PUPILS PAID £1M IN DAMAGES BY SCOTS SCHOOLS
Children awarded thousands in compensation – for bumps and scrapes in playgrounds, injuries during PE lessons and bullying
PUPILS have been handed more than £1million in compensation for slips, trips and accidents at school. Councils have been forced to hand over cash ranging from tens of thousands of pounds to individuals who were injured in class to hundreds of pounds for damage to musical instruments.
In other cases payouts have been made for theft.
Last night critics said the sum showed that ‘compensation culture’ was rife in Scotland’s classrooms. Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real education, said: ‘Teachers are afraid to expose their pupils to even the slightest risk. The consequence is that pupils are robbed of their childhood.
‘Playground activities with any physical contact, including “tag”, soccer and chase games are being banned for fear of an accident. Some schools even ban conkers and refuse to allow toddlers to use climbing frames.’
A Freedom of Information request shows that claims range from trips in the playground to burnt clothing from science experiments, with a single payout of £57,425 made by one council. Aberdeenshire
NICOLA Sturgeon yesterday announced the return of national tests for all primary age children in a bid to end years of classroom failure.
The First Minister bowed to parent pressure and turned the clock back 12 years amid a growing crisis over reading and writing skills.
But Miss Sturgeon also gave in to union barons and revealed that results data from the new tests will not be made publicly available, in a desperate attempt to prevent the return of league tables.
Instead, teachers will decide if pupils have reached ‘benchmarks’ in numeracy and literacy, using a mixture of test results, presentations and jotter marks.
That means two children in different schools could receive the same exam result, yet only one may officially reach the expected skill level.
Miss Sturgeon also insisted on using the term ‘assessment’ rather than tests.
But parents will receive individual exam results and the percentage of pupils in each school achieving the benchmarks will be made publicly available – so comparisons will be possible.
Critics last night accused Miss Sturgeon of a return to ‘Thatcherite’ policies as league tables are almost certain to be compiled regardless of the attempt to prevent it, and teachers could come under pressure to inflate marks.
National testing for five to 14-year-olds was scrapped by the Labour-led Scottish Executive nearly 12 years ago, meaning pupils’ ability is not uniformly assessed until S3. Instead, councils have spent £3.6million over the past three years on buying tests from private suppliers.
Yesterday, new data revealed children from Scotland’s most deprived areas are 14 months behind those from affluent communities in terms of development by the time they reach primary school.
Miss Sturgeon has made closing the gap between pupils from rich and poor backgrounds a key aim for her government, and said the tests would provide ‘clear and consistent’ information about how children are performing in class. The tests will be piloted this year before being brought in across Scotland in 2017 and will look at reading, writing and numeracy in P1, P4, P7 and S3 to evaluate pupils’ progress.
‘Nobody can be comfortable living in a country where different levels of wealth create such a significant gap in the attainment levels – and therefore the life chances – of so many children,’ the First Minister said.
‘That’s why the Scottish Government is taking concerted action now. Our overall aim is to raise standards everywhere, but to raise them most quickly in the areas that most need it. We can only drive rapid and significant improvement if we can understand whether what we are doing is working.
‘This is not a high stakes testing – where you pass or you fail and your entire future is determined by that – it’s about diagnostic assessment.’
A ‘dashboard’ of information on every school in the country will be published, which will include data on various issues – including the percentages of children who have achieved a benchmark in literacy and numeracy set by the recentlyintroduced Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).
The new system will not bring back the controversial 11-plus exam, which dictated whether pupils went to a senior secondary which offered a chance to sit Highers and go on to university, or to a junior secondary which often led to life in a trade.
But Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said: ‘The reintroduction of national tests and the inevitable league tables is a throwback to Thatcherism. National testing goes against the very essence of Curriculum for Excellence, which gives the power to teachers to oversee the development of each pupil.
‘Let’s not forget that when national testing was abolished in 2003 the SNP described league tables as “Thatcherite” and “meaningless”. Nothing the First Minister has said will avoid school league tables.’
The EIS teachers’ union had voiced fears about the testing plans, but general secretary Larry Flanagan said yesterday: ‘The EIS is encouraged that the First Minister has confirmed the central role of teacher professional judgment in assessing pupil progress and the continuation of the CfE assessment framework, within which the primary purpose of assessment is to support learning.’
‘The litmus test for these new assessments will be whether teachers see them as useful in terms of supporting children’s learning or as a bureaucratic imposition – if it is the latter, they will be opposed.’
‘Nothing will avoid league tables’