Sir, – The Scottish Higher results for 2020 and 2021, entirely teacher-assessed, showed pronounced grade inflation over 2019.
The results for 2022, which came out on 9 August, are closer to 2019 and demonstrate clearly the benefits of external exams in producing meaningful results, despite the OECD report of June 2021 recommending only continuous assessment.
The attainment gap, which measures achievement between schools in the least and most deprived areas, was quoted as 19% in 2019 and seemed to have narrowed to 6% during the pandemic years. But an Audit Commission report in 2021 disagreed, claiming it had, in fact, widened.
The gap quoted for 2022 is 15% and Holyrood, perhaps optimistically, would like to close it entirely by 2026 by making funds available to education authorities for extra tuition in deprived areas.
For this strategy to be effective, it needs careful monitoring and fine-tuning as necessary.
This is perhaps a task for the revised HM Inspectorate, which assumes office in 2024.
In setting up the new agencies SQA and Education Scotland, care should be taken to ensure good mechanisms of communication between the two or the well-documented shortcomings of the old SQA may appear in the new one.
Dr Walter J MacCulloch, Causewayend Crescent, Aberchirder.
Stop dividends and halve our bills
Sir, – I have just been listening to a spokesman for the energy companies. He was making a plea for the government to get a scheme going to support users to make sure they can afford the cost of energy over the next however many months, to be repaid once energy prices go down. As I and others see it, you’re asking the taxpayer to ensure people continue using and paying for the energy you produce, thereby ensuring your shareholders get their dividends. Well Mr Spokesman, how about your crowd stopping all the dividends to shareholders? That will halve our bills.
Finlay G Mackintosh, Loch View, Forres.
One man’s raise is another man’s job
Sir, – Call me maybe stupid in my thinking, but I assume all these people who are striking for inflation-rated wage rises will then strike to have these reduced when inflation hopefully reduces.
Watch what you wish for.
It is many years ago, when car workers were getting eye-watering wage rises, that I was told by someone that one man’s wage rise was another man’s job. Maybe your workmate/best friend’s job.
That is what brought on technology so much faster. As did, sadly, wars. Some good, some bad.
Look how car production has been automated. Jobs lost! After posties went on strike many years ago, quite a lot of mail then transferred to couriers. Maybe more jobs lost!
Years ago, nearly all fish leaving Aberdeen went by train all over the country. Because of strikes and fish being left to rot, all fish were then transferred to road transport, as it still is today.
These are just the ones I know of. There may be a few more caused by union intransigence.
There have been a few instances of quite reasonable offers being made to union officials but not being put to the members. Why?
Is it because the union officials are afraid their members will accept the said offers and kill their power over their members?
Ian Balgowan, Jubilee Court, Stonehaven.
Focus on repairing peatlands
Sir, – Victor Clements (Letters, August 16) claims: “In Scotland, public policy is based on a misunderstanding of how peatlands actually work.”
However, Mr Clements’ letter itself contains several such misunderstandings.
He claims that “water will… oxidise the peat”. That is not true. It is the oxygen dissolved in water that oxidises the peat, just as it is the alcohol dissolved in water in whisky that causes inebriation.
Were water itself able to oxidise peat, then peat would not be able to form at all, since it is water-saturated.
Nor do temporary pools of water “kill the vegetation underneath” as Mr Clements claims. Peatland mosses are well-adapted to seasonal inundation.
However, peatlands damaged by burning or overgrazing are more susceptible to erosion, loss of carbon and to rapid run-off of heavy precipitation, increasing the risk of downstream flooding, than good-quality vegetation.
Of course, not all peatlands are damaged, but public policy is focused on repairing those that are. For example, there is at present a public consultation on proposals at Glen Dye Moor (near Banchory) that includes the restoration of “up to 1,800 hectares of degraded peatland” that will “result in a reduction in emissions totalling 650,000 tonnes of CO2 from peatland restoration over the life of the project”.
Roy Turnbull, Torniscar, Nethy Bridge.
Sorry not sorry to be SNP ‘apologist’
Sir, – I was recently described as an “SNP apologist” by a contributor to these pages.
Fine by me. Let me “apologise” for the following:
1 – Despite all the prevailing difficulties, we still have the best-performing NHS in the UK.
2 – England is engulfed in a crime wave while, in Scotland, we have the lowest crime rates in 40 years. Our police force is not in “special measures” either, as a number southward are.
3 – Our beaches aren’t awash with sewage, as we had the good sense to keep water nationalised.
4 – Education is no worse in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK. Both require to be improved on though.
Scottish students still benefit from free tuition, along with free bus travel to/from their studies. Not in England alas.
5 – Significant infrastructure programmes have been completed in Scotland, along with thousands of council houses being built.
All this in times of Westminster-inspired austerity measures, which simply doubled the debt.
Why were those things not completed in times of plenty, when the unionist parties controlled Holyrood?
6 – Local authority funding has been cut, by necessity, but no local authority is in the crisis seen by some in England.
All in all, in times of extreme difficulty, much of it caused by Westminster actions, the SNP has performed rather well.
