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  • Johnston backs praises response of Lib Dem MEP Watson August 31, 2010
    Paul Johnston, a leading Aberdeenshire Councillor has welcomed the link between the Pakistan floods to climate change and the need for the UK to tackle it in a more co-ordinated manner. “In much of the coverage of the tragedy that is Pakistan at the moment it is hard to make the connection to the UK.  Its […]

Energy

 ------News-------

Call for school parent groups to give essential information

Aberdeenshire Councillor Paul Johnston has urged all Aberdeenshire School Parent Councils to respond to the survey on funding launched by the Scottish Parent Teacher Council.

“People are becoming increasingly concerned about Parent Councils and their PTA’s raising money for ‘essential’ school equipment handed there current funding challenges. This survey is launched at almost the same time as the Scottish Parliament’s Education Committee voted to hold an inquiry into school funding.” said Councillor Johnston.

“The implications are that underfunding for core education equipment is being paid for by parents when it is the responsibility of the local authority. It requires a survey to check if the “essential” nature of the equipment being funded is a significant problem.”

“I hope every parent Council responds so that the extent of this can inform both the Scottish Parent Teacher Council in lobbying the Government but also the Scottish Parliament’s Education Committee inquiry. We should not be covering up underspending in education. We need transparency and this survey will help.”

Councillor Johnston is that leader of the Democratic independent Councillors on Aberdeenshire Council.

January 18th, 2010 | Category: News

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Paul's Blog

  • Exams and Scottish Higher Education
    August 5, 2010 | 7:21 pm

    On the day that Scottish Exam results drop through the letterboxes of expecting students, there remains the unresolved debate about the future of higher education that underlies all the comments that will flow forth from the great and good.

    My concerns that commentators will rubbish the results again, as they do when any increase in pass rates are announced.  The requirements of any qualification change with time.  It does not mean it gets easier – it can, but there is no evidence that it actually has.  But there is evidence it has changed in another way.

    Change in the the topics covered by exams have always happened.  How many doing Maths now would be able to handle a slide rule?  In my day, it was part of the exam.  Now students would no know what a slide rule was.

    For all those who are tempted to suggest the utter nonsense of advising students not to go to further Education but study things that industry bosses want now, could I enter the thought that we are really teaching people for occupations in technologies and systems that have not even been invented yet.  Such is the challenge of the future.

    Congratulations to all students in your results.  I just hope that the generation currently making decisions about your futures, your higher education places and the very sustainability of the Country, will not indulge in the short term thinking of ‘government spending’.  I hope they will have the courage for the investment in peoples’ futures and not our selfish present.

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