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James McEnaney Profile picture
James McEnaney
@MrMcEnaney
Journalist, author & former teacher | Buy some books: https://t.co/1In5J8vez8 | He/him | Very much my views
Feb 4, 2024 • 18 tweets • 8 min read
This weekend, @heraldscotland's Big Read looked at my attempts to investigate the SNP's latest big education policy - a Centre for Teaching Excellence. You can read it here:

In this thread, I want to actually show you the FOI trail I followed.heraldscotland.com/news/24075712.… To put this in context, the Centre for Teaching Excellence was announced at SNP conference but is, apparently, a Scottish Govt policy.

We heard it would be all about collaboration - then found out they hadn't bothered to ask anyone if they wanted it.

heraldscotland.com/news/23869813.…
Dec 31, 2023 • 15 tweets • 7 min read
🧵
2023 was the year I left teaching and joined @heraldscotland as education writer, and today I'm looking back over my top ten articles (in no particular order) since taking on the role.

heraldscotland.com/news/24004682.… First up is this piece from my visit to Westray during my week in Orkney. I visited the island's junior high school, went a walk to the shops with the nursery class, and even got to stroll about the beach in the sunshine. A 10/10 day!

heraldscotland.com/news/23825060.…
Image
Jul 30, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Ah yes - because communities across the highlands and islands are, in fact, just 'top tourist spots'? A someone who used to live in one of Scotland's top tourist spots I can confirm that being viewed as little more than a top tourist spot by central belt politicians is rather grating.
Dec 26, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The problem here, I'm afraid, is simple - @devisridhar (rightly) criticises 'idealised' views of remote learning, but then hinges her entire position on a wildly idealised view of Covid protections in schools (including the mention of HEPA air filters). If there are schools in Scotland with HEPA filters I'd love to hear from them, but the numbers must be pretty tiny. And given we don't even automatically count classmates as contacts for Covid cases the second paragraph here is also wishful thinking unfortunately.
Dec 23, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Today I have learned that pupils from the richest 20% of Scotland make up 29.3% of Higher candidates and 38.8% of Advanced Higher candidates.

Just 13.4% of Higher students and 8.4% of Advanced Higher students come from the poorest 20% of Scotland. These are the full stats: ImageImage
Aug 20, 2021 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
A couple of days ago the Times published what it described as primary 7 league tables for Scotland. This has been rightly condemned already, mostly on principle. But it's worse. This is bad data being misused for bad journalism. Here’s a thread on why. First of all, this data isn’t new. It is in fact 2 years old. The Times also got it via FOI (even though they didn’t need an FOI, so fair play to ScotGov for answering it). However, the actual FOI isn’t included in the story, so here it is: gov.scot/publications/f…
Aug 17, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Maybe...just maybe...there's a reason that even in Scotland nobody has ever tried to do something this stupid? Image The data has been available for ages. Anyone with nothing better to do could have pulled it together into a league table. And yet it hasn't happened?

I wonder why that might be...
Apr 20, 2021 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
A few things to show you all that come straight from the SQA regarding this year's results.

First this: "demonstrated attainment" only. Wasn't the case last year, and what about pupils who have been ill or otherwise affected by the GLOBAL PANDEMIC? Exams have been cancelled, but *wink wink* here's an exam you can use in its entirety
Apr 20, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Just got material out from @EISUnion - as a member rather than a journo - about the system for awarding grades this year and I'm not sure what I'm paying subs for to be honest. Shockingly poor and feels like a total failure to defend members. Example. Govt docs say that this payment will be less than min wage for some staff & by accepting it they're agreeing to the extra work. But @EISUnion won't say if they'll back members who want to decline the payment and the extra work.
Apr 20, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Seriously @NicolaSturgeon and @JohnSwinney are you actually ok with this? How can a pupil in this situation possibly be treated fairly? And before anyone tries: no this is not the fault of schools. The SNP and SQA have put Scotland's educators in an impossible position because ONCE AGAIN they're more concerned with protecting the system (and their jobs) than young people.
Apr 5, 2021 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
A quick thread on my exclusive story revealing that the poorest pupils are Scotland are more likely to fail Highers than they are to get an A.

