‘WE the people who live here”, as stated by Andrew Tickell in the Sunday National of May 9 (“Adding 2021 to the numbers which shape our political memories”) is a powerful – although I would suggest not fully accurate – summary of the extension of the voting franchise in Scotland.
The one group not mentioned by Andrew is the one where the franchise has been extended only slightly: prisoners. With effect from April 1, 2020, the Scottish Parliament extended voting in local council and Scottish parliamentary elections to those imprisoned for 12 months or less, with those serving longer sentences remaining unable to vote.
Prisoners are expected to reintegrate into society upon release from prison. Where, though, is the incentive for prisoners to remain informed about and engaged in anything that happens outside of prison if they are refused the very means everyone else has to effect change: to vote in elections?
If Scotland does indeed aspire to the notion of inclusivity, as mentioned by Andrew, the Scottish Parliament should reconsider this matter and grant the right to vote to all adults, including all prisoners.
David Logan
Milngavie
GEORGE Kerevan in The National (“Critics of Nicola Sturgeon must now eat their words – she’s a political titan”, May 10) states that “history will criticise Nicola Sturgeon for sending the elderly from hospital to care homes”. This puzzles me.
I thought such decisions were made by health professionals and not politicians. Just before Covid, we had an elderly relative in hospital with a broken pelvis. When she was ready to be discharged, the options were gone into thoroughly and happily she ended up at home and is still to the fore.
However, my feeling even then was she would be better off out of hospital, an opinion that was shared in informal discussions with nurses.
If things had ended up differently I would not have blamed the Government, except that care homes should have been nationalised and professionalised long ago. Some of these homes are exploiters of their staff who are poorly paid and have residents who are very highly charged as far as I understand.
Iain WD Forde
Scotlandwell
SUNDAY’S National carried a Ferret discussion of the exams that school pupils are currently being tasked with – an article largely voiced by the pupils, with a few sound bites from opposition politicians and the Commissioner for Children and Young People .
An investigative and interrogative interview with the responsible voice at SQA, the teaching unions and with Mr Swinney would be a good follow up and a chance to open up the dialogue about how best to award qualifications.
School children struggled through the first half of the year, working as best they could towards exams that no-one believed would take place. Consequently, teachers and pupils put in hard work in amassing “assessment evidence” that could be used for whatever uncertain future requirements would demand.Many people embraced the idea that this was an opportunity to change the way in which school pupils are assessed and awarded with qualifications; a possible bright future lay ahead.
In December, Mr Swinney announced that exams were off the menu – a step in the right direction, thought many! Pupils and teachers continued to collect “evidence” for assessment use.
In March, the SQA said that, of course, all assessments would require to be evidence based, but only their style of evidence would do – these would not be exams, but “assessments”, set by the teachers, marked by the teachers, and mulled over by the SQA.
And so what do we have? Exams. By style, by nature, by content and by impact, we once more have exams for assessment of school children's qualifications.
Quite apart from the loss of vital teaching time that this unexpected examination season brings, we have the damaging impact of examination interrogation and judgement of our county’s children who have worked mightily in the face of extraordinary problems, and who have adapted, along with their teachers, to a new style of teaching and learning.
The SQA have failed any attempt to open up or re-examine the whole issue and seem hell-bent on reploughing their furrow that insists that “the old ways are best”.
If this pandemic is life-changing, then a response from those charged with our children’s qualifications awards that changes nothing is a nonsense.
Donald McGregor
Edinburgh
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