Andy

School’s out for summer – but there is a lot of angry rhetoric still rumbling around the corridors. Scotland’s largest teaching union has threatened to ballot for a strike if the Scottish Executive fails to accept its demand for maximum class sizes of 20 across the board. Its members say this will lead to better attainment, especially for disadvantaged children.

And yet the Scottish Executive argues that research into the educational benefits of small classes is inconclusive and that it may not be the best use of resources.

‘History is more or less bunk, said Henry Ford. And that view appears to be gaining ground.

Not in St Augustine’s high school in Edinburgh, where it is one of the most popular subjects, with 65% of pupils taking it to exam level. There, the subject is compulsory until the third year. “History should be part of everyone’s secondary education,” says Andy Gray, the headteacher. “We have a right and a duty to pass on our story.”

However, at least four secondary schools in Scotland have now dropped the subject altogether in favour of other social science subjects that they say pupils find more relevant, and in which they do better.

You don’t have to be an aunt Sally to see that this is exactly the kind of school the white paper in England is aimed at creating.” Gordon Smith, head of Jordanhill school in Glasgow’s West End, is describing why he has to be careful what he says just at the moment.

In his role as president of the Scottish Association of Headteachers, Smith describes why Scotland can’t have more schools like Jordanhill. While with his other hat on, he talks about how great it is. It is a difficult line to tread.

The class of eight-year-olds at Low Port school in Linlithgow are engrossed in the shapes on their interactive computer screen. They are touching frames to colour different fractions. This is a maths lesson, but it could be a game. The children at Low Port start using Smart Boards in primary one and continue throughout their time at the school. “The
internet is your oyster, explains Liz Greig, a teacher in primary 4. “I can go on to Google and get a map, say, and display it for the class. When we are reading, they can all follow the text on the screen. It’s much easier to keep them focused.”

The school spent several hundred pounds on these popular maths games last year and the pupil council is pushing for more. Where does the money come from? “We approach the trust fund,” explains the principal teacher, Anne Cook.

A DVD costing tens of thousands of pounds produced to support Scotland’s new music syllabus has been criticised as “disappointing”, “crazy” and “a missed opportunity” by some of Scotland’s leading music educators. A new music syllabus is being introduced next year which is aimed at making Scotland’s music education more diverse and creative. However, a GBP65,000 supporting DVD released last month has been criticised as failing to meet these goals, and sticking too firmly to the western classical tradition.

In schoolyards across Scotland, a battle is raging. On one side are councillors who say that spending the education budget sensibly means underused primaries have to close. On the other are banner-waving families – dubbed Kimbies (Keep It In My Backyard) – who say their local schools form the heart of their communities.

For the thousand ormore nervous first years who recently moved into Legoland blocks on the treelined Heriot Watt University campus west of Edinburgh, it is a hopeful time. As with the half of all young Scots who now go on to higher education, they are setting out on what they expect will be the start of a bright future.

But a young man tending the bar at Geordie’s in the student union could tell a sorrier tale.

Oxford and Cambridge universities say they consider the Advanced Higher as a more testing qualification and will accept students with lower grades than in equivalent A-level subjects.

It is a further indication that the A-level, once regarded as Britain’s “gold standard” qualification, has been discredited.

A-level results released last week showed pass rates rising for the 23rd consecutive year to a new high of 96.2%. Almost 23% of candidates are now awarded an A grade. The Advanced Higher pass rate stands at 74.5%, an increase of just 1% since the exam’s introduction in 2000.

Heller was synonymous with Catch-22; the same might be said of Michael Cunningham and The Hours. After two well received but slow-selling novels, A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood, published in 1990 and 1995, The Hours transported Cunningham into an elite league where critical and commercial success go hand in hand. The subsequent film, starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman, with a hypnotic score by Philip Glass, served merely to confirm the arrival on the block of a new literary superstar. He won a Pulitzer and enough credit to pursue his own dream.

The result is Specimen Days, which borrows the title of Walt Whitman’s Civil War diaries.

The image of the biological clock calling time on a woman’s fertility has been used to stereotype the “Bridget Jones” generation of women who postpone settling down and having children . . . but now a world expert on male fertility claims it also ticks for men.