The young man (boy, really) played with his fingers in the garish light cast from the lone bulb in the concrete bunker. He scratched at an imaginary itch on his right hand (just below his thumb) to take his mind off the man in the lab coat who sat across from him at the beaten, scarred, wood table. It didn't work. And whoever this man in the lab coat was, he was insistent about paperwork. He had three inches clipped onto a weathered clipboard which he flipped through with precision. "Can I offer you a glass of water?" asked the boy's captor in a calm, sensitive tenor. The boy, Kurt, continued to scratch the imaginary itch, which had leapt magically from his right hand to the left. Eventually the falseness of the itch would be deduced, and the lab coated man would disappear out of the cell and return with... God knows what. He had seen torture hundreds-if not thousands-of times on TV, and he was glumly certain that there would be no commercial breaks for him. "Can I offer you a glass of water?" The question was repeated without urgency, like a forgetful waiter. The itch now leaped with the dexterity of a trained flea onto the boy's leg, and the dutiful fingers followed. He watched as the man in the lab coat, without name tag or company insignia, studied his stack of papers attached to the clipboard. Several yellow forms near the top half inch were labeled 27B. The man frowned and wrote a note on the top page. "Note: Find out who isn't duplicating 27B in Pink." "I'm sorry," he said, "I wasn't listening. Was that a yes or no to the water?" Kurt remained in his chair, almost motionless, except for the itching-and-scratching routine. It had leapt again, this time onto his scalp, and the twitching fingers followed. He wondered how long he could keep this up without drawing blood. The young man scrathed an imaginary itch on his hand: A. not enough information B. Since morning C. Before his captor aproached him D. After meeting a man in a lab coat
D

(Question)
For a moment, Paul wasn't even sure who had walked into the room. Chloe had totally transformed herself since he'd last seen her. She wore a wig for starters, and a very good one. It was light brown and shoulder length. It looked so natural that if he didn't know she had much shorter hair, he would have guessed that she had dyed it. But it was the outfit that made the change. She wore a well-tailored, very professional, gray woman's skirt/blazer combo with a yellow silk blouse. Her wrist sported what looked to Paul's uneducated eye like an expensive and fashionable gold lady's watch from which he thought he detected a glint of diamond. In short, she looked just like the high priced lawyer she was supposed to be. She was certainly the best-dressed person in the room. Chloe reached across the table to shake Greg's hand, stretching forward as she did so. Paul watched Greg glance down at her cleavage while he shook her hand. "I'm Rachel Roth, here on behalf of Mr. Paul Reynolds." "Hi," said Greg. "I'm Greg Driscol, and this is..." "I know the rogues gallery here," said Chloe cutting Greg off and looking around at the assembled board members. "I've learned all about you gentlemen." Marie stood up and shook Chloe's hand. "Marie Cooper, from Johnson, Myers, and Wick," she said. "Nice to meet you," she said. "Ok, we've got the intros down, shall we get on with the dirty business?" "Um, sure," Greg said as he sat back down. "I was just about to turn things over to Marie." The plan was now in action, and so far so good. But Paul knew that this was a crucial moment. Chloe didn't really know the law - just a few points that her friend had helped her out with. She couldn't let the real lawyer take over the meeting. Her dramatic, unexpected entrance had them off guard, and Paul hoped she seized the moment and pressed on. How long does the introductions probably takes? A. not enough information B. One minute C. Thirty minutes D. Five minutes
(Answer)
D

I end this small run of blog posts with the question posed by Professor Brian Boyd at the beginning of our evening: Do we want to close the achievement gap? We know we can close the gap. It's been done or almost been done before in Scottish education, but the answers have been ignored as they pass us by. The simple clue is this: poverty is single biggest predictor of achievement, and according to research (Hammonds sic, reference required), aged 10, a child living in poverty is 60% less likely to get to university. Boyd borrowed from his own mother's report card to ask us what kind of education we desire. Is it the academic success at all costs route, or is there another option we need to value as much, if not more? His mother's report card, one that prevented her from becoming a secondary school pupil in Glasgow, is filled with G and FG, until the last point: Character and conduct - excellent. What kind of pupils do we want to develop in Scotland? What do we value in our assessment system? Opening up opportunity for all is a tough game to play when the examination system rewards only certain types of behaviour, few of them related to what the Curriculum for Excellence says we stand for. In his own small community in East Kilbride, three secondary schools enter a period of meltdown as the local rag sets about creating its own local league table of performance, with those three 'teams' in competition for the top spot (or at least not the bottom one). Therefore, we must stop basing "the gap" largely on attainment. First of all, Boyd would like us to remove the traditional, and non-sensical academic/vocational divide. Is the law or medicine degree we value not vocational? (Are all General Practitioners not Plumbers, as Dr Murray on the panel suggests?) After the end of this story, Boyd probably is A. Nervous B. not enough information C. Worried D. Hopeful
C