This article appears as part of the Letter of the Day newsletter.

On Monday, our columnist Mark Smith gave a bit of sympathy to those angered at an ad for Kelvinside Academy despite his own private school education.

Read that column here 👈

Today, one of our readers makes the case that the attack on private schools is unnecessary when it pulls up the overall standard of Scottish education and fills in gaps left by lack of state school funding.

Pete Wright from East Kilbride writes:

"Mark Smith in his article “Anger at the ad for a Glasgow private school? I totally get it” (The Herald, October 16) is naive in the extreme if he believes for one minute that taxation raised from the Scottish private education system will ever be available to boost our failing state schools.

Humza Yousaf is going to put £300m into the NHS to reduce waiting lists. This government cannot even build a single ferry for that amount, but it is actually split over three years further watering down its effectiveness. It is too little too late.

The promised dualling of the A9 by 2025 at a then cost of £3bn will need far more money thanks to the delays. There was more dualling of the A9 prior to devolution which speaks volumes.

The A83 has had £80m spent on fruitless schemes in the past decade yet the current proposed £470m tunnel solution, like the A9, is as far away from even starting as it was when this government came into power. Lord knows what it is going to cost.

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Cuts to the police. Cuts to the fire service. The list goes on and on. Any taxation raised from any source is desperately needed to fill the ever widening gaps. So, if Mark Smith thinks that Mr Yousaf will see education as a spending priority then he is very much mistaken.

Mr Yousaf is but a shadow of his predecessor whose mantra for many years was “judge me on my record in education”. And this is where we are today? We need the private school system to at least educate some of our youth to a high standard rather than bring it down to the substandard levels that our current government have managed to achieve."

To join the debate email letters@theherald.co.uk.