I SYMPATHISE with G Braidwood Rodger and Stuart J Mitchell (Letters, January 30) over the loss of their schools to blinkered socialism, though, I confess, I would have approved at the time. Even at the loss of centres of excellence. I thought then that equality of opportunity was the sine qua non. It is still high on my list of moral imperatives. I now think that excellence should never be given up easily, not even for that principle: it is too important to the country. My conversion did not occur at George Watson's College (GWC) where I began to teach, for I saw the huge advantage of specialist coaches in everything, a tradition of service, a dozen minds on the staff with great depth and scholarship, the kind who could achieve practically anything but chose to teach because they loved their subjects, and a drive for excellence in all things, even strictly human ones. No, it was long after my years at GWC in the pages of a book by Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart who never made it to university but attended Fettes.

In the First World War out of fewer than 2,000 Old Fettesians nearly 900 were over 40. Of the whole group, 1,094 served in the conflict and 246 died for their country. Two VCs, 59 DSOs and 146 MCs were awarded.

The book explains these fine statistics.

And yet I know that for many, removal from the home is an unpleasant experience that can leave scars and disrupt lives. For most, I believe, a day school is better but it means staying near the school, for too much travel is exhausting and the far commuter never makes the connections he should. Of course the pupil who copes with life away at school gains in maturity.

The problem is that many people are rich enough to pay for huge advantages in the education of their children. They think it is a right. They have a choice and they exercise it. What about the child in a home with no books whose parents know nothing of the world of ideas and whose idea of life is circumscribed and limited at birth? My own, as it happens. Society is unequal. Some people have it made because money buys many things. The lack of wealth is one thing; the lack of information about the world of what is possible, another. But there is worse and I experienced that too: the belief, continually stated that, as a manual labourer's son, your life is already decided. You must leave school at 14 and that is all for you. That was the worst thing to overcome.

I think our country must retain excellence wherever it exists, for the best we are capable of must be preserved and enhanced. But equality of opportunity is the right of everyone. Efforts ought to be made to pluck children out of their ghettos of the mind and help them to overcome the deficiencies of their backgrounds.

William Scott, 23 Argyle Place, Rothesay.

YOUR correspondents Donald Mackay (Letters, Janaury 29) and Peter D Christie (Letters, February 1) refer to the “classless nature” of the selective High School of Glasgow. Is it not the case that selective schools such as this classify pupils by academic ability, accepting only those who are at the top of the academic tree? In doing this they have rejected the many in favour of the few. Surely this is as system that far from classless?

Margaret MH Lyth,

26 Gardenside Street, Uddingston.

PETER D Christie (Letters, February 1), is a little awry in his recollection of the demise of Glasgow's selective schools. There were not three, but six in total – Glasgow High School for Boys, Glasgow High School for Girls, Hillhead High School, Allan Glen's School, St Mungo's Academy and Notre Dame High School.

Sir Meyer Galpern was Lord Provost of Glasgow between 1958 and 1960 and had long departed the position when the schools lost their selective status in 1972. The principal architect of that decision was Dr Dan Docherty, the last convener of education of the former Glasgow Corporation, whose commitment to comprehensive education did not extend to the education of his own sons, who attended the fee-paying and private St Aloysius' College.

The High School for Girls became the mixed-sex comprehensive Cleveden Secondary School. Allan Glen's merged with City Public School in 1973 and closed because of falling rolls in 1989. The buildings were demolished in 2013 to make way for the Glasgow College campus on Cathedral Street.

Hillhead High remains on its original site, as a comprehensive school, as does Notre Dame – Scotland's only single-sex comprehensive school. In 1976, St Mungo's Academy relocated from Townhead to its current site in Crownpoint Road.

Roderick Forsyth,

35 Saltoun Street, Glasgow.

RECENTLY I was glancing at a book on grammar in, of all places Debenham's... In the introduction reference was made to an education report in which prominent firms – ICI, Rolls-Royce,Vickers Armstrong and the like – complained at the level of literacy displayed by their new young employees: inability to construct a simple sentence, lack of agreement between subject and verb and so on. The date of the report was 1922 which incidentally proves very little but does give some redress to the perennial debates about standards. As they said of Punch, "it's not as good as it was, (perhaps) it never was."

When was that golden age again?

I attended my south side state school where, inter alia, I took Latin and Greek. Our classics teacher had fought in North Africa in the Second World War – the transition from the retreat from Persia in Xenophon's Anabis to war in the desert was relatively seamless and certainly much more engrossing. He seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

After National Service I enrolled as a mature (married) student and renewed my acquaintance with Latin at Glasgow University. Looking back I would say that the years outside the classroom didn't necessarily make me a better teacher but they certainly gave me a deeper understanding of what is a very fulfilling albeit very demanding job.

Modern technology and the acquisition of language skills – still a bit ambivalent, aggravated of course by the ease with which my grandchildren highlight my limitations.

I recall a few aeons ago an incident which still carries a certain resonance. A colleague, an excellent modern languages teacher, burst into the staff room at the interval muttering "I don't believe it." She had given the class vocabulary homework – one of the words was "child'. One young man offered "le morf'"as an answer and then apparently became a little miffed when questioned about its provenance and triumphantly displayed

his dictionary at the appropriate entry: "child – enfant, m or f.' Would never happen with Google.

William Dickie,

12 Cumbrae, East Kilbride.

FRESH from having its fingers burnt by interfering with police management, the Scottish Government appears now to have designs on the General Teaching Council Scotland ("Scrapping teacher watchdog risks ‘irreparable harm’ to profession", The Herald, February 1), distrusting the voice practising teachers have on their regulatory body. Manoeuvring for greater numbers of those outside the profession sadly discredits current external representatives' ability to present a convincing case to the board.

Meanwhile, the record of Curriculum for Excellence and the distortions it has produced at the Scottish Qualifications Authority has had a clear thumbs-down from pupils, parents, staff and headteachers, let alone employers, despite the Cabinet Secretary for Education's self-congratulations. And is the Finance Secretary's leading of pupils on bikes on to a zebra crossing a promising sign for further central government control ("Blunder as photoshoot breaks Highway Code", The Herald, February 1)?

Martin Archibald,

Kinpurnie Road, Oldhall, Paisley.