The Herald

Glasgow Academy Headteacher Is Latest to Step Down

GLASGOW'S leading independent schools are losing another headteacher, with the rector of The Glasgow Academy the latest to announce plans to depart his role. David Comins has stated his intention to leave at the end of June 2005, when, at the age of 57, he will have notched up 11 years' service as rector.

Multiple A's for Fast-Track Maths Pupils; Class Sails Through Exam with 30 Top Passes

SPECTACULAR results achieved by Higher maths pupils at a state school have been attributed to a policy of fast-tracking them through the subject. Fast-tracking is generally associated with setting pupils by ability and the practice continues to split the education community.

Single-Sex School Results Confirm Trend of Girls Outperforming Boys in Highers

SINGLE-SEX independent schools have performed better than their co-educational rivals - with the notable exception of Hutchesons' Grammar - in this year's Scottish independent schools' exam results. The outcomes also seemed to confirm an overall trend of girls outperforming boys in Higher exams.

House Prices Soar by 20% in a Year

HOUSE prices rose by almost 20% in the last 12 months, despite recent interest rates increases prompting fears of a collapse in prices. An average house in Scotland now costs (pounds) 108,232, according to figures published yesterday by the Registers of Scotland, the government agency.

Bt Premiership 1 Club by Club Guide

GLASGOW HAWKS Coaches Peter Wright, (pictured), Rob Ackerman Captain Ian Milligan In Kenny Sinclair (Glasgow), Guy Perrett (Edinburgh), Kenny Baillie (Boston Wolfhounds), Peter Dalton (Hillhead), Matt Smith (Glasgow Accies), John Barclay (Dollar Academy) Out Kenny Barclay, Calum Morrison, Stuart Orr (all to West of Scotland), James Adams (Ayr), Robert Currie (Aberdeen), Craig Hodgkinson (Royal Marines), Gordon McFadyen (Gordon, Sydney), Scott Hutton (allegedly retired) Key player Irishman Mic...

Rugby Searches for Road Forward; Hawick Chief Looks to the Top As Season Kicks Off

They may be plunging towards the unknown but clubs worrying about failure before the BT Premiership season has even kicked off should get what they deserve. Hawick rugby may be close to crisis, with its fabled junior clubs struggling to field sides, but that remained the defiant message from Scottish rugby's spiritual homeland in response to agonising at a recent Premier One Forum gathering.

Sports Given (Pounds) 268,000 Boost

Raikkonen Back in the Fast Lane; Flying Finn Emerges From Shadows to Set Fastest Time

Kimi Raikkonen, the McLaren driver, set the fastest time in free practice for tomorrow's Belgian Grand Prix, while Ryan Briscoe was uninjured following a high-speed crash. Raikkonen's time of 1min 44.701sec in the second session was fastest at Spa-Francorchamps, a track back on the Formula One calendar after a one-year absence because of a tobacco advertising ban.

Rumour, Fear and Paranoia. How This Woman Was Mistaken for Maxine Carr; Soon After Irene Little Moved House, She Was Targeted in an Outrageous Case of Mistaken Identity. Why Were People so Quick to Victimise an Innocent Stranger? By Rebecca Mcquillan

It all began when someone reckoned they'd seen Maxine Carr peering out from inside a taxi in East Kilbride. Could the former girlfriend of the Soham murderer Ian Huntley be living in the South Lanarkshire town? Some locals dismissed the rumours as ludicrous: surely if you're English and trying to melt into obscurity, you wouldn't come to Scotland to do it. But others remained watchful, because, of course, you can never be sure. When the whispers began that "Maxine" had been seen drinking with...

Gripping Story of a Bleak House; Film Festival

Blinded 4/5 With its isolated, timeless setting, its stylistic elegance and its narrative urgency, Eleanor Yule's intense drama recalls both Roman Polanski's claustrophobic thrillers and Ingmar Bergman's bleak portraits of relationship disintegration. The set-up has a Gothic feel: a wanderer in the Highlands enters a very disturbed household, inadvertently to cause chaos there by challenging an ingrained set of unspoken rules. Francis, an embittered blind man, rules his young wife and devoted...

