The Scotsman Bulletin Monday October 16 2023

The Scotsman

The Scotsman Bulletin Monday, October 16 2023

Transcript

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.

06:30 (upbeat music)

06:33 (upbeat music)

06:36 [MUSIC]

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