Claims by the Ministry of Defence that its recruitment teams only visit schools by invitation have been branded “a fabrication” by South of Scot-land MSP Christine Grahame. The SNP poli-tician used Freedom of Information laws to re-quest copies of army recruitment invitations from Govan High in Glasgow, which received 14 “regimental recruitment visits” in 2005-06. The previous year, there had been only 14 visits across the whole of Scotland.
The school’s senior management team was unable to provide evidence of any such invitations to the Army and had no knowledge of any requests being made in recent years, she said.
A spokeswoman for the British Army said last month, following a motion at the Educational Institute of Scotland’s annual conference calling for a ban on recruitment in schools: “We do not go into schools unless invited.”
The majority of childminders and childcare workers who responded to the Scottish Executive’s national early years workers’ review, say they want qualifications that are on a par with the rest of the sector’s workforce. Seventy-two per cent of the childminders said they would undertake training and learning if it was recognised within a single qualifications and professional development framework across the whole early years and childcare sector. Others argued, however, that experience should count for more than paper qualifications.
School fees in the independent sector have risen by 40 per cent over the past five years, the Scottish Council of Independent Schools has confirmed. Research published by the Bank of Scotland Investment Service found that the average annual cost of sending a child to an independent school in Scotland was Pounds 8,247 in 2007, compared to pound;6,039 in 2002.
Scientists, police officers, journalists, and teachers and lecturers were among those who could not afford to educate their children privately without assistance from other sources.
Judith Sischy, SCIS director, said she was aware of the impact of school fees on family income, but added that a private education was “one of the most important investments” parents could make for their children.
Cutting down on school exclusions and keeping teenagers in education beyond the minimum school leaving age could stop youngsters turning to crime later on in life, according to new research from Edinburgh Univer-sity. Children who are kicked out of school by S3, or who leave as soon as they reach 16, are at greater risk of becoming convicted criminals in adulthood than those who stay on in school, according to the report part of the wider Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, which is tracking more than 4,000 young people who started secondary school in Edinburgh in 1998.
