Tag: teaching

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Two leading academics cast doubt on England’s supposedly better Pisa scores as their sample is revealed to be skewed toward high achievers by schools gaming the system again

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To put it plainly, based on the reading of two prominent academics in England, the sample from English schools is light on the percentage of pupils with special needs. This echoes the problems of representativeness in the English sample in 2022 (more below) when the results were ‘asterisked’ with a serious warning after almost being fully excluded. There is no history of such gaming or bias in the other 3 UK nations. Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 The above from the Times Education Supplement‘s analysis of the Pisa test … Continue reading Two leading academics cast doubt on England’s supposedly better Pisa scores as their sample is revealed to be skewed toward high achievers by schools gaming the system again

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No credible academic uses the Pisa scores and proper tests show real progress in Scotland’s schools

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 Here’s a short video version: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2026/03/10/short-video-on-englands-pisa-scores-are-based-only-on-a-tiny-selective-sample-of-higher-achieving-schools-making-paul-okanes-sad-desperate-attempt-to-claim-they-are-better/ ‘Pisa tests fail to recognise what’s important in education and should be ignored’ https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/pisa-tests-fail-recognise-whats-important-education-and-should-be-ignored OECD and Pisa tests are damaging education worldwide – academics https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/06/oecd-pisa-tests-damaging-education-academics Too few students from England took part in the study – meaning the results could be up to eight points too generous, as more higher-performing pupils took part.  https://schoolsweek.co.uk/pisa-2022-rise-in-maths-but-warning-over-inflated-results/#:~:text=But%20the%20country’s%20performance%20is,caution%20on%20interpreting%20the%20findings. I could go on with quotes about Pisa but the above three give a flavour of just how useless they are. Only politicians use them and do … Continue reading No credible academic uses the Pisa scores and proper tests show real progress in Scotland’s schools

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Do you ever get fed up with us reporting how after 19 years without LabCons just about every public service in Scotland has been protected by the SNP? Now it’s our well-regulated RAAC ‘which can easily last 50 years, and should be able to carry on for several decades after that’

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 BBC Reporting Scotland Down today are back in Aberdeen, meeting folk who should really be suing the engineers who did the report upon which a mortgage lender lent them money to buy their RAAC council house, at a knock-down price thanks to the Tories and Labour back in the 20th C., before the SNP put an end to the taxpayer rip-off scheme in 2016. They interview a young man who has clearly played poker before and likes it there, he says. ‘Make me an … Continue reading Do you ever get fed up with us reporting how after 19 years without LabCons just about every public service in Scotland has been protected by the SNP? Now it’s our well-regulated RAAC ‘which can easily last 50 years, and should be able to carry on for several decades after that’

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Funding education ‘for the good of society’ but ‘whose society?’

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 By Alasdair Macdonald Within the pre-school and school sector, funding per capita allocations increased as age groups increased. So, allocations to pre-school organisations were less than those for primary and, these, in turn, were less than the allocations to secondary. And, within secondary, these were even greater for senior secondaries compared to junior secondaries and for students in Fifth and Sixth Years, the two years after the school leaving age of 16. Students opting to continue beyond the statutory minimum leaving were disproportionately from … Continue reading Funding education ‘for the good of society’ but ‘whose society?’

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Scotland has 21% more to spend on each school pupil but 24% less to spend on each undergraduate than England? Harvard Researchers would say ‘Good, good!’

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Help Talking-up Scotland keep going Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421 From the Higher Education Policy Institute yesterday and echoed in reports from Universities Scotland and the NUS: How Scotland has 21% more to spend on each school pupil but 24% less to spend on each undergraduate than England. This is all much more important than it might initially sound. Policymaking in Scotland is shaped by the size of its relatively small polity, meaning the political class is tighter and universities have more direct engagement with their political overlords, at least compared to England. This … Continue reading Scotland has 21% more to spend on each school pupil but 24% less to spend on each undergraduate than England? Harvard Researchers would say ‘Good, good!’

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An unholy trinity dedicated to lying about Scottish education to please Westminster is the full panel for BBC Scotland’s lack of balance today

johnrobertson834

MSM Monitor today, fast and forensic as ever, circles another rabid dissembler on schools in Scotland for the panel in BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show today. Perhaps MSM Monitor only wanted to point to the worst but, when I saw the list, I was frankly gobsmacked by the BBC Scotland editor’s bloody nerve in selecting all three of those assassins, James McAneny, Lindsay Paterson AND Carole Ford. Regulars will have seen our responses to the under-educated nonsense they regularly share, to help Scottish Labour MPs fawn to their leader in Westmnister. We have umpteen reports but one each of our previous … Continue reading An unholy trinity dedicated to lying about Scottish education to please Westminster is the full panel for BBC Scotland’s lack of balance today

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Even before today’s results Scotland’s schools narrowed attainment gaps across the board and ‘most deprived’ 14/15 year-olds made major strides in literacy

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The gutter press today, above, with the same old un-educated claims. The facts: 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, … Continue reading Even before today’s results Scotland’s schools narrowed attainment gaps across the board and ‘most deprived’ 14/15 year-olds made major strides in literacy

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The real news – The SNP era sees massive increases in attainment by looked after children with three times as many passing at National 5 and eight times as many at Higher

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In the Herald today, under a frankly creepy image: Scottish Labour has accused the SNP of “breaking The Promise” after new figures showed the attainment gap between looked-after children and their peers has widened in recent years. Looked-after children are young people in the care of their local authority, including those in foster care, residential care, kinship care or some children living at home under formal supervision. How many times have I pointed out that not one credible, peer-review published educational researcher, across the globe, cares about attainment gaps. They care about improvements within disadvantaged groups over time. They know that the middle … Continue reading The real news – The SNP era sees massive increases in attainment by looked after children with three times as many passing at National 5 and eight times as many at Higher

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‘Two decades of havoc’ – Here’s what a real, current, international expert ON EDUCATION knows of the PISA testing loved by Scotland’s only user, Lindsay Paterson

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By stewartb It’s not that hard to find educationalists internationally who are either sceptical or straightforwardly negative about the OECD’s PISA rankings. This from one ‘expert’ in a peer reviewed journal: Zhao, Y. Two decades of havoc: A synthesis of criticism against PISA. J Educ Change 21, 245–266 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-019-09367-x Abstract: ‘The Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) has become one of the most influential forces in global education. The growing influence has been accompanied by growing criticism. For nearly two decades since the first round of PISA was conducted in 2000, the global assessment program has been roundly scrutinized and criticized by education … Continue reading ‘Two decades of havoc’ – Here’s what a real, current, international expert ON EDUCATION knows of the PISA testing loved by Scotland’s only user, Lindsay Paterson

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The Herald’s ‘senior 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

johnrobertson834

The Herald today has: I’ve lost track of how often I’ve felt the need to deal with Prof Paterson, Scotland’s only regular rentagobprof across Scottish and English MSM, always ready to tell everyone that education in Scotland is in decline and worse than elsewhere and, to my knowledge, only fan of Pisa data. He is, to my knowledge, the only serious educationist publishing in peer-review journals who thinks the Pisa scores are of any value at all. I’ll come back to Pisa scores below but first and perhaps explaining his odd attachment to them: Why is Paterson not an expert … Continue reading The Herald’s ‘senior 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