Theoretically, the very notion that parental income determines your chances of future success should shock anyone who believes in the centrist liberal ideology of meritocracy. All the more so in Scotland, where the democratic intellect and “lad o’ pairts” myths shape our national amour propre.
Scottish education
“Children in Scotland still do not have the right to opt out of the Christianity-focused ‘religious observance’ which bafflingly remains a statutory duty for all state-funded schools to provide.”
Sean Bell: Scotland’s children deserve the right to opt out of enforced religious observance
“If we want young children to develop the physical, social, emotional and cognitive capacities required for long-term health and well-being… we have to put love and play at the heart of state-sponsored early childhood education and care.”
Sue Palmer: Best place in the world to grow up?
“if the exams are cancelled again this school year, what changes would have to be made? Because there’s no way that a system like the one we saw last year can be re-implemented.”
Fin Laing: The failures of 2020 provide an opportunity to reform our broken exam system
“Unionism remains instrumentally powerful through the state, and some committed unionists must be beginning to ask why that power isn’t being deployed.”
Analysis: The school grades debacle ‘Groundhog day’ is yet more evidence of Union atrophy
“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.”
Analysis: What does Swinney’s retreat mean for the future of Scottish education?
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 […]
Becki Menzies: I would have been one of those kids let down by the SQA system – it’s time for change
“The problem at the heart of the statistical standardisation is that it can be simultaneously unfair to individuals, but also maintain the integrity of the system. However, if system integrity damages the life chances of individuals, then it is not much of a system.” Professor Guy Nason of the London School of Economics’ yesterday, summing up […]
“Somehow I’ve failed an exam I didn’t sit”
“As ever, a small group of particularly loud voices was presented as representing ‘parent power’. None of this is new in Scotland but for the sake of our kids I really, really wish we could move beyond it.”