent CHAS research estimates more than 16,000 children aged 0-21 are in need of specialist care).
What have local councils ever done for us?
“A start to redressing this imbalance would be for the UK Government and the devolved governments to sign the European Charter of Local Self Government – then we could at last begin to have serious conversations, based on a joint understanding of and respect for each other’s roles, on how we are to successfully tackle the substantial and increasingly complex issues of the future.”
Time to shake up Scotland
“…now would be a good time to shake things up even further. Who will make that happen? I expect little from the Government or the Parliament, it’ll be for others to push for change..”