To be English and think Nicols Sturgeon would be a better PM

[Lifejacket]

Just that really, I live in England but would quite happily vote for NS to be PM if given the choice over BJ. To me she seems much more trustworthy and has shown better leadership.

I live in Scotland- you are welcome to her anytime you want.

I dont know where you get the idea Scottish schools are better? They really arent; the education system here has been failing for years

The Scottish education system used to be better but has been declining for years.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-government-failing-pupils-number-achieving-least-one-exam-pass-drops-1891151%3famp

I have issues with the current exams but I don't think people praising the system just mean exams - there are benefits around how you get into a school in particular, and the absence of SATs as well that make the system better in my view.
Also pupils not achieving a pass - that's not just down to the schools, years of austerity have had a massive toll on rates of poverty and services within schools have been slashed.

I have issues with the current exams but I don't think people praising the system just mean exams - there are benefits around how you get into a school in particular, and the absence of SATs as well that make the system better in my view.
Also pupils not achieving a pass - that's not just down to the schools, years of austerity have had a massive toll on rates of poverty and services within schools have been slashed.

I agree. I work in schools in Scotland and I'm not a great fan of the current system but the SG know that and are under pressure to tweak it.

Smart and motivated pupils can, and do, extremely well in Scottish schools. My DC and their friends went to a middling secondary and most are at Uni doing what they wanted to do. Unfortunately, the years of austerity have created a generation who don't value education as much as we previously did and it can be difficult to motivate their children and increase their ambition.

There is lots to do and the SG will have to keep improving or people will go elsewhere, but our education system is still sound at its base and we have plenty of strengths.

I would have been horrified if I had educated my children in England - some of the rules are Draconian, pointless and demeaning. What on earth does the colour of hair or a stripe on a show have to do with education? I took my children out of primary for a week every year for an early summer holiday - we travelled and visited lots of nice places and they learned lots more than they would have done in school during that week. We knew from nursery which schools they would be attending and they didn't have to stress about any testing.

Now my DC are both at good Universities and have no fee debt. That's a huge benefit which I am very grateful to the Scottish Government for.

All the SNP seem to spout is “we will do that, we will do that”, compare that to what they actually HAVE done and you will be quite surprised!

Unfortunately, the years of austerity have created a generation who don't value education as much as we previously did and it can be difficult to motivate their children and increase their ambition.

In fairness it’s very hard to value education when you don’t have enough to meet your basic needs for food, housing and warm clothes. Austerity has utterly compromised the life chances of children and young people, unable to access or cognitively process the curriculum if they do get to school. Austerity will scupper life chances way more than any gap in education caused by our current circumstances.

The Scottish government do at least rage steps to try and bridge the gap. The school system is by no means perfect but it does recognise the humanity of the children in the system.

As a Scottish person living in England I’m glad to be away from her. She’s a nasty single minded zealot can’t stand her

I live in Scotland, and Sturgeon and the SNP are a bloody disaster.
Education has fallen right down the international league tables, and is well behind England.
The much vaunted free university education is pure hype. It is funded by a) capping the number of Scots students who are given government money, so not all of them can go,
b) the universities limiting places for Scots, in favour of foreign students who pay higher fees
and c) cutting 140,000 college places for poorer students on vocational courses, to balance the books.

Police Scotland has been a laughing stock since its inception- it was created to satisfy the SNP’s power grab and desire for central control.
They have wasted money painting bloody Gaelic wording on police cars, in areas of Scotland where nobody speaks it.
The devolved NHS in Scotland is failing - my own local health Trust was £12 million in debt. We can’t fill the hundreds of consultant vacancies across Scotland because the SNP tax them higher than their colleagues in England, so none of them want to work here.
The only game in town is the push for yet another damn independence referendum- good luck with that, when the oil price has crashed to $22 a barrel, tourism has flatlined due to the pandemic, and the whole Scots economy is only being kept afloat by the massive UK bailout.

If you want Sturgeon, OP, take her and welcome - we don’t want her back! She’s done nothing even for her own deprived constituency of Govanhill, while enjoying a salary higher than Boris’s.

Smart and well motivated children will do well in any education system. @Chocolatedeficitdisorder I'm glad my dcs attend schools that require them to dress smartly. I went to a 'nice' school in one of the leafy suburbs of Glasgow. When I visited my dps during term time a couple of years ago, I was horrified by how the pupils from my old school were dressed. The majority of girls were caked in makeup. That's not ok. Children need to understand they need to dress appropriately. I can't go to work wearing trainers.

