Tag: education

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Institute for Fiscal Studies’ shocking revelation – Scottish Labour does not have a plan to reduce child poverty

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In the Daily Record, three days ago, the above claim but it’s all talk as the IFS has exposed. From Initial response to the Scottish Labour manifesto, published yesterday: Despite signalling that Scottish Labour wants to see falls in child poverty, the manifesto proposes little new cash support for families with children beyond additional support for childcare. The policy to increase the Scottish child payment to £40 a week for children under one is already planned by the outgoing government for 2027–28, as is the plan for breakfast clubs in primary schools. Whilst there is a plan to ‘review’ the … Continue reading Institute for Fiscal Studies’ shocking revelation – Scottish Labour does not have a plan to reduce child poverty

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Oxford researchers write thousands of words but fail to mention that significantly fewer ‘austerity children’ were ‘scarred by poverty’ here after nearly two decades of the SNP

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In the Guardian today: More than a fifth of all “austerity generation” British children have been scarred by poverty for at least half their childhood, a direct legacy of the welfare benefit cuts imposed by Conservative governments in recent years, research reveals. The proportion of children born after 2013 who spent at least six of their first 11 years of life in hardship surged after ministers froze working age benefits levels and imposed policies such as the two-child limit, it found. Austerity policies, which drastically shrank annual welfare spending by tens of billions a year and took thousands of pounds … Continue reading Oxford researchers write thousands of words but fail to mention that significantly fewer ‘austerity children’ were ‘scarred by poverty’ here after nearly two decades of the SNP

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Scotland avoids large classes and lack of support staff found in England to have ‘created a barrier to inclusion’

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In the Guardian today: Lack of specialist staff hinders support for Send children, teacher survey finds – National Education Union poll finds 89% feel class sizes in England are too big to be ‘properly inclusive’. Oversized classes and inadequate staffing levels are hindering teachers’ capacity to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send), according to a large survey of state school teachers in England. Nine out of 10 (89%) of the 10,000 teachers who took part in the poll by the National Education Union (NEU), before its annual conference in Brighton which starts on Monday, said class sizes … Continue reading Scotland avoids large classes and lack of support staff found in England to have ‘created a barrier to inclusion’

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How Scotland’s schools have played the major role in keeping thousands of pupils safe and making sure County Lines gangs membership is an England-only phenomenon

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In the Sunday Times today, the above video, and: The UK’s county lines networks have evolved into a sophisticated business model that thrives on the exploitation of the young. David Collins, Northern Editor of The Sunday Times, and David Woode, Crime Editor of The Times, go inside a police disruption unit in North Yorkshire to witness high-stakes raids targeting the “line holders” who pull the strings from a single mobile phone. Beyond the arrests, they uncover a disturbing tactical shift where gangs use the Modern Slavery Act as a legal shield for their recruits. It is a portrait of a … Continue reading How Scotland’s schools have played the major role in keeping thousands of pupils safe and making sure County Lines gangs membership is an England-only phenomenon

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BBC Radio 4 Today on school leaver destinations ignores Scotland’s 96% success rate and England’s 40% higher youth unemployment

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Thanks to Frances McKie, once more for noting and researching this one. BBC Radio 4 Today this morning have been discussing today, the GOV.UK publication of: A major youth employment drive backed by £1 billion will help create 200,000 jobs for young people, alongside the biggest transformation of apprenticeships in a decade. It comes as apprenticeships starts amongst young people are down 40 percent in the last decade and almost one million young people are not earning or learning – a rise of 248,000 between 2021-2024. To be announced today (Monday) in a speech by Work and Pensions Secretary Pat … Continue reading BBC Radio 4 Today on school leaver destinations ignores Scotland’s 96% success rate and England’s 40% higher youth unemployment

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England’s Pisa scores are based only on a tiny selective sample of higher achieving schools making Paul O’Kane’s sad desperate attempt to claim they are better than Scotland just another under-educated failure from Scottish Labour

