I’m coming down to reality after another glorious summer.
But I’m still dreaming of our family holiday on Speyside, kayaking on the lochs and walking in the hills with a mild wind keeping the midges at bay. It was Scotland’s sixth hottest summer since records began in 1884 but it was pleasantly cool by English and European standards.
Though, we did have one major forest fire, at Nethy Bridge, not far from where we were staying.
I couldn’t resist another venture into the countryside last weekend, to see summer turning into autumn in the Moorfoot Hills. The fields had long been harvested and showers of rain were being driven across the dark green landscape by strong winds. Cows and sheep were sheltering under hedgerows and a flock of crows followed my bicycle showing off their mastery of the air.
All this was a welcome escape from the news of the week which has centred around our creaking education system and our over-crowded prisons.
The latest international comparison has shown Scottish school education in decline and trailing behind England. The PISA study sampled 15-year-old pupils’ attainment in reading, maths, science and problem-solving in 91 countries. It showed that standards were slipping across the board, largely due to the year’s interruption caused by Covid. But the Scottish results showed a sharp decline in reading and maths, down to 28th in the world, while England held steady in tenth place.
The report also showed that the “attainment gap” between pupils from wealthy backgrounds and those from deprived backgrounds was narrowing but only because the best performing pupils were scoring less well. And not surprisingly, the study also found that 64 per cent of pupils were in schools suffering from a shortage of staff and 19 per cent reported bullying.
All this has been rather embarrassing for the education secretary Màiri McAllan who, only a few weeks ago was boasting of a 76.7 per cent pass rate in the Scottish Higher Exams. The opposition parties have blamed the SNP’s “Curriculum for Excellence” for the decline in English and maths, and said there has to be more emphasis on “knowledge” learning, rather than skills and creativity. McAllan has already moved on this front and is redrafting the curriculum to reinforce the place of knowledge in the broad agenda of Scottish education.
The other main talking point this week has been prison over-crowding. As is happening in England, The Scottish Government is releasing some prisoners early, to bring the prison population down by about 850 to the official capacity of our prisons 7,800. Scotland has one of the highest imprisonment rates in Europe and you can see why. At least 25 per cent of prisoners are on remand awaiting trial, 30 per cent are on short sentences of less than a year and the average length of sentence for serious crimes (excluding murder) has increased by 37 per cent in the last 10 years.
All of the above can be blamed on the judges. They should be handling cases quicker, they should be making more use of alternatives to prison and they should not be imposing such long sentences. It’s true that crime has increased by seven per cent in the last year but a lot of that is due to better reporting of historic sexual and domestic abuse cases.
I also think the justice system is now weighted too heavily towards victims. No sentence will ever compensate for the pain of a crime. The judge is there to safeguard society as a whole, not to give in to a victim’s desire for vengeance. It’s the judges’ duty to give first priority to preventing re-offending and I don’t think the figures given above show they are doing that.
I suppose the judges will say they just don’t have the resources for quicker trials or alternatives to prison. And that’s true, just as it’s true for the shortcomings of our education system. The solution, in a nutshell, is a combination of tax rises on the wealthier half of the population, spending less on the NHS and targeting welfare.
There, at least I’ve made a contribution to finding a solution to our sea of troubles. I can now get back to cycling with those free-thinking crows.
