Professor John Robertson OBA, former Associate Dean (Quality Assurance) Faculty of Education, UWS
See all that stuff up there? That’s real that is, not like that fake Reverend Stu Campbell or, or Doctor Feelgood…..or, Professor Longhair….
So, trust me, I can read research.
I know you can too but the Research Director at Jack McConnell’s education ‘thinktank’ and the folk at BBC Scotland, clearly can’t or won’t. Who is she? This woman:
Why?
They had a woman on this morning to say her wean did not go to school because she ‘doesn’t feel safe’ there.
I’m sure that’s true but is that enough data to use, in forming the wider conclusion made by Reform Scotland, unchallenged by BBC Scotland, that school absences are increasing because children do not feel safe there?
Makes you wonder if the Research Director could have checked to see if there’s more evidence, doesn’t it?
Like this:
Looking at data from proper research by Pisa, just last year1, it is clear that all forms of bullying are in decline, with only 9.4% reporting experiencing it in 2022, down from the 2018 level of 11.8%, and that Scottish students feel significantly safer than in other nations, on average.
And in England? No such breakdown seems to have been done with only this offered:
The report also found that the majority of pupils in England reported feeling safe in their schools.2
That it? Just ‘the majority’ is OK? 90% in Scotland reported feeling safe in Scottish schools.
Why no percentage we might compared with Scotland?
This sort of thing?
Violence fears make children miss school [in England], youth survey suggests
Results from the survey of over 7,500 children [in England] indicate 16% of children aged 13-17 have been a victim of violence. The children’s commissioner [for England] said knife crime and violence was the “number one issue” raised with her by young people.3
and:
Hundreds of children thrown out of school in English county lines hotspots 4
Sources:
- https://www.gov.scot/publications/programme-international-student-assessment-pisa-2022-highlights-scotlands-results/documents/
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/england-among-highest-performing-western-countries-in-education
- https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/29/hundreds-of-children-thrown-out-of-school-in-english-county-lines-hotspots
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-67359254
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Footnote: See all that Professor John Robertson OBA, former Associate Dean (Quality Assurance) Faculty of Education, UWS stuff? Just having a laugh using it with ‘our’ journos.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
This is the ‘Ah, but ….’ fallacy. It is a version of the ‘perfectionist fallacy’. The ‘Ah, but’ter looks for the cloud attached to every silver lining.
Alistair Reid wrote a poem about her:
It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet,
when larks rose on long thin strings of singing
and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels.
Greenness entered the body. The grasses
shivered with presences, and sunlight
stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills.
Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat,
the woman from the fish-shop. ‘What a day it is!’
cried I, like a sunstruck madman.
And what did she have to say for it?
Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves
as she spoke with their ancient misery:
‘We’ll pay for it, we’ll pay for it, we’ll pay for it!’
Alasdair Macdonald
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Hi
Many children do not feel safe in school, some for many years.
Please look at the Facebook page – Not Fine in School for very relevant perspectives.
Kind regards
Chris
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I’m afraid it’s widespread over any aspect of any matter the present Scottish Government has control. Why? Quite simply to demonstrate to the electorate, at least the ones who are politically brain dead, that Scotland, at least when run by an administration whose raison d’etre is to make us an Independent nation once again, is failing. So choose any subject you like, and these uniformed idiots will be given time and space by equally corrupt media, led by the B.B.C,
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