Tag: teaching

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Scotland’s schools narrow attainment gaps across the board and ‘most deprived’ 14/15 year-olds make major strides in literacy

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From Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels, 2024-25 published on 9 December 2025: The statistics also provide information on the gap in attainment between pupils from the most and least deprived areas of Scotland: For literacy, there was an increase in the proportions of primary pupils (P1, P4, P7 combined) that achieved the expected level, from both the least deprived and most deprived areas with a larger increase in the most deprived areas. As a result, the gap reached its narrowest ever level of 19.4 percentage points. For primary numeracy, the gap narrowed to 16.6 percentage points, which was … Continue reading Scotland’s schools narrow attainment gaps across the board and ‘most deprived’ 14/15 year-olds make major strides in literacy

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Literacy and Numeracy at record highs in Scotland’s schools

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Support Talking-up Scotland -In this election year in Scotland, the 90% pro-Union media and their sponsors in the opposition parties will do everything they can to undermine the pro-independence parties. Thought vastly outnumbered, we will do our very best to counter their lies and get you, every day, the true stories and the sources of evidence to prove them. Help us if you can at https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-get-the-facts-for-you From the National Standardised Assessments for Scotland National Report for Academic Year 2024-2025, published today, we can see the one year results but no trends. This is a classic example of a task where … Continue reading Literacy and Numeracy at record highs in Scotland’s schools

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BBC Scotland desperately keen to headline their hoped for ‘closure of almost every school in Scotland’ and confront the minister but then keep quiet when the teachers clearly can’t be bothered to strike

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BBC Scotland, 15 January 2025 from first thing. This captured at 10am. The following day it remained the headline story in the BBC Scotland inserts in BBC Breakfast. One of the teaching unions, the NAS UWT, had already given up because not enough members had voted but the BBC team still seem hopeful today that they might get some bad news they can connect to the Scottish Government. It’s now an hour or so since the comedic EIS announcement: The EIS announced that its recent statutory industrial action ballot on teacher workload has become a victim of soon-to-be repealed elements of UK … Continue reading BBC Scotland desperately keen to headline their hoped for ‘closure of almost every school in Scotland’ and confront the minister but then keep quiet when the teachers clearly can’t be bothered to strike

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Factcheck – 70% pass rate in S4 mathematics – Someone who actually knows something about educational research scoffs at fake ‘commission’s education arm’

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Professor John Robertson OBA, , former schoolteacher, education lecturer, head of department, Associate Dean (Quality Assurance), Research Professor, research methods tutor, Masters and PhD supervisor, multiple peer-reviewed international research author, Faculty Research Ethics Chair I have more detail on the above ‘research’, front page this morning and 35th by this afternoon. The only story that has sunk faster is that on the Labour MSP and the paedophile. I’ve already clarified in my previous post why you should be wary of ‘The Commission on School Reform, the education arm of the independent think tank Enlighten.’ Who on earth do they think they are? … Continue reading Factcheck – 70% pass rate in S4 mathematics – Someone who actually knows something about educational research scoffs at fake ‘commission’s education arm’

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Scotsman ‘newspaper’ front pages incompetent, mendacious, self-important, sub-standard researchers to undermine Scottish schools

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Professor John Robertson OBA, , former schoolteacher, education lecturer, head of department, Associate Dean (Quality Assurance), Research Professor, research methods tutor, Masters and PhD supervisor, multiple peer-reviewed international research author, Faculty Research Ethics Chair The above is on the front page of the Scotsman, based on a report by the far from ‘independent‘, pompously self-styled Commission on School Reform (neither royal nor government just invented) and fronted by the notorious Carole Ford with, as always, party-affiliation hidden, and at the end evidence of Pisa-data which no respectable published educationist will ever use. Note – I’ve put all my ‘stuff’ there … Continue reading Scotsman ‘newspaper’ front pages incompetent, mendacious, self-important, sub-standard researchers to undermine Scottish schools

