AS a recently-retired secondary school principal teacher of 38 years' experience, I wasn't at all surprised to read that standards of literacy in Scottish schools are falling ("Fall in literacy skills in Scottish schools", The Herald, April 29).
These results are expected by those of us who have had to deliver the muddled nonsense that is Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) over the past five years in secondary schools and for many more in primary schools.
CfE, almost as soon as it hit the secondary sector, became an administrative and bureaucratic nightmare. Pupils are constantly assessed, leaving much less time for actual teaching. Teachers are stressed to breaking point through having to carry out and co-ordinate these often meaningless exercises. CfE gets in the way of good teaching and allows vague and woolly outcomes to dominate over focus and rigour.
Whilst not surprising, these results are a cause for great concern. However, CfE is not the cure that will tackle these falling standards; it is the cause of them.
Huge numbers of people have made a career out of promoting this chaos in an evangelical manner, whilst classroom teachers were fully aware it was nothing but the Emperor's New Clothes. Get rid of it quickly, or things will simply get worse.
Alan Carroll,
24 The Quadrant, Clarkston, Glasgow.
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