The Scottish Government has been accused of downgrading the influence of parents on key decisions made about education.
The warning follows the removal of Judith Gillespie, development officer with the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, from the board of Scotland's exam body.
Ms Gillespie was appointed to the board of the Scottish Qualifications Authority in 2001 as part of moves to make the body more accountable after the exam fiasco of 2000, when thousands of pupils were sent the wrong certificates.
However, last week, ministers announced that Willie Gallagher, the former chairman of Transport Initiatives Edinburgh - who presided over the Edinburgh trams fiasco - was to replace her on the board.
In a letter to The Herald, published today, Ms Gillespie said she was concerned there was no parental voice on the SQA board at a time when very significant changes are being made to both the school curriculum and the exams system.
"I wish to register my utter dismay at his appointment," she said. "When my term of office came to an end, I was keen to reapply because this is a highly critical time for Scottish education with the Curriculum for Excellence development and a new examination system, and because I felt it was important for the pupil and parental perspectives to be actively represented.
"My re-application was strongly supported by many within SQA. However, as there was about to be a new chairman, Graham Houston, the SNP leader of Stirling Council, it was agreed to delay the new appointments until the latter was in post and could determine what type of person he wanted.
"Graham subsequently phoned me to say that the specification for my post was to be changed from a parent with knowledge and understanding of education to someone who had knowledge and experience of driving business change at a senior level."
Ms Gillespie said she felt the move was part of the current government's "determination to silence the parental voice" on matters relating to the new school curriculum "Now, the parental voice has been removed from the SQA board and replaced by someone with experience of transport whose track record is, to put it mildly, controversial. I only hope that having been involved in one fiasco, Mr Gallagher does not find himself involved in another," she added.
However, a spokeswoman for the government said the appointment was made on merit.
The row comes as the SPTC is also under threat following separate calls by Fiona Hyslop, the Education Secretary, for parents to set up a new national parent group, which would effectively replace the SPTC.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: "The appointment process for selecting the new SQA Board was carried out in accordance with the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments in Scotland (OCPAS) Code of Practice. An independent OCPAS assessor concluded that Mr Gallagher met all the criteria for the post.
"Parents have a direct voice in the development of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). There is a parental representative on the SQA Advisory Council as well as the Cabinet Secretary's CfE Stakeholder group. Furthermore, the Cabinet Secretary has already said she wants to help parents establish a National Parents' Forum so that there could be a strong parental input engaging with Government at national level on education issues."
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