Thoughts on the SNP’s proposed P1 school bag scheme

[FunnyOrca]

What do you think about the SNP’s P1 bag idea?

I think the prototypes look ugly! My nephew down south got a school branded one from his local primary. It’s satchel style and looks smart. It’s not huge, fits his homework jotter, reading folder and water bottle.

I also think it’s pretty pointless! I’d rather have funded childcare from 9 months or strategies for teacher retention! 😭

They've made free school meals available now up to P7.

They're not currently universally free up to P7 in our area (D&G).

Are they in other areas and our council has just not introduced them yet? I appreciate additional kitchen space etc is required for the full roll out.

It’s not an issue for us personally as a family, but it is interesting that the take up of school dinners is very high in the younger classes and then in my DS p7 class I am told that majority of the kids have packed lunches, making it more obvious which kids get the “free” meals.

Our area has free nursery provision for over 3s and I didn’t realise until recently this wasn’t across the whole of Scotland. I think that should also be addressed before providing a gimicky bag to all pupils!

I bet whoever is providing the bags will be rubbing their hands in glee and trebling the price.
I don’t have much faith in SNP procurement or business acumen.

Perhaps, they’ll get John Swinney’s travel agent to do the deal or the guy running the Scottish Investment Bank.

Free nursery hours for three year olds are available in the whole of Scotland and have been for years.

https://www.mygov.scot/childcare-costs-help/funded-early-learning-and-childcare

I think it’s a silly gimmick but I’m not surprised, that’s the SNP all over.
I was not aware that p1 is now play based learning. I have a friend who moved her child from Scotland to England, they had just completed P1 and was saying how far behind her DD was. I’ll admit i thought she was just saying this to prove her point about the English system being better than up here but it looks like she could well have had a point, which is really sad

Long term you do not lift children out of poverty by just increasing benefits and taxing business more to pay for them. You need to grow the economy. Over the last ten years Scottish economic output grew by round 8 to 10% compared to 14 to 15% for the uk as a whole.

For everyone as opposed to just those on
low incomes who were already receiving FSM

With the baby box, so many people do this and try to hand it to charity, thinking they are being so kind and generous, without considering everyone already got one!

I understand there is an issue for people with no-fixed address and a few charities work to help these women but people just handing them into cancer research are contributing to landfill.

Exactly!

Just another vote-grabbing gimmick.

Why don't the SNP give the cost of this to each school so that teachers don't have to buy supplies out of their own pockets, as happens every year.

Agree with PPs that this will be a complete nightmare for P1 teachers - why does nobody in the government even run any of their ideas past teachers who'd have to deal with it.

I'm a teacher in England (though Scottish) and it would infuriate me if children turned up with free bags and pencil cases given how diabolical schools' funding is. No children don't need bags and pencil cases to learn - as has been pointed out many times already on this thread, schools provide stationery. I am absolutely not wasting valuable learning time dealing with pencil case squabbles, and I teach older children than P1s. Kids in my class turn up without bags and that's absolutely fine - they're really not important. Turning up is important. Having a qualified teacher is important. Having a rigorous curriculum (which seems to be debatable in Scotland at the moment) is important.

Highland Council alone spent six million on Chromebooks in 2022-2023 after spending six million previously in 2017. So 12 million pounds on Chromebooks in the space of five years.

they should do away with free bags and baby boxes and use the money for more teachers / better asn provision.
I'm so sick of people blindly voting snp. We badly need common sense leaders.

You don't have a very good opinion on your country men do you.

All thick.

Our.primary school 20+ years ago required all bags to be the same. They were mostly used for carrying their reading book and reading record, plus letters home. They were kept in a box at school and made life much easier for the TAs as they were all the same size/shape with a clear label in the same place on every bag. Only difference was we had to pay for ours!

I am sure she has better opinions of the large majority of countrymen who didn’t vote SNP

Only 30% of the country vote SNP. Do they vote SNP cause the SNP are doing such a good job, or are they idealistic, romantic, gullible fools that think Indy Scotland would be a good thing. What do we think?

Oh I am absolutely not being deliberately stupid . I just cannot fathom why parents would instill this tribalistic colour shite. And it is shite. !!!!!!

Whose "we"?

38.2% at the elections this year. No majority.

Labour in UK elections. 33.7%. 172 seat majority. 😉

SNP have a bigger mandate than Labour.

If it was a UK election the other parties would have single figure seats.

I've just checked and it seems this is specific to our area (Glasgow).

38% was for constituency seats. 27% for regional seats.

I blame the people who designed the Scottish system in which the only secondary scrutiny of legislation is by committees and they can be chaired and vice chaired by the ruling party, and scrutiny of ministers’ behaviour has to be approved by the FM who is the same party, and the appointment to the head of the prosecution service is at the gift of the same party on whose cabinet they sit, and there is no right to recall MSPs, and now we can have someone with no right to stay in the uk get appointed as MSP following a regional vote that includes students who are only here for a month…. The whole system is corrupt.

On and we have a presiding officer appointed by the ruling party who is unsurprisingly just as biased as the last one.

I agree with it being a disaster in Westminster with Labour getting such a huge majority after being voted for by only 20% of the electorate but two wrongs don’t make a right.

Still a bigger mandate than Labour in the UK. If it wasn’t for our voting system Tories would have zero seats.

33.7%. D’HONT is fairer than FPTP.