Society
Education and inequality Part Three: Greater Glasgow
‘What we have here is clear evidence that points to what many people believe anecdotally: there are many parents in Glasgow who believe their children’s education is better served by a school in one of…
Putting the BTP merger on hold (2): Crown Servants and contracts
‘With only eighteen months until integration, the fact that the status of BTP Scotland officers transferring to Police Scotland remains unresolved should ring further loud alarm bells…At this stage in the process, I’d argue that…
Police Scotland and democratic governance
‘The question now seems to be why are these fundamental issues of governance and accountability only now are being exposed, and with such serious consequences? This debate should have occurred before a centralised police force…
Education and inequality: Part Two
Why do some parents send their children to secondary schools outside the catchment area? In the second part of his series on education and inequality in Scotland, Andrew Conway finds associations between school placements and…
Mapping educational inequality in Scotland
How to assess educational inequality? This is the first in a series of posts by Andrew Conway looking at placing requests and what, if anything, they can tell us about how educational inequality varies across…
Baby boxes: who’s in charge of delivery?
‘It’s now also clear that standing up to the political impulse to go national, fast, would have enabled the costs to be pinned down better before the long-term commitment was made…
Widening access: a modest proposal
‘Most access initiatives target the people identified as disadvantaged. We remain less comfortable curtailing the effects of privilege.’
Taking the politics out of policing appointments
‘The SPA should be made accountable to the Scottish Parliament, not to Ministers, and the appointment of the Chair and Board made subject to cross-party approval. Taking the politics out policing appointments…’
US health care is sick – a bitter foretaste for us?
‘The wasteful and inefficient system pushes unnecessary treatment at the worried well and has no cap on cost. One aspirin cost my insurance firm $400’. From Boston Jackie Kemp reports on what lie in store…
Student debt and grants in Scotland: an update
“The Scottish system is not debt-free in the absence of fees: indeed Scottish students are borrowing a substantial amount as a group each year. The Scottish approach relies heavily on loans to cover the state’s…
Let’s debate different models for student fees and grants
“there is no realistic chance that the Scottish Government is going to reduce its reliance on student loans to underwrite the higher education system. £500m is roughly the annual cost of the whole FE system,…
Why do girls do better than boys in education?
Professor Emer Smyth,from the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, on the widespread, but little studied, issue of the underperformance of boys at all stages of education from pre-school to first degree. What are the…