Section:GDN 1N PaGe:13 Edition Date:190807 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/8/2019 19:39 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Wednesday 7 August 2019 The Guardian •
National^13
The British
teenager is
surrounded by
photographers
as she arrives in
court in Cyprus
PHOTOGRAPH:
IAKOVOS
HATZISTAVROU/GETTYScottish ministers under fi re
as exam pass rates fall again
Severin Carrell
Scotland editor
Scottish ministers have been accused
of failing to invest enough in edu cation
after pass rates in nearly all school
qualifi cations fell for the fourth year
in a row.
The Scottish Qualifi cations Author-
ity said A-C passes in Higher grades,
roughly equivalent to an A -level, fell
to below 75%, after four consecu-
tive years of decline, while Advanced
Higher grades also fell to their lowest
pass rate since 2015.
The fi gures showed a slight increase
of 0.7% in passes year on year for
National 5s, the equivalent of an
O -level in England and Wales, but in
National 4s, an award for students
not academically suited to National
5s, they fell by 1.1%.
John Swinney, the Scottish edu-
cation secretary and deputy first
minister, said fl uctuations in results
were acceptable. “These are a strong
set of results which show a degree of
year -on -year variation expected in a
high -performing education system
with credible assessment,” he said.“If the pass rate only ever went up
people would rightly question the
robustness of our assessment system.”
That was angrily dismissed by
Scottish Labour and the Scottish Con-
servatives, who said there was now an
established trend of declining results
in schools, owing entirely to cuts in
teacher numbers, budgets and sub-
ject choice.
“Swinney is trying to pretend this
is just a statistical blip,” said Iain Gray,
Labour’s education spokesman. “It
isn’t. It’s a trend. He is really clutch-
ing at straws this year. ”
Compared with 2013, the year
before substantial changes in teaching
and exams came into force under cur-
riculum for excellence (CfE) reforms,
the number of entries for exams and
awards have fallen by nearly 17%.
Since 2015, when CfE was fully
in place, total entries for all awards,
including skills for work courses, fell
from 670,568 to 636,085 this year.3,
The number of core teachers lost
since 2007, when the Scottish
National party came to powerUnion calls for
inquiry after
‘toxic fume’
plane incident
Aamna MohdinAviation unions have praised British
Airway pilots and crew for landing
an airliner safely and evacuating its
passengers after it fi lled with smoke.
One union called for an inquiry
into the incident, in which nearly 200
people were evacuated from a BA fl ight
after smoke fi lled the cabin minutes
before it was due to land in Valencia on
Monday. Three people were taken to
hospital but all were later discharged.
One passenger, Gail Fitzpatrick,
said: “It was very scary. The fl ight was
just ending, and with 10 minutes to go,
it started descending rapidly as smoke
started to fi ll the cabin.
“There were no communications
from the crew, who started to wear
full oxygen masks and protective fi re
wear. Eventually they managed to
open the emergency doors and told
us to go down the chutes. There were
fi re engines waiting .”Unite, the UK and Ireland’s largest
union, has now called for an inquiry
into toxic cabin air and fume events.
Calling the event the tip of an ice-
berg, Unite urged airlines to “come
clean” over toxic cabin air and “clean
up” their act by fi tting cabin-air fi lters
and using safer oil to lubricate engines.
Howard Beckett of Unite said: “This
latest fume event is deeply alarming.
B A has some serious questions to
answer regarding safety ... in addition
to providing health and safety guar-
antees for our cabin crew members.”
Unite said it was supporting 51 high
court actions against fi ve UK airlines
after the union said it found evidence
that the air in most commercial airline
cabins can cause irreversible neuro-
logical damage and chronic illness
among susceptible individuals.
Beckett added: “Far too often fume
events like these go unreported ...
this latest event only came to light
because members of the media were
on board. The industry cannot con-
tinue to hide from the issue of toxic
cabin air while placing the health and
safety of aircrew at risk.”
Brian Strutton , of the British Air-
line Pilots’ Association, praised the
crew for the “ highly professional job
of getting this aircraft safely on to the
ground in very diffi cult circumstances
... this looks to have been a very well-
managed emergency situation and
overall a good outcome and I pay trib-
ute to the pilots and crew .”Malaysian police
expand search
for missing girl
Hannah Ellis-PetersenPolice in Malaysia have deployed a hel-
icopter and sniff er dogs in an expanded
search for a 15-year-old British girl who
disappeared from her bedroom at a
nature resort over the weekend.
The district police chief, Mohamad
Nor Marzukee Besar , said the oper-
ation to fi nd Nora Quoirin , involving
more than 150 people, resumed yes-
terday with a helicopter, sniff er dogs
and villagers helping in an expanded
search through the jungle.
Quoirin’s family say they discovered
her missing at the Dusun eco resort insouthern Negeri Sembilan state on
Sunday morning with the window of
her bedroom open, and considered it a
criminal matter. Police have said there
were no initial signs of foul play.
Speaking at a press conference yes-
terday evening, the district police chief
said there was no evidence that her
disappearance involved any criminal
off ence and that it was still being inves-
tigated as a “missing person”.
The parents of Quoirin are an Irish-
French couple who have lived in
London for about 20 years.
A statement from her family yester-
day said they believed she had been
abducted. “We are especially worried
because Nora has learning and devel-
opmental disabilities and is not like
other 15-year-olds. She looks younger,
she is not capable of taking care of her-
self and she won’t understand what is
going on. She never goes anywhere by
herself. We have no reason to believe
she wandered off and is lost.”РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS