WHERE in heaven's name does Angela Constance get the evidence to support her claim that 80 per cent of secondary teachers "do not think that reading and writing are vital to their curriculum area" ("Minister: Teachers failing children on the three Rs", The Herald, May 20)?

Having taught for nearly 40 years, I cannot imagine that a single one of my colleagues, or any secondary teacher for that matter, would hold that totally implausible idea.

The old adage that "it is a bad workman that blames his tools" is what she is applying to the present scenario, when in fact it is the very tool itself, Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), that is to blame, not the workman ( the teacher).

Ms Constance says that official figures show that standards of literacy and numeracy have dropped since 2012. Is it a coincidence then that CfE was introduced around 2011?

As a former principal teacher of mathematics, I have seen many changes in education over the last 40 year period and unfortunately, most of them have been to the detriment of what was once the most enlightened educational system in the world, but CfE has been the worst ever initiative to have been inflicted on Scottish schools and Scottish teachers. The move away in the 1980s however from putting children under any sort of pressure in the way of developing memory skills has seen pupils unable to learn the basics ¬ tables, spelling, simple grammar, historical dates, and so on, That's why from the mid 80s on, there was a dramatic drop in children continuing with modern languages. They simply did not have the ability to memorise word for word a second language.

O-Grades, Standard Grades, 5-14, Higher Still, Modules, and the like, all had a clearly defined set of objectives, but when CfE was presented to us, most teachers were flummoxed . For the first time ever, we had a curriculum with no recognised contents list.

CfE is almost totally skills-based with an actual content list almost an aside. CfE is all about how to teach (and I feel it is away off track in that respect), but it does not tell teachers what to teach. It is just too vague. Putting pupils under a bit of pressure in the run-up to exams meant lots of revision work, an improvement in memory techniques, consolidation of class work, past paper work, and the "geeing" up of children. These all helped build up pupil's confidence. Yes, some struggled, but some will always struggle. That's life, unfortunately.

So, unless the Government comes off its high horse, removes those rose-tinted glasses, stops blaming teachers for its own mistakes, decides to talk to front-line class teachers instead, and abandons Curriculum for Excellence, we are going to ruin further generations of children and lag further and further behind those very successful nations, particularly in the Middle and Far East, who are now using precisely the same methodologies we used 40 years ago.

Tom Strang,

1 Gorse Drive,

Barrhead.

NO Ms Constance, we do not have to step up the pace of change. The last thing education needs is more change, more initiatives and yet more great ideas. It's perfectly clear that none of it is working. Firstly, educational attainment must be properly valued and encouraged. It must be regarded as "cool" to do well. The role of teachers and head teachers must also be valued and respected. Teachers should not be spending time policing children instead of teaching them; head teachers are not social workers but they must be strong, decisive and support their staff.

Children do not learn in a noisy disruptive atmosphere, there has to be basic discipline. Too little time is spent working with the quiet, unobtrusive child who is there to learn.

In the 1970s and 1980s attainment in Primary 4 was higher than it is now in Primary 7. We taught spelling, grammar and number, including multiplication tables, thoroughly, until the children were confident. Teachers in secondary school cannot begin to teach a foreign language to children who don't know what a verb is.

Standards have fallen across the educational spectrum right up to degree level. So, Ms Constance, stop cutting teacher numbers and blaming the ones who are left. Let them get on with the job they spent years working for and put the Curriculum for Excellence back on the shelf where it should have stayed.

J Mathie,

16 Sheepburn Road,

Glasgow.

THERE was a sad predictability in the response of the teaching unions and the opposition parties to Education Secretary Angela Constance's welcome and long overdue call for candour in facing Scotland's educational problems ("Teachers call for breathing space in row over three Rs", The Herald, May 21). The opposition parties saw it as an opportunity to attack the SNP's record, although the slide in standards has been under way over a longer period than their term in office in Holyrood, while the union official entered a plea for "breathing space" before facing challenges which relate to nothing more exceptional than numeracy and literacy. If teaching cannot adequately deal with these basic requirements as a matter of routine, we are badly off course.

I have written on this subject before, and on one occasion when you carried a letter of mine, the Ministry for Education got in touch with the Department of Education in the University of Strathclyde to see if they would confirm or rebut my allegations of slipping standards. They replied they could do neither. There has always been support from teachers in staffrooms who are worried about trends and standards, and opposition from educationalists and trade unionists. Colleagues in universities have found they had to arrange basic, near remedial courses, in straightforward matters like sentence construction or forming paragraphs and, in another field, in basic mathematics and arithmetic. The other group who show concern are personnel officials charged with the recruitment of suitable candidates for business.

Once we enter the fields of business or finance, things get serious even for people who care nothing for education in itself. We are, by common consent, entering the so-called knowledge economy, where educational attainment is fundamental to economic success. Since my retirement from Strathclyde, I have been invited to teach in the universities of Warsaw, Melbourne and Venice, and while I run the risk of having what I say dismissed as mere anecdote, my experience is that students there are ahead of Scottish students not in intelligence - any such assertion is senseless - but in the knowledge they are expected to have acquired. That is before we deal with the better documented advances made by young people in China, Korea and other Asian countries. And we have not mentioned other areas, like our failure to promote adequately language teaching.

We are letting down young people in Scotland by a faltering programme and a lack of ambition. The consequences for the country, independent or devolved, will be dire. Honour to Ms Constance for putting the subject on the political agenda.

Joseph Farrell,

Professsor Emeritus, University of Strathclyde,

7 Endfield Avenue,

Glasgow.