Swimming against the stream

From the Scotsman: The gentleman that penned this article, as well as being a some-time education journalist, is a fellow Modern Studies teacher. He was at St. Paul's in Glasgow where the head teacher pioneered the streaming of classes from first year. He writes:

"Last June, numerous articles appeared in the national press claiming the streaming experiment to be a great success in raising SQA attainment, an odd claim given the national examination results of the first classes to have experienced streaming wouldn't be known until August."

He goes on to say that he wrote to the press in his capacity as an EiS representative "pointing out that assertions that streaming was the panacea for poorly performing schools were premature. Unsurprisingly, the messenger was shot."

Indeed - but if the full story I heard about this is correct, Hugh's missed out the best bit : the head teacher of the aforementioned school went on to a radio talk show to hail the success of the streaming policy. One caller phoned up to say that he taught at the same school as the talk show guest and that his claims were bollocks for the reasons outlined above. Guess who that was? Everyone found it very amusing - except, of course, Rod O'Donnell, the head teacher of St. Paul's.

Hugh applied for a voluntary transfer. It won't surprise you to learn that the directorate agreed.