The Scotsman Bulletin Monday October 16 2023
The Scotsman Bulletin Monday, October 16 2023
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello, and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin
00:10 for Monday, the 16th of October.
00:13 My name's Dale Miller, I'm Head of News at the Scotsman.
00:15 I'm joined by our education correspondent, Callum Ross.
00:19 It is a chilly Monday out there.
00:22 We're definitely in autumn period.
00:24 And we're also, we've got S&P conference happening
00:28 and the ongoing conflict in Israel.
00:32 We are gonna talk about the front page of the Scotsman,
00:34 firstly, today.
00:36 And we led on backing for basically Rosebank,
00:41 the oil field and net zero targets.
00:45 So this was part of polling.
00:47 We've been releasing several stories
00:49 through our work with Savantha.
00:51 Over recent days, you will have seen polling stories
00:54 in and around independence leading into the S&P conference.
00:59 But very interesting that actually there is
01:02 significant backing for the Rosebank oil field going ahead
01:06 and significant voter backing in our survey
01:10 for the net zero targets that were outlined
01:12 by Rishi Sunak as well.
01:14 We obviously know that there was a rollback.
01:17 The move to ban certain types of petrol
01:20 and diesel vehicles pushed back five years.
01:24 There's a court action that's gonna take place this week
01:28 in and around the LEZ in Glasgow as well.
01:31 So it is interesting to get a bit of an insight
01:35 into what voters think about aggressive climate targets.
01:39 And if this poll is anything to go by,
01:41 it suggests it's far from black and white
01:44 that there is a good level of support
01:46 for ongoing oil investment.
01:49 Callum, I've got you on though,
01:51 because I wanted to talk about some education news.
01:54 You've been looking at catchment places effectively.
01:59 It's a hot topic for any parent as we know.
02:02 What's the stats going up?
02:05 - Yeah, that's right, Dale.
02:07 I mean, it's quite interesting.
02:08 The starting point for this story for me anyway
02:10 was I'd read somewhere that Edinburgh City
02:14 had by far the most kind of out of class
02:18 catchment placing requests in Scotland,
02:22 which I thought was interesting.
02:25 So I tried to find the figures
02:26 and I couldn't really find anything.
02:28 So I put freedom of information requests
02:30 into all the councils just to see what the situation was
02:35 and what came back was it wasn't actually Edinburgh.
02:39 I mean, it may have been in the past, I'm not sure,
02:41 but not at the moment it seems.
02:44 What came back was that kind of really two or three councils
02:47 stood out.
02:49 South Lanarkshire and Glasgow
02:50 had the highest number of placing requests.
02:55 These are requests to move.
02:57 In Scotland, you have a kind of default catchment
02:59 to go to school and you've got to make a special request
03:02 to move your child to a different catchment.
03:05 I mean, I guess in terms of Glasgow,
03:06 it's maybe not hugely surprising
03:08 that it had the highest number
03:10 'cause it is obviously the biggest council.
03:14 South Lanarkshire was up there too.
03:17 They kind of by far the highest.
03:19 Then the third place,
03:20 this is kind of interesting is East Renfrewshire.
03:24 It's one of the smaller councils in Scotland,
03:28 but it had more requests than Edinburgh even.
03:31 Now, pretty obvious what's going on there.
03:34 East Renfrewshire has some of the top performing schools
03:37 in Scotland.
03:38 I think five secondary schools in the top 11
03:42 according to last most recent kind of exam results,
03:46 league tables.
03:48 So that's obviously a factor
03:50 and that kind of confirmed by a breakdown
03:52 provided by the council,
03:53 which showed that those five schools
03:55 were getting kind of 130 to 200 placing requests each
04:00 in a year, which is a lot.
04:03 Glasgow also provided a breakdown.
04:06 There was a bit of a similar story there
04:09 in schools that were kind of high up in the league tables,
04:12 kind of top 30, Hindland and Hillhead.
04:15 They were up there getting more than 100 requests in a year.
04:20 The most popular in terms of requests was Notre Dame,
04:23 which is another kind of top performance school,
04:26 also a Catholic school.
04:28 But there were also a couple of other Catholic schools
04:30 that wouldn't be anywhere near the kind of top
04:33 of league tables that were getting kind of similar numbers.
04:36 So that's obviously a factor in Glasgow as well.
04:38 That seems a demand for Catholic schools.
04:41 - That, Calum, that religious denomination link
04:45 is particularly interesting.
04:47 Back in my native Australia,
04:48 you have a lot more pupils actually going to schools
04:52 that are identified as Catholic or Anglican or otherwise.
04:57 Do you think it is a wider trend here
04:59 or just some isolated cases?
05:02 - Yeah, I mean, honest answer is I don't know.
05:05 I'm not an expert and I don't know
05:06 what's driving that demand.
05:09 Obviously, there'll be Catholic families
05:11 looking to get their kids into Catholic schools.
05:14 I think often the schools are considered quite good schools.
05:18 And I think also, I mean, in the story,
05:22 you'll see we've got a Glasgow University professor
05:24 quoted and she points out that, you know,
05:26 they're also attractive to families of other faiths
05:30 and no faiths as well, because I think,
05:33 because they've got that kind of ethical dimension
05:37 and are also quite often considered good schools.
05:40 - You can read about that story at scotsman.com,
05:45 follow the education tab,
05:47 you'll be able to read all the very latest from Calum Ross.
05:51 And in terms of our wider coverage,
05:54 we'll have more coming from the SMP conference today.
05:57 We've got Humza Yousaf's keynote speech
05:59 coming up in the next 24 hours,
06:01 but also Nicola Sturgeon is expected to make an appearance
06:05 today to be seen and questioned about how she views
06:10 the party's approach to independence
06:13 and just the state of play
06:15 with the party's voting trajectory as well.
06:19 So please tune into our website.
06:22 You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter,
06:25 and go and buy a copy of the Scotsman Tomorrow
06:27 support local journalism.
06:29 Thanks very much for joining us.
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