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.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald 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 hereComments are closed on this article