Tag: education

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England’s primary schools heading back to pre-War class sizes under Conservative or Labour governments

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From the Guardian today: English primary schools cutting teacher numbers amid budget pressure, survey finds. A survey of more than 1,000 school leaders and teachers by the National Foundation for Educational Research found that three-quarters said their primary schools were cutting teaching assistant roles, while a third were also cutting teacher numbers. From GOV.UK in November 2023, pupil-teacher ratios: Any class-teachers out these will be shouting things like ‘I’ve got 30’ and ‘I’ve never had fewer than 25’, and so on. That’s because the above ratios take into account promoted staff with no or reduced class-contact times, so in Scotland, … Continue reading England’s primary schools heading back to pre-War class sizes under Conservative or Labour governments

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School suspensions 4 times more, and full expulsions shocking 600 times more, common in England’s not so fair and pleasant land

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Many thanks to Dottie for alerting me to this via the Guardian: Pupil suspensions in England hit record high, rising by nearly a third year on year, DfE figures show From the Scotsman, no friend of the SNP Government, on 25 March 2024: Across Scotland, there were 11,675 cases of temporary exclusion of any length of time, with just one pupil being expelled, as previously revealed by The Scotsman. The figures compare to 39,553 temporary exclusions and 164 permanent in 2007, when the SNP came to power. So, with 10 times the population, all things being equally progressive and hopefully not … Continue reading School suspensions 4 times more, and full expulsions shocking 600 times more, common in England’s not so fair and pleasant land

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Teachers in England may strike over 36% higher pupil workload than in Scotland

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BBC Breakfast, as with the junior doctors strikes, is NOT shielding the Conservative Government from criticism, but allowing union reps free reign to attack. Today’s threat of teacher strikes is headlining there but is nowhere on the BBC News websites. BBC Scotland? School photos scandal. A significant factor for the NASUWT is this: Class sizes, pupil teacher ratios, have gotten worse not better over the last decade. Strangely, neither the NASUWT nor the Government state the actual pupil/teacher ratio. Here they are, helpfully from gov.uk, across the 4 nations: Pupil to teacher ratios in maintained schools were lowest in Scotland … Continue reading Teachers in England may strike over 36% higher pupil workload than in Scotland

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Former head teacher says ‘PISA has very little statistical rigour and offers nothing in the way of improving educational practice’

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By Alasdair Macdonald The issue is with PISA. It has very little statistical rigour and offers nothing in the way of improving educational practice. I was a secondary school head teacher at the time it and other ‘measures’ were introduced in education in Scotland in other places. I and my colleagues argued against it. Educational provision, like everything else, ought to be continuously evaluated, partly to get evidence on whether it is achieving the aims set out for it and partly to get information on areas which require attention. However, there are, literally, hundreds of aspects to be measured and … Continue reading Former head teacher says ‘PISA has very little statistical rigour and offers nothing in the way of improving educational practice’

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Worse than England – Pisa scores fiasco leads to NINTH Welsh Education minister since devolution

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By stewartb I’m not one to consider that an education system should be judged on just the OECD’s PISA scoring but there is something to be said for comparing reactions by politicians to such scores for different parts of the UK. When the last set of PISA results for Scotland were reported on the BBC News website on 5 December 2023, we learned that ‘Performance in Scotland’s high schools has slipped according to new international research on education.’ With countries across the world receiving scores that were better or indeed more often worse than before, there are likely to be … Continue reading Worse than England – Pisa scores fiasco leads to NINTH Welsh Education minister since devolution

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Teacher staffing in Labour-run Wales a pupil-harming 40% lower than in Scotland as it remains the same here

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This site costs nothing to run so donate to our friends at  https://www.broadcastingscotland.scot/donate/ As the Guardian reports on 14 years of cuts to school budgets, crumbling buildings and a crisis in the funding for staff in England, the Scotsman has a go at including Scotland in this ‘crisis’ with: SNP teacher numbers vow in tatters The claim comes, no surprise, not from an independent research group but from the EIS union, whose leaders have regularly misrepresented their members interests to help Scottish Labour. The EIS leadership and Labour are close. Several, with me, were at Stirling University, thanks to one … Continue reading Teacher staffing in Labour-run Wales a pupil-harming 40% lower than in Scotland as it remains the same here

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Scottish student nursing applications at nearly twice the level of England due to SNP Government initiatives

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Another desperate (no ”) attempt by the Scotsman to turn a problem being tackled by the Scottish Government into a crisis in which their actions seem to be invisible. Nowhere in that front page do you see this important piece of evidence, of the Scottish Government’s efforts. On top of free tuition, in Scotland only: The Bursary The bursary is for the normal duration of the course that you are undertaking. If you are taking the four-year honours nursing degree course and you are eligible for a bursary, you will receive the full bursary rate for years 1-3 and a … Continue reading Scottish student nursing applications at nearly twice the level of England due to SNP Government initiatives

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Already worse, how much more so can England’s pupil-teacher ratio get?

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Today in the Observer: Schools across England are warning they will soon be unsafe because they are having to cut teachers and support staff to save money, with record numbers now in deficit. With escalating behavioural problems, soaring numbers of children with special educational needs, and increased pupil numbers, schools say staff are already stretched to the limit. Yet heads across the country say they now have no choice but to plan redundancies or not replace leaving staff in order to balance their books. One in eight local authority maintained schools were in deficit in 2022-23, the highest number on … Continue reading Already worse, how much more so can England’s pupil-teacher ratio get?

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Only 3.6% of Scots ‘face serious challenges’ in literacy but BBC Scotland and Prof Paterson lie to all UK viewers that it’s 26%!

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On BBC Breakfast at 06:25 this morning, the Reporting Scotland team were allowed to share with the rest of the UK, their disgracefully inaccurate report claiming that 26% of Scots were illiterate and that meant 1.9 million! The claim was supported by Professor Lindsay Paterson. It’s a lie. The facts: From the University of Glasgow’s full report, 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 … Continue reading Only 3.6% of Scots ‘face serious challenges’ in literacy but BBC Scotland and Prof Paterson lie to all UK viewers that it’s 26%!

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Far fewer in Scotland have ‘serious’ or ‘very poor’ literacy problems than across the UK

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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 … Continue reading Far fewer in Scotland have ‘serious’ or ‘very poor’ literacy problems than across the UK