From Public Health Scotland, today: Referrals to a chronic pain clinic are now back to levels seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the quarter ending 30 September 2023, 5,220 patients were referred, an increase of 6.1% on the previous quarter, when 4,919 patients were referred. Referrals are up by 3.9% compared to a year earlier, when there were 5,026 during the quarter ending 30 September 2022. https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/chronic-pain-waiting-times/chronic-pain-waiting-times-quarter-ending-30-september-2023/ Despite this, based on the graph above, the number seen within 12 weeks has increased for the last three quarters as has the total seen within 1 year. BBC Scotland, on chronic … Continue reading Chronic pain waiting times continue to shorten for third quarter despite referrals returning to pre-Covid level

Leah Gunn Barrett It’s rich for English Education minister Gillian Keegan to claim English schools are superior when English school buildings are literally crumbling. Her own department admitted that England had cherry-picked better performing schools with more affluent students to take part in the PISA exams, violating a rule that each participating nation should select pupils of average academic background.[1] England cheated, which won’t come as a surprise to most Scots.  Keegan fails to mention another little detail. Just 4.7% of English secondary schools took part in the PISA exams, whereas 32.8% of all Scottish did.[2] This should invalidate any attempts to … Continue reading A better metric for judging a nation’s education system

From the Guardian today: Peers [led by former Education Secretary Kenneth Baker, above] call for urgent overhaul of secondary education in England – Lords report says there is too much learning by rote and many key Tory changes should be reversed. The House of Lords report says the education system for 11- to 16-year-olds is too focused on academic learning and written exams, resulting in too much learning by rote and not enough opportunity for pupils to pursue creative and technical subjects. The committee recommends instead that schools and teachers should be allowed to offer a more varied range of … Continue reading English Lords ignore Pisa test results and call for curriculum more like Scotland’s

From Politics Home yesterday: English state schools plunged into a financial deficit last year, new figures have shown, with teachers’ leaders warning of a “bleak” future. Financial data obtained by PoliticsHome under the Freedom of Information Act, covering 8,539 non-academy state schools in 93 local authorities, shows the schools made an average in-year surplus of £13,963 each on their day-to-day revenue spending in 2021/22. But this plummeted to an average deficit of £10,561 each in 2022/23, as rising inflation and growing numbers of children with complex special needs combined with sustained underfunding by Government to squeeze schools’ finances. Taking all 8,500 schools … Continue reading SNP in government – funding schools 18% higher and increasing faster than in other nations

From BBC Health today: Campaigners have written to the chief constables of Norfolk and Suffolk to request an investigation into thousands of mental health deaths in those areas. They say coroners are raising safety issues but no improvements are being made. A report by independent auditors found as many as 8,440 patients had died unexpectedly over three years. Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust said it had started a review of patient deaths. Coroners worried about the risk of future deaths highlight unsafe practices in what are known as prevention-of-future-deaths reports (PFDs). And authorities are required by law to respond with an action plan … Continue reading 8 440 unexpected hospital deaths but no political responsibility

This is, I feel sure, the standard Scottish Cons leaflet going out to every letter box in Scotland in a determined effort to use up the millions they’ve had in donations from the rich and powerful, of whom they have a long history of serving the demands – deregulation, no workers right, low council and other taxes and low public spending. The word ‘Con’ only appears in the dated graph and ‘Conservative’ only appears in the tiniest lettering in the footers. The colour blue only appears in the graphs as they show off their new livery – Racing Green. Dowey … Continue reading Ayrshire Tories pretend they’re not Tories and try to scare locals with fake news on local hospital

Huh, is this the best the SNP can do for the country’s economy? Look and learn, hen: No list of politicians and cars is complete without mention of John ‘Two Jags’ Prescott. The former Labour Deputy Prime Minister famously had one luxury Jaguar in his Hull consistency and a second in London. Continue reading Jaguar/Land Rover accuse Sturgeon of typical Scottish tightness and lack of loyalty to UK by only letting hubby buy one Jag!

By cuckooshoe An article in the BBC News Section (under Health) says “Parts of the UK could become home to mosquitoes capable of spreading dengue fever, chikungunya and zika virus by the 2040s and 2050s, health officials warn.” Mention of the chikungunya virus rang a bell and prompted me to look up Valneva! Valneva is the French pharmaceutical company, some may recall, who received a termination notice in September 2021 from the UK Government in relation to the supply of its Covid-19 vaccine. The article below is from the Daily Express and is dated 20th November 2023 – https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-enterprise-claw-back-millions-31477524 “Scottish … Continue reading Scottish Government support for Livingston vaccine plant leads to new mosquito vaccine

By stewartb The PISA 2022 results are just one of a raft of measures that one can and should use to assess the quality and relevance of an eduction system and its associated curriculum. We need a ‘balanced scorecard’ and we need balanced, objective consideration of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in system. We do not need insulting, partial, partisan and ill-informed comment on Scottish education from the Westminster government’s Education Secretary aided and abetted by a newspaper supposedly ‘serving’ Scotland. Scotland on Sunday (SoS) gave Gillian Keegan space today to tell us – justified by the PISA 2022 scores … Continue reading UK minister unaware Scots pupils among the most likely in the developed world to understand and appreciate the perspective of others

Like a playground crowd around a fight, our MSM have gathered frothily around some figures which seem to bear little relationship to those published above. Looking at the above data, it is clear that all forms of bullying are decline from the 2018 level 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. That it? Just ‘the majority’ is OK? Why no percentage we might … Continue reading Scotland’s school violence fact check – All forms of bullying in decline and students feel safer than in other nations