The X-amination Factor
Tuesday, 06 May 2008 12:34
Rows are forecast across breakfast tables this morning as parents try to persuade teenage children that their English exams are more important than the X Factor.
Scottish heads are furious that the ITV show scheduled its first auditions for 10,000 hopefuls in Hampden Park football stadium yesterday, the day before the Scottish equivalent of GCSE English. The second round, involving thousands of hopefuls, is due to take place today in the same venue.
The rector of Dingwall Academy, Graham Mackenzie, spoke for many when he said: "This is appalling. I have seen a copy of the letter the children have been sent. In big bold letters, it congratulates them for being selected. It tells them this is their first step on the road to stardom and that this decision may change their lives. It also tells them to rehearse and practise to impress the judges.
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A taste of freedom
Tuesday, 22 April 2008 11:00
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.
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Driving children from distraction
Wednesday, 06 February 2008 10:51
"I was called in to see the teacher just a few days after my son Alex started school. The teacher said he wouldn't sit at his desk. We had just suffered a sudden bereavement in the family. I tried to explain how he might be feeling, but she didn't seem to want to know."
For Anne Cranston, this was the beginning of several years of difficult consultations. "It's very upsetting, hearing teachers being negative about your child. I would sit on the little chairs in the classroom and I wouldn't know what to say."
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What's it like to suffer a brain injury?
Tuesday, 20 November 2007 10:35
ROBERT was a student with a bright future as a musician, but that was before he fell from a mountain 14 years ago. Since his rock-climbing accident, he can't move around so well and few people can understand what he is saying.
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A career in crime
Saturday, 20 October 2007 10:38
"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.
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