The appearance of Prof Lindsay Paterson on Reporting Scotland today is, once more, fraught with the kind of misunderstandings this statistician with zero experience of teaching regularly brings.
Prompted by the numbers-obsessed prof’s strop on the fact that Scotland doesn’t take part in an international study of no use, like Pisa, to compare our adult illiteracy with theirs, they claim:
The last Scottish government survey was in 2009 and put the number of people in Scotland who have problems with literacy at around 26%.
As with drug deaths, they desperately hope they have found the only kind of whitabootery that matters to them.
They fail to tell us this, from the University of Glasgow’s full report on the above, in 2009:
around one-quarter of the Scottish population (26.7%) may face occasional challenges and constrained opportunities due to their literacies difficulties, but will generally cope with their day-to-day lives; and
within this quarter of the population, 3.6% (one person in 28) face serious challenges in their literacies practices.
They also fail to tell us, from the National Literacy Trust based on data from 2012:
1 in 6 (16.4% / 7.1 million people) adults in England have very poor literacy skills.
1 in 8 (12% / 216,000 people) adults in Wales lack basic literacy skills.
1 in 5 (17.4% / 256,000 people) adults in Northern Ireland have very poor literacy skills.
So, ‘serious’ or ‘very poor’ literacy is around 4 times higher in England, 3 times higher in Wales and 5 times higher in Northern Ireland, than in Scotland.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-67882749
https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Aye, and true to form, Suzanne Allan has a piece on the BBC/Scotland page ” ‘I was 49 before I could write my own address’ “, https://archive.ph/1cAW4, 9th January 2024, 06:06 UTC feeding into platforming this living dead’s opinions over PISA which have absolutely nothing to do with the two cases cited…
I suspect you put the propaganda troupe’s noses out of joint over the last exposee over PISA and England’s selective involvement, and comments revealing the extent of the sham and it’s abuse for political ends…
No mention of any of that from Lindsay naturally….
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“I was 49 before I could write my own address”
As that was apparently18 months ago, I’d hazard that he left school in the mid-1980s, after attending from the mid-1970s. I wonder who was in charge of Education over that period?
It certainly wasn’t the Scottish Government, which didn’t exist – and certainly wouldn’t have been the SNP.
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Of course not, but James won’t ‘earn’ his gong to accompany his expensive taste in suits if he can’t bend facts out of all shape to reality – The Spanish Ambassador confirmed it in an email only I have seen, and I now look forward to an all expenses paid holiday in America….
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Is it was possible to include those who inadvertently use statistical data incorrectly in support of their own opinions in the numbers with poor literacy skills it would show that inadequate literary skills affects people at all levels in society – in fact there are probably many more in very senior positions in government and industry lacking these skills than at the opposite end of the social spectrum.
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Jings, he’s a cheery looking individual!
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Quite a good small article from TES!!!
https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/primary-literacy-and-numeracy-achievement-highest-record
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Unfortunately being based on Jenny Gilruth’s announcement on data collated from within Scotland’s education system, it’s worthless compared to the opinion of a 67 year old with zero experience in the field, and thereby of no interest to an ‘impartial’ broadcaster in search of negativity for political reasons..
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