EDUCATION Secretary Angela Constance is facing calls to investigate a publicly-funded language centre which has been accused of publishing pro-independence propaganda.
The Scots Language Centre, which provides free resources for schools, published a brief history of the referendum on its website which implied the No campaign failed to win a legitimate majority.
Referring to last year's vote, the article stated: "On that day 55 per cent of the registered electorate voted against independence while 45 per cent voted in favour.
"Or, put another way, two million of the population voted against independence while the remaining three and a half million either voted for independence, didn't vote, or never had a vote."
It has since been removed from the website.
Willie Rennie, the Scots Lib Dem leader, said: “It’s disappointing that an organisation that’s funded by the state and sending information round schools and pupils is distorting information in this way and with a clear political agenda.
"If they want to be taken seriously they need to have a good look at what they think their objectives are. The Education Secretary must investigate this."
Scottish Conservative deputy leader Jackson Carlaw said:
"This is such a laughable statement it’s almost impossible to get upset about.
"Worryingly, it seems the Scots Language Centre doesn’t understand children aren’t allowed to vote, and doesn’t know what the population of Scotland is.
"People will be rightly asking just why taxpayers are coughing up to spout this nonsense."
Earlier this year, Ms Constance's deputy, minister for learning and languages Alasdair Allan, launched the government's Scots language policy.
As part of the effort to promote spoken and written Scots, quango Education Scotland will adopt trilingual corporate signage so that messages are written in English, Gaelic and Scots.
The Scottish Government currently spends a total of £270,000 on funding the Scots Language Centre and Scottish language dictionaries.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: "The Scots Language Centre is responsible for the content of its website and we understand that the text in question has now been removed."
No-one at the Perth-based centre was available for comment.
Why are you making commenting on HeraldScotland only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel