#falling standards

Look … I’m knocking on a bit. I’m getting grumpy in my old age. It’s allowed. (Who am I kidding? I’ve always been a grumpy wee sort. 😉 ) There are more and more seemingly trivial thing that really grind my gears – or as we say in the west of Scotland, ‘rip ma knitting.’ My new pet hate is the current trend for people (most notably sports commentators) to say someone ‘just about managed’ to do…

Ashanti Region chiefs turn heat on parents over falling academic performance

Akyeamehene of Adugyama, Nana Owusu

As part of measures to address falling academic standards, chiefs of Adugyama Traditional area in the Ahafo Ano South District of the Ashanti Region have vowed to punish parents who send their children on errands after 7 p.m.

Community leaders say there are growing levels of promiscuous lifestyles, especially among girls, resulting in falling academic…

Running Scotland is Little More than a Failing Experiment for the SNP

How else might one account for the disparity between the First Minister’s oft repeated claim to be prioritizing education, and the actual results her government manages to achieve. 

(Keep in mind that while she not only talks big about education now - not matched by actions - Sturgeon is a past party spokesperson on Education, before she was deputy and now leader of the SNP).

Metric after metric illustrates that the SNP’s failed approach of neglect, under-funding and concentration on propaganda, at the expense of actual learning, are all undermining the ability of Scots children to achieve (and thus to cope in the wider world).

To past catastrophic failures - like under funding science, losing colleges/college places and staff, increasing class sizes, widening the attainment gap between rich and poor, increasing debt on poorer students & their families, adding fees onto any challenge to exam results (meaning poorer families challenge questionable results less), etc., etc. - we must now add the latest international comparison scores on peer to peer attainment.

The most recent PISA results that while the UK overall is in a fairly competitive place (well above OECD average) and ahead of all its main European competitors and the US, that is an average result for the UK overall.

Scotland’s results are little short of a lumbering leap backwards!  And when can this UN-progressive educational regression be traced to - how about the entire time that the SNP have been in office.  In fact while Scotland lags in all the indices - school strudents in England are ahead of all the UK averages - and in sufficiant numbers to keep the UK well above the OECD average.  And THAT is with more non-english speaking students and less money spent per pupil.  All of which highlights the abject failings of the SNP even more.

Year after year the SNP have had the chance to make good on their promise to focus on education, to prioritize schools and year after year they have failed to do anything of the sort.  Each year of SNP government in fact brings a new low in standards. 

Absolutely No Lessons Learned...

So the only thing the SNP is actually any good at is proving just how unfit they are to run Scotland’s schools (but i guess they are also good at proving they can’t run the health service, local government, the police, the economy - or anything else either!).  Yet on they plough, undeterred by facts and their miserable failing statistics.  Undaunted by the widening chasm between their propagandist rhetoric and the results.  Unaffected by the fact that they are literally failing generations of Scottish children.

Perhaps this is why the SNP don’t tend to send their children to public schools - despite being such ‘progressives?

But after all, education children is NOT the raison d’etre of the SNP.  (Come to that - neither is administering schools, hospitals, law & order or anything else).  The engine of the SNP is separatism, its fuel is hatred & grievance and the direction does not matter (it can be smack into a wall for all the SNP care, really) so long as its through the break-up of the UK. 

Literally: “Independence at Any Cost”