My post on the exam results of the school in which the Rutherglen and Hamilton West, UK Labour candidate works has drawn the predictable response from Labour and their media chums.
I’m in the gutter now but it’s not lonely here. Notably, I seem to be the only one not sniffing around noisily.
Three things quickly.
I’m an SNP member and supporter but the SNP has no responsibility for what I post any more than Labour is responsible for what appears in the Daily Record.
Second, I clearly did not attack the school pupils but rather the school’s failure to maintain the pass rates those pupils and their parents deserved.
Third, I did not attack the Labour candidate directly but, as many of you will know, a teacher who arrives newly trained in a small department will have to work very hard and learn very fast if performance is to be maintained. Imagine however that the new teacher though hardworking and fully competent, at the level of a probationer, is also a committed political activist with ambitions to become an MP and and obsessive sporting participant? Might they be a bit distracted?
A probationer teacher needs full focus in those extremely challenging years. With 25% of its teaching resource distracted, the pass rate four years later, falls. I know, pass rates vary according to several factors and teacher performance is only one but it’s a key factor and crucially a controllable factor.
In reporting the SQA results for one school, I’ve been accused of weaponizing them.
However, only days earlier in the Daily Record, Scottish Labour education spokesperson Pam Duncan-Glancy said:
“The data published this morning shows that the poverty-related attainment gap is still persisting across subjects and that pupils from more deprived backgrounds continue to be failed.
“The fact is that after over a decade and a half of SNP rule, progress on tackling the attainment gap for people from deprived backgrounds, people with ASN and minorities is stalling.
“The results have basically gone back to 2019 levels, but we knew then the system was unequal. A return to pre-covid is not good enough. The young people of Scotland deserve better than SNP failure.”
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/poverty-related-higher-attainment-gap-30654720
Looks like weaponizing the disappointment of thousands and inevitably drawing attention to schools and teachers for cynical political reasons.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Labour have got a cheek to talk about school children with additional support needs, ASL, when on their watch parents had to beg for support, and proper assessment was denied so that children could access the support required and so that their statutory educational needs were met. They were left on the scrapheap by the Labour branch office in Scotland. Disgraceful.
Labour sent billions of pounds back to Westminster rather than invest in education, and they would do the same again. If Labour had been in charge during the three years of pandemic, and it’s not over yet, it just doesn’t bear thinking about, health, education etc, would be in ruins as it is in England.
I’m sure that the SNP government will continue to invest in education, and
will make sure to keep university tuition free. Investing in children’s futures
being crucial to a successful, independent, inclusive society, one that can face up to the enormous challenges that they will be faced with, as part of a family of 27 nations in the EU. Not an isolated backwater third world country, that Tories and Labour are intent on, with the Scottish branch dancing to the tune of their ever more far right wing neighbour.
The people of Rutherglen and Hamilton will vote accordingly I’m sure.
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John, don’t fret about the Labour branch attempting to defame your good reputation, we have your back. Far as I know, we still also have freedom of speech. The onslaught of anti SNP in the so called media, and demonisation of those who speak out against the BritNats’ lies and propaganda, just demonstrates the panic of BritNats. Aww.
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I will say, and keep on saying until it’s no longer an issue, wouldn’t it be great if every MSP in HR was working for Scotland? Think of the difference it would make if everthing the opposition parties said could be taken as constructive criticism instead of the destruction they always choose to impose on their own country.
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Scottish ( sic ) Labour are a party which revels as opposition .
You see they don’t have to produce any policies – name one policy that they have advanced since the SNP came to power ?
By being Opposition in Holyrood they can snipe and protest and attempt to undermine the Government – but don’t have to produce ANYTHING !
Imagine the assorted oddbods that make up the Labour ranks in Holyrood being in Government .
No – me neither !
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This is substantially true. When they lost power in 2007, Labour went into a monumental huff and, especially with the electorate (“Mass delusion”). They became implacably oppositionist. No matter what the Scottish Government did they were against it. Some of their MSPs did, eventually, realise that in order to try to achieve the kinds of things they believed in then they had to cooperate, but, under a sorry trail of uninspiring leadership the main thrust has been unconstructive oppositionism.
Some, like Monica Lennon and Mercedes Villalba have shown an independent mind.
Labour actually supported – unanimously – the recent gender recognition legislation refused buy Holyrood, but, because the English leadership followed the Tory line, Labour in Scotland remained shtumm as its media chums condemned ‘this SNP legislation’, despite the fact that the legislation was genuinely cross-party, with a majority or all SNP, Labour, Green, LibDem MSPs supporting it and also 2 Tory MSPs.
In order to ‘close the gap’ – and it is closing – schools cannot be expected to do this alone. Low attainment is affected by levels of poverty, health, housing and to remedy these will require serious investment and this is something which Labour will not commit to: after all they are, the self-declared ‘real conservatives’.
Ms Duncan-Glancy is being hypocritical in demanding the Scottish Government do more when she knows that this will require investment which her own party will not commit to.
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25% of mature students left out of the statistics.
Scotland has the most unis pro rata in the world. Life long learning. Graduates with less debt. Grants and loans for lower income households. The highest % in the world. EU students, foreign students paying the full amount. The highest proportion in the world. The next is Canada 56%.
Scotland has colleges and apprenticeships. An outcome for every pupils.. Funding for those in care. Kinship payments. Education based on the ability to learn. Not the ability to pay. Oxbridge funded 20 to 1 of all other universities. The graduates ruin the economy. The UK the most unequal place in the world.
Scotland would be more equal and prosperous Independent. Funding and help needs to be improved for additional needs pupils, but it is improving. Unionist councils shut it down, and employ more unqualified classroom assistants, instead of teachers. More teachers would keep class sizes down. The unionist councils are the problem. They have not got a clue. Wasting monies on groteque projects of no value instead of essential services.
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Labour have abandoned Scotland. Our only value to them is the number of Westminster seats that they can get from us to bolster the English party. Nothing more. They will give Scotland as little as they need to get them. It is time exactly the same in Wales.
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Had Labour not weaponised the exam results in the media as Pam Duncan-Glancy and others did, they would not have drawn attention to their candidate is his capacity as a teacher. That this story then grew legs further exposing the candidate and began getting distributed is when panic set in and the harrumphs began.
To then engage friends in the media to criticise a SNP supporting blogger was probably the stupidest next step they could have taken rather than hunker it out – Blogs largely persist as antidote to a Scottish media notoriously anti-SNP, so a massive own goal by drawing attention to it.
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