Three cheers for babdoc

It’s what many many scots think. The ones that like her are a bloody cult

@MissEliza

Do you think these pupils should be forced to miss out on their education because they choose to wear make-up or trainers? Is that battle worth the sacrifice? They're not adults in the work-place, they're children who are at school.

Most schools on earth do not enforce uniforms, including many of those who have better results than Scotland and England.

capping the number of Scots students who are given government money, so not all of them can go

All universities have minimum grades to reach, even with some wiggle room. If a Scottish student reaches these grades, they have every chance of going to their chosen Uni. I haven't known of any Scottish student with a clutch of at least 4xC grade Highers not getting a Uni place. It might not be where they want to go, but it's still a free higher education.

I was horrified by how the pupils from my old school were dressed. The majority of girls were caked in makeup. That's not ok. Children need to understand they need to dress appropriately. I can't go to work wearing trainers.

Or you could recognise that developmentally teenagers are at a stage of finding and asserting their identity and experimentation with appearance is part of that psychological and physiological process, that within reason they can explore in the context of a safe educational setting without fear of being labelled or exploited. You could know that as part of their development process they’ll grow out of the need for 2 inches of make up and trainers through the usual maturation process that moves them towards adulthood.

Or you could treat a 13 year old like the mini-adult workbot society needs to fuel the economy.

I live in Scotland and really like Nicola. She’s straight forward and honest and her agenda is far from single issue. She’s very popular (for a leader) according to polls and this popularity has risen during the current crisis.

I can’t get worked up about teenagers and makeup/ uniform etc. Many people, even with professional jobs, can wear trainers to work so let the teenagers wear what they like .

Or you could treat a 13 year old like the mini-adult workbot society needs to fuel the economy.

I can never get on board with the shirt/tie aspect of school uniform. It's not ever going to be the work style for most people, especially girls. It has no function other than to be uncomfortable and to subjugate those who are forced to wear it. I would have preferred to sit in a class in comfortable clothes and choose to wear very different clothing now, even to work.

I secretly enjoy seeing pupils rebel against uniform, despite it being against the party line in my school.

To be honest looking at Johnson it might even be tempting. I would have to think hard about that one. Anyone else perhaps.

@Grilledaubergines

And I'm still waiting for examples of this "Anti-English"ness that she can't be "arsed to hide".

Waiting....

I like NS. I’m Scottish and live in Scotland. I used to work for one of the companies that put items into the baby boxes and it’s cheaper to produce one per child than it would be to administer means testing. And universal provision has been proven to remove the stigma of being given ‘charity’ items and a more positive view of the items leads to people who need to use them being more likely to do so and to take advantage of the useful messaging they contain around signposting to other services for children. I don’t think anyone who argues that they’re a bad thing knows what they’re talking about.

On another point, I just don’t recognise the idea that Scotland is a horrible place to be in the wake of Indyref. I voted Yes but some friends and family voted No and we’ve never fallen out over it or felt irreparably torn apart. However, if someone told me I was a bigoted nationalist who hated the English (half my family is English) and refused to listen to any of my views I probably wouldn’t speak to them either, so perhaps you should look at why you’re experiencing such divisiveness!

On another point, I just don’t recognise the idea that Scotland is a horrible place to be in the wake of Indyref. I voted Yes but some friends and family voted No and we’ve never fallen out over it or felt irreparably torn apart.

Me neither. Though the day after the Brexit result my mum said she wished she had voted YES as I had done. (And will next time.)

To clarify - That was a wish that she had voted YES in the Indyref. Not to Brexit.

The bitter Nationalism that she fuels would be called out in any other situation. She wants to break up the most successful economic and cultural union in history based on historic anti English sentiment, but stay in a union that has no historic, cultural or language ties and who's institutions are more distant to Scotland than Westminster. Both votes on her key policies went against her but she has not accepted them, and sees no wrong in this. Despite movement of wealth to Scotland from the rest of the Union that has resulted in significant more per capital expenditure of public money under her watch than in England and Wales, the inequalities in economic activity, education and health are some of the highest in Europe. She is probably still better than BJ, though.

She's awful. And has an awful track record.

She wants to break up the most successful economic and cultural union in history

That's a bold claim. The UK in its current form has been in existence for less than a century. The USA has grown in that time. The English Empire dwindled. Empires fall.