We're Graduating to a Whole New Degree of Highbrow; Book Festival

David Lodge with Miranda Seymour 4/5 Marina Warner 4/5 In some respects, visiting the Book Festival can feel a bit like taking an Open University course. Yesterday, this was particularly the case. First, we had comic novelist and former academic David Lodge discussing his literary idol, Henry James, with biographer Miranda Seymour. An hour later, Marina Warner, arguably the cleverest woman in Britain, stepped out of her ivory tower to captivate her audience with her erudition and charm. Both ...

Proportional Representation Needed If Game Is to Grow From the Grassroots

AS the Scottish Rugby Union prepares to reveal the outcome of its strategic review many observers are asking if a re-drawing of regional boundaries would help introduce a new era of democracy in the sport. While leading clubs go apprehensively into the new season today - they do not know how many of them might be relegated at the season's end - the SRU review which is examining that issue could threaten the old, undemocratic order if it does its job properly.

A Word On Young Luvviedom; Festival Reviews

Epistle To Young Actors The Hub 4/5 In the beginning was the word. And, in Olivier Py's bite-sized treatise on luvviedom in all its finery, it's the end and everything inbetween as well. As actor John Arnold transforms himself into a pasty-faced cliche of a tragic heroine, his extrapolations are forever interrupted by a series of archetypes on the fringes of theatrical infrastructure. Advertised as a rehearsed reading, but actually a whole lot more, Py's play both pricks the pretensions of ac...

They've Cracked the Ice, Floods and Hurricanes; Future World

The European Space Agency has announced good news for scientists in Antarctica . . . and potentially the residents of Boscastle. A new prototype living pod, made out of the same ultra-light material that's used onboard spacecraft, has been designed to withstand natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, snowdrifts and flooding. The solar-powered pods are now in line to replace the existing Antarctic science station, which is slowly sinking into the ice because rivers of snow have buil...

The Week in Pictures

1A police diver searches the River Thames in London for clues to the murder of French student Amelie Delagrange. She was found with severe head injuries on Twickenham Green, but her house keys, purse and CD player were recovered from the river. The Frenchwoman's family travelled to London, where Amelie had been living for the past two months to improve her English. They left flowers at the murder spot, only a few miles from where a 19-year-old student was beaten to death in February last year.

Booker Whinges

IT'S that time of the year again: time for the Scottish literary establishment (and media) to whinge about Scots writers being left off the long/shortlist for the Booker. I enjoy Kelman's and Kennedy's books myself but they are not the only ones to be left off the longlist. What about Andrea Levy's Small Island, for example? There were 132 books submitted and probably most of them are very good books. As an Irish author whose first novel was almost entirely ignored by the Scottish literary me...

Missed Gp Appointments Don't Cost the Exchequer Anything

I AM confused as to where this wasted money is going (Sick of the NHS waste, August 24). While it is true that demand is always outstripping supply in general practice as elsewhere in the NHS, and that a cancelled appointment can always be re-allocated, this isn't actually "costing" anything to the Exchequer, as GPs are paid a notional flat rate per patient per year, and a notional slightly higher flat rate for high-demand groups like the elderly. The GP receives the same notional fee per pat...

Crime and Poverty

Election Precedent

ALF Young (August 27) gives the impression that because the poverty rate in the US now stands at 12.5% the incumbent president (who did not serve in Vietnam) will lose to his challenger (a decorated veteran). In 1996 the poverty rate in the US stood at 13.7% and the incumbent president (who avoided service in Vietnam) faced a challenger who was a decorated veteran of the Second World War. The incumbent won by a significant margin.

Great Progress in the Field of Emergency Medicine

THE figures for A&E waiting times, purporting to show a deterioration in time waiting to see a doctor in an A&E department, have provoked some rather predictable political opportunism (August 27). Unfortunately the figures are essentially useless. For my own department, the numbers are grossly inaccurate. The report quotes us as having dealt with only 286 patients over the three-day study period, whereas the true number was 410. Furthermore, the study was carried out over only one weekend, an...