A major study, the first of its kind, has been published by the League Against Cruel Sports Scotland for the Revive coalition for grouse moor reform, showing the extent of mass animal killings on Scotland’s grouse moors. The results are shocking. Calculating Cruelty shows that between 120,000 and up to around quarter of a million foxes, stoats, […]
The scale of the SQA mess is, I think, acknowledged by everyone. Of course governments get into policy messes all the time – it’s hardly a unique situation. But this government is producing far too many of them far too fast. The care home crisis, Nikegate, the early failures on Covid-19 control, the blended learning […]
The official economic data for the first half of 2020 is out, and according to the ONS there is only one country in Europe that Britain has not had a deeper recession than in the first half of the year. Spain. Now guess which two countries has had the worst deaths per million from Covid-19? […]
“El Borbón a prisión!” That was the shout of a small group of protestors in Madrid on Sunday [9 August], after the self-exile of Juan Carlos I of the House of Bourbon, who is under investigation for corruption charges in Switzerland and Spain. The protest was small because Spain is in its holiday season, but […]
Education Secretary John Swinney’s U-turn was about as complete as could be, to the extent that it was more an O than a U. All those SQA moderators may as well not bothered – Swinney has rubbed out their markings. The questions about what this means for the future of Scottish education are profound (David […]
“People will see straight through an expansion of university education with large numbers of working class students frozen out, not by their grades, but now solely by their inability to afford higher education.”
As schools begin to fully re-open in Scotland, this may begin to feel like the start of a return to normal for many, but the global situation suggests complacency would be a big mistake. The 20 million recorded infections mark globally was reached overnight, with cases doubling in just six weeks. There are 730,000 recorded […]
Common Weal communications officer Becki Menzies looks at the SQA grading debacle through her own experience of going to a school in a deprived area. She argues that this should be a wake-up call. If my fifth year exams results had been marked by the same SQA methodology as this year, I’d probably not the […]
“Children and young people are least likely to be affected by Covid19 physically but are most likely to be affected psychologically.”
Education Secretary John Swinney has created the expectation of a major reversal on the SQA pupil grading system when he speaks to the parliament on Tuesday. “These are unprecedented times and as we have said throughout this pandemic, we will not get everything right first time,” he said yesterday. Politicians willing to admit to mistakes […]
Ahead of the pupil protest outside the SQA’s HQ today, it is worth thinking about the structural disadvantages facing young people from deprived communities in the broader context of this economic crisis. Economics commentator Aditya Chakrabortty wrote yesterday about the enormous ‘Covid jobs crisis’ to come when the furlough scheme finishes at the end of October, with […]
“There is one final element of democracy they haven’t quite managed to degrade yet. The people.”
“The central green commitment of the Scottish Government’s economic recovery plan is an auction block of Scotland’s resources in the form of a Green Investment Portfolio.”