You can read the full story in @thetimesscot here: thetimes.co.uk/article/poorer… First of all, where did this data come from?

The answer is simple: the Scottish Government.

I just submitted an FOI and got it back a few weeks later, which means that the government could (and critics say SHOULD) have been publishing this all along.
Apr 3, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Unsurprisingly, the system is once again moving to protect itself at the expense of young people. @NicolaSturgeon should be absolutely ashamed of her response to what pupils are facing after Easter.

scotsman.com/news/politics/… I just wish it were a surprise to her see effectively blaming teachers for the failures of her own government and the SQA. But is isn't really, is it? It's actually exactly what we should all have been expecting.
Jan 9, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Think, for a moment, about the sheer scale of the financial and logistical resources needed to make schooling work in normal times.

Now tell me why you think poorly resourced, emergency online learning could or should replicate normal education. If we had started the year using the blended model things would look massively better - but we didn't, because politics was deemed more important than proper planning.

And now here we are.
Jan 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I won't identify the school or council but this is really quite concerning. It isn't clear if those 90min blocks are video classes the whole time (that would be disastrous) but look at the demands of log in on time and in a quiet area. Literally impossible for LOTS of families. And the wording. How does it help anyone right now to make parents feel that schools will be checking up on and condemning them if they can't manage to participate in this sort of thing? Did nobody stop and think before sending this out to parents?
Dec 4, 2020 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Yesterday I asked how teachers were feeling after John Swinney announced no changes to term dates over Christmas.

This thread gives a very small selection of the overall responses.
Nov 15, 2020 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
I've been saying for months and months, as both a teacher and a journalist, that it is obvious that 2021 exams in Scotland need to be cancelled. Here's why... The reason is simple: there is no conceivable way for exams to be fair.

Even leaving aside the huge problems with them, they operate on the assumption that everyone gets the same amount of teaching and sits the same exam under the same circumstances, making grades valid.

But...
Nov 13, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Remember when the SQA issued that long-awaited advice on Nat 5 English and Maths. They've already had to issue a new version. The following tweets show the old and new versions of each page side by side

Page 1 ImageImage Page 2 ImageImage
Sep 20, 2020 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
If reports are true, and John Swinney is planning to cancel Nat 5 exams but just mess about with the Highers, then we may well have managed the remarkable achievement of making things worse than I ever expected. Obviously you can ignore the fringe zoomer groups like UsForThem whining about the fact that any changes at all might be made - they're only a few steps away from warning about fluoride in the WiFi anyway.
Aug 9, 2020 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
Much of this might not be unnecessary as John Swinney has announced there will be some sort of u-turn on Tuesday, but in the absence of any detail I think it’s useful for us to be clear about why the appeals system that the govt has pushed is actually completely unacceptable. Also, until we have that detail, we need to assume that parts of this system could be retained in their latest solution - as I'm going to show, that would be a disaster.
Jul 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Getting some info now and it looks BAD. More than 75% of Higher social studies students in one centre have had their grades lowered, with several being given a fail despite teachers saying they should pass. Uni places now at risk too. Other issue: we had expected grades to be moved a little bit, but I'm hearing about estimated B grades being moved down to fail grades.
Apr 3, 2020 • 44 tweets • 8 min read
The SQA has now announced some details of how N5, Higher and Advanced Higher qualifications will be awarded this year when there will be no exams or marked coursework. It was clear pretty much instantly that lots of people were deeply concerned about what had been announced. I asked if people could get in touch and let me know what they thought. And they did.

But first of all, let's try to translate the key parts of the SQA statement into normal language, since I've seen plenty of complaints about that too.