IT is to the credit of The Herald that it gives publicity to a range of schools after publication of examination results (“Pupils toast their results as achievements stay stable”, The Herald, August 9). For many years publicity was directed at schools at the top of league tables for the quantity and quality of passes.
Such schools were frequently in the leafy suburbs where pupils had the advantages of encouraging parents, tutoring, peer-group competition and classes were largely free of discipline problems. I am not suggesting that areas outwith leafy suburbs are devoid of parents committed to their children.
Life can never be made completely fair. As Andrew Denholm reported, young people in the most affluent areas are still 3.5 times more likely to enter higher education at 18 than those from deprived backgrounds.
It was once observed that the most important journey you make is the one from the hospital, after birth, to your home. However, it is important to recognise that there are many schools in our communities in which teachers work with pupils with great commitment in what, at times, can be difficult circumstances and children are succeeding sometimes against the odds.
Ian W Thomson, 38 Kirkintilloch Road, Lenzie.
REGARDLESS of the problems Scottish education may be facing, the Teach First model isn’t the answer (“Student teachers in class after five weeks of training”, The Herald, August 11).
It’s all very well trying to attract bright young science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) graduates, for example, into the teaching profession but they will presumably also be bright enough to realise that they have been sold the proverbial pig in a poke. Teaching in most of Scotland isn’t a career any more; it’s a job with few prospects of advancement. Most of the last few year’s intake of new teachers can look forward to a period of six years or thereabouts to get to the top of the pay scale and there they will stay.
Most local authorities paid for the McCrone improvements in teacher’s pay by flattening management structures and slashing the number of promoted posts. One school I know of that had a headteacher, a depute, two assistant heads and eight principal teachers before McCrone now has one head, two deputes and three principal teachers. The proposition that one person’s management structure is another’s career ladder was lost to control costs.
There is, understandably, a problem with teacher retention.
There is no nationally agreed system of additional responsibility payments as elsewhere in the UK.
Instead, the classroom teacher is expected to handle the cascaded bureaucracy, because the admin work still needs to be done and it can be chalked up to “leadership opportunities” or “continuing professional development”.
The only way to progress in the system is to get out of the classroom as fast as possible and into a management track that seems to value process over people; either that or get out and do something else, which seems to be what many are choosing to do.
My son is about to start an engineering course at university. He expects to earn more than a main scale teacher a few years after graduation and go up from there.
Sadly teachers, no matter how bright or how competent, can’t expect the same.
John Walker, 73 McLachlan Street, Stenhousemuir.
PERHAPS before we become too agitated about the lack of Gaelic students, we should consider that only 1.2 per cent of the population speak Gaelic (“Call for action as fewer pupils sitting Gaelic qualifications”, The Herald, August 10). Many years ago, as a young Borderer, Gaelic was a strange language only spoken in the Western Isles and, while enjoyable in wonderful Gaelic songs, irrelevant for day-to-day living.
Borders schools rightly considered French, German and Latin more appropriate.
I lived in Aberdeenshire for 12 years where Doric was prominent.
It took me some time to get my head around the vocabulary and nuances. Later, my wife and I taught English as a foreign language in Catalonia, where more than 50 per cent of the people speak Catalan and around 90 per cent understand it. Doric and Catalan are in a different league from Gaelic. I agree with the cognitive benefits of learning a second language, as we found was the case with students who spoke Catalan, Spanish and, often, French. Learning a language achieves cognitive benefits and is hardly an argument for Gaelic.
I have no axe to grind over learning Gaelic as it would be a shame if it was lost to posterity. I fondly remember an ex-colleague and friend who spent much of his holiday each summer journeying to the Western Isles to a Gaelic school.
Perhaps the Scottish Government could focus its energies on adult education, as he was a fervent supporter of the language. It might be more productive than wasting millions of pounds on possibly reluctant youngsters. The money might have been better spent on encouraging the uptake of more useful languages such as Spanish, Russian or Mandarin Chinese.
Surely the purpose of education is to prepare youngsters for life.
Ian Smith, 111 Dutch House, Kilmarnock Road, Monkton.
BILL Brown (Letters, August 10) argues against “academic”
universities where selection is on an academic basis, preferring the idea of “comprehensive “ universities whereby young people of different abilities would be educated together as in the comprehensive school system.
How high or low would the academic bar be set to qualify for “comprehensive” university entrance, as that would determine the greater time and effort lecturers would have to spend on less-able students , to the detriment of brighter ones and leading potentially to a lengthening or dumbing down of the degree course to achieve acceptable pass levels?
In support he cites a paper which proposes that a “comprehensive”
university would provide an alternative to “social stratification by academic selection” which, I guess, translates a university graduate having the expectation of higher earning potential and a position in society . My concern is that a degree from a “comprehensive” university would not receive the same level of recognition or commercial value as one from an “academic” university . In an increasingly competitive world what do we really need by way of graduates from our Universities: quality or quantity ?
Alan Fitzpatrick, 10 Solomon’s View, Dunlop.
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