New teaching leader warns about ‘dodgy’ exam repeats

DAVID LEASK

Authority (SQA), Scotland’s exam quango, confirm a drop in entries at the National 3 level. There were 18,596 entries for the qualifications in 2016, compared with 33,402 for Access 3 in 2013, the last full year under the old system.

The SQA disputed Mr Campbell’s claims of pressure. A spokesman said the body relies “on the professionalism of teachers, as schools and colleges undertake their own internal verification processes”.

It said officials offered support to teachers on how to check they were correctly assessing young people.

Mr Campbell, 42, from Easterhouse in Glasgow, was a late entry into his profession after being excluded from his Glasgow school for truancy and leaving with no qualifications at all. The son of a postman and Co-op worker, he then did a succession of unskilled jobs.

When he did get a job as a teacher – at age 27 following an HNC, a degree from Glasgow Caledonian and an English teaching course – he was told to tone down his working class accent. He declined, saying it helps him connect with deprived young people.

He said: “Working-class kids are always going to identify more and, therefore, listen to a teacher who obviously comes from the same place in society as they do.”

Now Mr Campbell says his job is not just to turn out young people with test marks but “decent human beings”.

The biology teacher at Levenmouth Academy in Fife – a new-build – claimed his school suffered from “zilch” resources and a lack of teachers. He told TESS: “In science we have no money for equipment, so we are in state-of-the-art labs but we are using physics and chemistry equipment from the 1980s and 1970s.”

Levenmouth, in a deprived area, only opened in August, but Mr Campbell is determined to use his new post to raise concerns about school resources at a national level. THE social entrepreneur behind the visits to Scotland of A-List actors George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio has received an honorary doctorate.

Josh Littlejohn, 30, is the co-founder of sandwich chain Social Bite. He had the honour conferred on him by Edinburgh Napier