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Please Support Talking-up Scotland at:https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above.Or direct bank transfer at Sort Code 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Name – JOHN ROBERTSON Paul O’Kane Labour MSP and former head boy, seems delighted to be suggesting that Scotland’s schools education system is worse than England’s, with the above, from those other head boys at the IFS. Paul and the lads at the IFS are clearly out of their depth here. There’s something important in the actual figures from the OECD, in this table: See the wee asterisk there? What does it mean? Notes: Values that are statistically significant are marked in … Continue reading England’s Pisa scores are based only on a tiny selective sample of higher achieving schools making Paul O’Kane’s sad desperate attempt to claim they are better than Scotland just another under-educated failure from Scottish Labour

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Scotland’s teachers biting the hand of the ‘best friend they could have’ and even Jack McConnell’s Labour think tank director says ‘Scotland’s teaching unions must be broken’

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Please Support Talking-up Scotland at:https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above.Or direct bank transfer at Sort Code 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Name – JOHN ROBERTSON In the long-time Labour-supporting New Statesman, by the long-time critic of the SNP and Director of Lord Jack McConnell’s ‘Enlighten’ think tank, Chris Deerin writes: Scotland’s teaching unions must be broken The country’s education system needs radical reform.You can always rely on the EIS. The Educational Institute of Scotland, the country’s largest teaching union, has for decades been the main block to effective reform of the nation’s schools. Its instinctive belligerence and obstructionism are key reasons that educational … Continue reading Scotland’s teachers biting the hand of the ‘best friend they could have’ and even Jack McConnell’s Labour think tank director says ‘Scotland’s teaching unions must be broken’

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Wrong! There are 6 505 fewer pupils yet 63 more teachers to keep Scotland’s pupil/teacher ratio the best by far in the UK

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Please Support Talking-up Scotland at:https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above.Or direct bank transfer at Sort Code 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Name – JOHN ROBERTSON Rehashing a story from one of their December 2025 front pages, the Herald’s Garrett Stell (‘Originally from North Carolina’), has the above headline based on an apparent fall in teacher numbers from 2022 to 2025. I’m not going to check. It’s not important. Much more important, he doesn’t seem to know about the ratio between teacher and pupil numbers. I’ll resist the temptation to do my Appalachian accent. You’ll see above, in the official figures, that pupil numbers … Continue reading Wrong! There are 6 505 fewer pupils yet 63 more teachers to keep Scotland’s pupil/teacher ratio the best by far in the UK

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Labour Government promises to halve the attainment gap by 2062 [!] for all pupils while SNP Scotland has already achieved a new low, in 2024

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Please Support Talking-up Scotland at:https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above.Or direct bank transfer at Sort Code 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Name – JOHN ROBERTSON All over BBC UK [England] today, this message: The government says it plans to halve the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers in England by the time children born in this Parliament finish secondary school. It’s another one of those promises you might like to ask an 11 year-old to answer these questions: 2044 and 2062!? Meanwhile, from the Scottish Government’s Literacy and numeracy standards reach record high report in December 2024: The proportion of pupils achieving the … Continue reading Labour Government promises to halve the attainment gap by 2062 [!] for all pupils while SNP Scotland has already achieved a new low, in 2024

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Last week Scottish Government committed firmly to free higher education tuition, was ignored by ALL news media, but this week BBC Scotland prefers to tell you about London-based thinktank’s doubts

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Please Support Talking-up Scotland at:https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotlandClick on the above. BBC Scotland today with London-based Institute [just a bunch of lads really] for Fiscal Studies doubting whether Scotland can continue to afford free higher education tuition for all and ignoring this from last week: I searched for news media coverage to get only this response: The Times Higher Education, read only by some academics, has this below but as you can see above this important news is being hidden from the electorate: ‘We’re looking at all parts of the system – except tuition fees’ https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/were-looking-all-parts-system-except-tuition-fees The THE article by Helen Packer is actually not at all supportive … Continue reading Last week Scottish Government committed firmly to free higher education tuition, was ignored by ALL news media, but this week BBC Scotland prefers to tell you about London-based thinktank’s doubts