FOR those of us who have been involved in Scottish education over the past five years, there will be very few who will be surprised to hear of the call for industrial action at the EIS annual conference ("Scottish teachers threaten industrial action over pay", The Herald, June 3).

There are many pressures on our teachers, who are at the forefront of our education system on a day-to-day basis, but when those pressures reach the levels that they are at present, it is only right and proper for teachers to demand that a halt must be called.

It has long been the case that whenever a problem arises in society, whether it be drug abuse, internet safety, smoking, or knife crime and the like, that schools are often seen as the first port of call in creating a solution to these problems. This has resulted in a year-on-year build up of extra initiatives that are expected to be delivered by teachers in schools where the workload is already grossly overloaded.

However, the workload implications of these social initiatives are as nothing compared to the bureaucratic tsunami that has been wreaked by Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). Secondary teachers are now drowning under the CfE demands of creating unit assessments, carrying out these assessments, reassessment, marking, cross-marking, verification procedures, recording results, submitting results ...t he list is near enough endless. It is small wonder that we are now hearing their cries for help ("Teachers 'work an extra 11 hours,, says union", The Herald, May 29).

Compounding the problem of crushing levels of CfE bureaucracy, we also have the ridiculous situation where secondary qualifications that were once prepared for over S3 and S4 are now squeezed into S4 alone. This results in timetabling pressures with some subjects being squeezed out of the Secondary curriculum altogether ( "Geography under threat as pupil numbers plummet", The Herald, June 1).

There are many problems and pressures that exist in Scottish education; this has always been the case. Let's face it, teaching is a stressful job. I know, I did it for almost 38 years. Teachers have always lived with this stress and performed a remarkable task, particularly considering the economic environment since 2008. However, even though the main culprit, CfE, was introduced to improve achievement and attainment, raise pupil motivation and to allow teachers the freedom to teach in a more innovative and engaging manner, it has resulted in the exact opposite.

The poisonous tentacles of CfE have, so far, only reached those pupils who are in S5 of our schools. We must therefore remember that every working adult in Scotland today went through school under the auspices of the "old" curriculum. A curriculum where literacy and numeracy levels were higher, pupils studied for Standard Grades and Intermediates over two years and teachers were less stressed.

Of course, we had problems back then too, but nothing compared to the shambles that we are experiencing today. CfE is the cause, and if the Scottish Government, of which I am a supporter, wants to alleviate the justifiable grievances of our teachers, they can go a long way to doing so by scrapping CfE forthwith.

Alan Carroll,

24 The Quadrant, Clarkston, Glasgow.