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The Scotsman’s ‘top academic’ wheeled in to savage Scottish schools again is mere ‘bean counter’ with no experience of teaching in schools, teacher ‘training’, leadership or research into anything other than assessment data

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Professor John Robertson OBA, retired Research Professor, Faculty Research Ethics Chair, Associate Dean for Quality Assurance in Education, Head of Department of Curriculum Studies (30 staff), Senior Lecturer in Educational Technology, Lecturer in Education, School Teacher (Primary), PhD, Master of Education Professor Lindsay Paterson is in the Scotsman again, as he often is, to cast doubt on the competence of Scottish teachers to assess their own pupils continuously as opposed to his preferred snapshot exam method. Once more he returns to the Pisa scores he loves to use to mark us down. He is, to my knowledge, the only serious … Continue reading The Scotsman’s ‘top academic’ wheeled in to savage Scottish schools again is mere ‘bean counter’ with no experience of teaching in schools, teacher ‘training’, leadership or research into anything other than assessment data

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Daily Record manages to miss easily accessed figures proving that the SNP has closed the attainment gap in Scottish schools and widened it with England

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Somebody post this here – https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/ – I’m banned Professor John Robertson OBA In the Record today, the above and: Even with Covid in mind, Record View says closing the poverty-related attainment gap in schools is yet another key SNP promise the party has failed to deliver. They have just not bothered or deliberately avoided the evidence easily accessed in the public domain From the Scottish Government’s Literacy and numeracy standards reach record high report in December 2024: The proportion of pupils achieving the expected level in literacy and numeracy across primary and secondary schools has reached a new high, officials figures … Continue reading Daily Record manages to miss easily accessed figures proving that the SNP has closed the attainment gap in Scottish schools and widened it with England

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English schools excluding pupils at twice the rate and expelling infinitely more often than in Scotland with consequent surges in youth crime

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Professor John Robertson OBA From School attendance, absence and exclusions statistics 2024-25 published yesterday: Cases of exclusion decreased from 11,673 in 2022/23 to 10,647 in 2024/25. This is consistent with the overall downward trend since 2006/07. The rate of exclusions per 1,000 pupils decreased from 16.6 in 2022/23 to 15.2 in 2024/25. This is consistent with the overall downward trend since 2006/07. No pupils were removed from the register in 2024/25, compared with one pupil in 2022/23. This is the first time there has been no pupils removed from the register since records began in 2002/03. In England, in the same period, … Continue reading English schools excluding pupils at twice the rate and expelling infinitely more often than in Scotland with consequent surges in youth crime

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Scotland’s schools surging ahead of those in England in literacy and numeracy attainment

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Professor John Robertson OBA From Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels 2024-25 published today, we see that in Scotland’s schools there have been significant increases in the numbers of pupils achieving the expected levels in the four years since the pandemic.1 Remember these, at first sight, small percentage differences refer to around 50 000 pupils at each level so the 4% improvement in S3 literacy means 2 000 more pupils succeeded last year than in 2021/2022. Scotland’s media have yet to respond. It will be interesting if irritating to see how they try to spin this success down. The … Continue reading Scotland’s schools surging ahead of those in England in literacy and numeracy attainment

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Scottish Government’s Funded Early Learning and Childcare project – 97% engagement, 72% increase in reported good health and greater benefits for those in deprived areas

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Professor John Robertson OBA The Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare: Phase 6 report, published today is a very sober, careful, modest piece of work giving no quick sign of success or failure. I’ve had to read in carefully to extract the good news. What is it all about? This report outlines findings from the 6th phase of the Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare (SSELC), focusing on 3-year-olds who were accessing up to 1140 hours of funded ELC. The SSELC forms a major part of the strategy for the evaluation of the expansion of funded ELC in … Continue reading Scottish Government’s Funded Early Learning and Childcare project – 97% engagement, 72% increase in reported good health and greater benefits for those in deprived areas