The smile on the boy’s face said it all. Sailing single-handed across a sea loch would be a special moment for any child. But for Reggie Fernie, who uses a wheelchair, it was an adventure he never thought he would have.

It was a moment to treasure for the staff at Carrongrange special school, too. The school is pursuing the new freedoms offered by Scotland’s curriculum for excellence to work with other children’s services in the area to radically extend its outdoor programme for pupils with special needs. Seeing the effect has been an education, says the head, Gillian Robertson.

WHAT makes an apple fall from a tree? Newton knew the answer to that one – gravity – but even he would have had trouble predicting the exact date that a particular fruit would hit the ground.

Oh, the scaldies call us tinker dirt and they sconce our bairns in school, But who cares what a scaldy says, for scaldy’s but a fool. They never hear the yorlin’s song, nor see the flax in bloom, For they’re aye cooped up in houses when the yellow’s on the broom.

READERS of travellers’ tales such as Betsy Whyte’s the Yellow on the Broom will be familiarwith the hardship and intolerance that Scotland ‘s gypsies have suffered. It’s easy to assume that those days are long gone. But for one gypsy family, it appears that little has changed.

“Don’t head off into town and spend a fortune on weekend-priced drinks, when you can come to your very own union instead. New this term: fantastic, better-than-ever drinks promotions – trebles+mixer (incl Red Bull) for £2.50 – new DJ line-up, stilt-walking, stage dancers and fire performers.”

This rather desperate promotion for the Newcastle student union bar tells a story. Those who look back fondly on an old-style university education may remember passing long hours in a union bar offering perhaps little more in-house entertainment than hard chairs, cheap beer and intense conversation.

Fire dancers forsooth, older readers may shriek, surprised at the efforts that have to be made to lure students into the bars that are provided for them nowadays.

No sign of open diagnosis on children’s hospital

FAST forward to 2012. You might be aware that this is the year London hosts the Olympics. It is also when the east of Scotland ‘s new children’s hospital is scheduled to open its doors. A shining palace of health, it will be a place where those who come to be treated will be children first and sick second.

Perhaps it will also have a shiny, blue, two-storey helter-skelter like London ‘s new children’s hospital, the Evalina, which was recently visited by a focus group from Edinburgh.

“We don’t want a cheap box, we want something that is really outstanding, that has a wow factor, ” says consultant paediatric surgeon Bill Manson.

“If you are selling off your sociology textbooks to a second-hand dealer, you are probably better to say they are cultural studies. You will get a better price.”
This admission by William Outhwaite, a professor of sociology at Sussex University, is an indication of the sliding status of the subject. Once the most glamorous of subjects, the leftwing equivalent of a Swiss finishing school, sociology flourished in the second half of the last century, particularly at the postwar universities and the polytechnics. But the wave of expansion of higher education is leaving sociology departments stranded, and many report that it is more difficult to attract undergraduates.

I believe I speak for others at the Herald when I say I am utterly heartbroken and furious at the massacre of our once great newspaper. This whole issue is about far more than the fate of one group of newspapers. It affects us all in Scotland.” This cri de coeur posted anonymously on the allmediascotland website was prompted by news that one of Scotland’s two quality national newspapers is facing its third round of budget cuts in three years, this time to cut the annual budget by between £2m and £3m. One hundred jobs will also go from the three titles, the Herald, its Sunday sister and the Glasgow Evening Times. The Herald had been set a target of making 39p per pound for shareholders and, because it had fallen short, cost-cutting was deemed necessary – management had even asked staff for suggestions on how to save money.

While schools in some parts of the UK debate the issues surrounding burqas and niqabs in the classroom, Scottish educationists have their own human rights dilemma, centred on Twixes and Caramel Wafers. When a headteacher and school board attempted to ban sweets in packed lunches at an Edinburgh primary, some parents objected and the education authority forced the school to back down.