Scotland’s exam body must improve its performance amid a “breakdown in trust” with teachers, according to a new report. The Parliament’s education committee has called for urgent improvements to the design, delivery and marking of national qualifications and in the Scottish Qualifications Authority communication with teachers. A survey, which included hundreds of responses from teachers, found that 67 per cent of 646 respondents suggested they lacked trust in the SQA. MSPs also examined the work of the Scottish Funding Council, Skills Development Scotland and Education Scotland.
Two secondary teachers have been reprimanded for making inappropriate comments on Twitter. Biology teacher Victoria Orr was disciplined by the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s fitness to teach panel after tweeting about pupils and referring to the IRA, while employed by Renfrewshire Council at Park Mains High School in 2015. She also made inappropriate comments on Twitter while on placement at Airdrie Academy, North Lanarkshire, in 2014-15. English teacher Anne Logue was reprimanded for making offensive comments on Twitter last August, including the term “English pricks”.
The National Confidential Forum has reported 38 incidents to police. The organisation, which is gathering testimonies from people who were in care as children, has heard descriptions of abuse, neglect, degradation and humiliation, in conversations with adults who recalled experiences of 117 institutions in Scotland. Most had been in residential homes or schools, but some spoke about hospitals, boarding schools, school hostels and secure facilities.
Scotland’s top young physicists were revealed last week when the Scottish government announced the winners of the Higgs Prize for physics. Charlotte Facherty, a former pupil of Boroughmuir High in Edinburgh, and Daniel Johnstone, a former pupil of the James Young High in Livingston, are the 2016 winners. The Higgs prize goes to the top performing Advanced Higher students and was established in recognition of the impact of the work of the Nobel prize in physics winner Professor Peter Higgs. Winners visit the internationally renowned CERN research facility in Switzerland.
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