I say again: We are so lucky to reside in Scotland.
Ron Campbell, Richmond Walk, Aberdeen.
Public paying up for design fails
Sir, – In today’s P&J (August 22) was an item covering the ongoing costs of maintenance and repairs to various court and justice buildings.
There was comment from the SCTS pointing out that they had a large and historic estate to look after, thus implying that their property was not modern and costs such as those mentioned were to be expected.
Fair comment with old buildings – but listed among the historic buildings was Inverness Justice Centre.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but by no stretch of one’s imagination could Inverness be classed as historic.
Yet it seems it needs handrail replacements, a new sheriff door entrance and a front door security portal (the combined cost being some £50,000).
I would have presumed that a competent architect familiar with the requirements of court and justice buildings would have foreseen the need for entrances of these natures simply due to the use of the premises he or she designed and, failing that, perhaps the SCTS estates manager would have pointed out the shortcomings.
Perhaps the costs might be recovered from the designers and/or the architects. Some hope.
No. Yet again, one way or another, we the public end up paying for these defects.
Alastair Armitstead, Achiltibuie, Ross-shire.
Where’s our not-for-profit energy?
Sir, – Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues took to the airwaves yesterday to “maybes aye, maybes no” suggest an independent Scotland would have a nationalised energy industry, seemingly forgetting that in October 2017, she said that “by the end of this Parliament in 2021, we will set up a publicly owned, not-for-profit energy company”.
Needless to say, it never happened and never would have.
It’s also a bit ironic that while Germany is opening up 19 mothballed coal-fired power stations, Ms Sturgeon was one of the VIPs at the demolition of Longannet last year.
Scotland’s energy policy is well behind the curve but at least the SNP can supply plenty of hot air.
Allan Sutherland, Willow Row, Stonehaven.
Passport service was first-class
Sir, – I have never sent an email to The Press and Journal before, but felt compelled to write because of the excellent service we have had from the Passport Office.
I submitted online applications for my wife and myself on July 25 and fully expected that it would take at least eight weeks for us to get our new passports.
I sent our old passports to the Passport Office on the 26th and received a text on the 27th to say that the passports had been received and checked. I then got another text on the 28th to say that the passports were being printed.
My passport arrived on the 29th and my wife’s passport was delivered on August 2!
We were really impressed with the first-class service, especially in view of the delays there have been with passport applications recently.
George Christie, Crathie Gardens, Aberdeen.
Ditch net-zero in order to cut costs
Sir, – The Institute for Fiscal Studies has, along with other sources of financial insight, warned the two hopefuls in the Tory leadership contest that their promises to reduce taxation cannot be achieved without reductions in government spending.
The best opportunities to cut back spending are surely in the absurdly costly net-zero carbon dioxide emission targets and the like.
The UK cannot help the planet or anybody with these policies except make richer many already rich people.
The costs to us are at least £3 trillion, with huge societal disruption.
The emissions reduction targets bring no benefits to us. However, it is said that cancelling net-zero would be electorally disastrous for the Tories.
Perhaps, therefore, the best time to cancel is post-electoral. That would be duplicitous, of course, but it’s politics!
The UK, after all, emits negligible CO2 even when energy from imported fossil fuels is included.
The worldwide use of fossil fuels has vastly increased because of the Russo-Ukrainian war’s impact on Russian exports of petroleum.
Many countries are now returning to coal for vital energy.
That will not change for years, by which time the needs for decarbonisation will have been proven or disproven.
The latest research findings (in Denmark, Canada and Israel), downgrade the role of man-made CO2 as the major climate changer.
Instead, the Earth’s climate is controlled by the sun and its impact on atmospheric water vapour.
We cannot influence these.
The UK’s, including Scotland’s, present problems, our people’s worsening financial anxieties and general common sense make such dubious policies unrealistic and unaffordable.
Politicos: You must delay avoidable policies pending the nation’s ability to afford them, if that ever happens!
Charles Wardrop, Viewlands Road West, Perth.
Time to sort out water problems
Sir, – It beggars belief that as an island surrounded by water that any government hasn’t yet totally addressed the problem of how to ensure adequate future supplies.
Desalination plants should be built, but, unfortunately, the only one opened at Beckton, London, by the Duke of Edinburgh in 2010 has been mothballed!
Its main aim was to supply potable water during droughts.
Changes to planning and building regulations making it mandatory for new dwellings to have water butts and underground storage tanks with pumps are needed.
A development of 1,650 homes is planned at Greenferns, Northfield, Aberdeen. How many will be environmentally planned and built? Unless drastic measures are taken we will continue using drinking water to wash cars, water the gardens and so on!
T Shirron, Davidson Drive, Aberdeen.
Promises, promises
Sir, – First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is insisting that nationalisation of energy companies “should be on the table” to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
Might this be the same Nicola Sturgeon who, at the 2017 SNP conference, promised to create a state-owned energy company to supply Scots with low-cost power?
Four years later, this proposal was quietly dropped, another abandoned nationalist pledge like closing the education attainment gap and reforming funding of local government.
Jonathan Mitchell.
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