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The ONLY weekly voice for secondary education Scottish edition • August 27 2009 Price £1.00
www.sec-ed.com
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How would you cope without your PA? Sharon Dow (right), headteacher’s PA at Merchiston School in Edinburgh, flew the flag for Scotland at last year’s SecEd
PA of the Year ceremony by taking home the Silver Award. Time is running out to nominate your school’s PA for this year’s prize. To find out how, turn to page 3
Professor re-ignites row
Festive season
over history curriculum
The Scottish Learning Festival
gets underway next month. A spokesman for Ms Hyslop The working party was also prism of the Highland Clearances, year, which will contain a compul-
Check out our guide to this
by Sam Phipps
said: “Perhaps Prof Devine would intended to examine whether his- which has tended to create a “vic- sory Scottish element.
year’s highlights
know the progress that has been tory should be compulsory, but Prof tim” mythology. He says the 19th Professor Samuel Kline Cohn
Page 10
The Scottish government has hit made if he had attended some meet- Devine suggested it had failed to century tragedy was only one Jr, of Glasgow University’s his-
back at a leading historian who says ings. make much progress. part of an emigration process that tory department, agreed that the
it is being too slow in reforming “The Scottish government is He said: “What is happening is started five centuries earlier and history curriculum needed to be
how history is taught in secondary placing a strong focus on history that the current government wishes continued into the 20th century, improved at secondary level, but
schools. throughout the school curriculum, to see changes in this area and has with Scots making key contribu- warned against too tight a focus on
Professor Tom Devine, a mem- as reflected in the Curriculum for set up a committee of which I am tions across the world. Scotland.
ber of the working group formed Excellence guidance launched in a member. “But it was not always a pretty “My sense is that history teach-
by the government to examine the April. “But it reminds me of what story. Scots pioneers in the ing should be more international.
history curriculum, said it was “a “This autumn, Learning and Harold Wilson said about royal Australian state of Victoria were In the 15 years that I have taught at
50-year-old scandal” and education Teaching Scotland will launch an commissions – ‘organisations which often land-grabbers and squatters the university there has been a nar-
secretary, Fiona Hyslop, “needs to innovative new online Scottish his- spend years taking minutes’.” who were notorious for their ruth- rowing, both chronologically and
get on with it”, according to a report tory resource for teachers, which has Prof Devine, director of the lessness, and they, like the English, geographically, in the knowledge
in The Scotsman. been demonstrated to the History in Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies Welsh and Irish, played a full part in that undergraduates bring when
But his remarks, made last week Curriculum for Excellence expert at the University of Edinburgh, and the harsh treatment of the Aboriginal they start here,” he said.
after he gave a lecture at Holyrood’s group, and was very positively head of its history department, peoples,” he has written. “In this year of Darwin (2009
Inspiring teachers
Festival of Politics, brought a strong received. has long criticised pupils’ lack of “It was ironic that some of those is the bicentenary of his birth), we
rebuke from the government, which “Prof Devine is a member of knowledge about Scotland’s past, most notoriously involved were should be more appreciative of the
We talk to some of this year’s
questioned Prof Devine’s own com- this group, and although he has not particularly its role in the empire Gaels who themselves had suffered long-term impacts of the distant past
mitment to reforming the subject yet attended any meetings, he is and colonialism, describing the clearance and destitution in the old on the present. Many students come
Scottish Education Award
and said he had not attended a sin- being invited to a preview briefing ignorance as “Scotland’s shameful country.” here not knowing anything before
winners
gle meeting of the working group in the coming weeks to see the cur- secret”. The Scottish Qualifications Hitler, so it’s difficult for them to
P14645 ATL Books Press ad 50x277 21/8/09 10:38 Page 1age 7 since it was established in January riculum material being rolled out to Scottish emigration, he argues, Authority is planning to launch the even conceive of, say, medieval
2008. schools.” is too often viewed through the revised Higher history later this history or the Renaissance.”
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Scottish Learning Festival
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