Revealed: the pound;10 million private schools save on rates . because they are `charities’
Sunday Herald
- Taxpayers are giving private schools a pound;10 million subsidy on their rates bills because the elite educational establishments are classed as charities. Meanwhile, state comprehensives are being charged full rates, paid by local authorities from the public purse. In the past three years, Fettes College in Edinburgh was liable for pound;550,236 in rates, but pound;440,188 was sliced off.
School secretary jailed for 30k theft
Daily Record
- A school official was yesterday jailed for embezzling pound;30,000 from school funds - including pupils’ cash for a trip to France. Administrator Barbara Donald’s scam was discovered when a travel firm called the head of Baldragon Academy in Dundee to say a cheque had bounced. Donald, 41, was jailed for eight months and ordered to pay back the money.
Autism campaigner hails moves to end patchy treatment for disability
Scotland on Sunday
- A major project to determine the availability of autism services across Scotland is to be launched in an attempt to end the “postcode lottery” for treatment. The pound;400,000 Scottish government-funded scheme, spearheaded by the National Autistic Society Scotland, will set out to “map” all existing services and highlight discrepancies between regions.
No kidding . the two schools with no pupils
Daily Record
- Two tiny island schools are being kept open by council chiefs - despite having no pupils. The last Primary 7 at the school on Rum left when the summer holidays began. And the primary on neighbouring Canna - 23 miles out into the Atlantic - has been mothballed since last June.
Transsexual, 16, forces school to let him sit exam dressed as a girl
Daily Mail
- A transgender pupil has used equality laws to force his headmaster to allow him to sit a GCSE exam wearing a skirt. Ashlyn Parram, 16 and a pupil at Giles Academy in Lincolnshire, who was born a boy but is undergoing gender reassignment treatment, said that at first he was told he could not sit the paper because he was not wearing boys’ uniform.
