YOUR article on the Scottish Qualifications Authority examination results this year makes interesting reading (“Swinney under fire as Higher pass rate falls”, The Herald August 7). I believe that the annual obsession with grade supremacy seems all part of the academic Olympiad which fosters a divisive and educationally divided society.
I find it strange that the SNP Government, in advocating independence, often wishes to compare Scotland with the similarly-sized Finland. However, any similarity it seeks to point out stops short of wishing to mimic the different, and internationally recognised, Finnish education system.
Scotland remains fixated with attainment comparisons, statistical trends and national results analysis being part of an often-unfair school inspection device. Mr Swinney should start trusting our teachers to conduct their own final examinations in line with his wish to devolve more power to schools. Those pupils who chose to go to university will, after all, not be sitting nationally-administered examinations for their degree, so why is their secondary school not considered professional enough?
The pupils who did well in this year's diet of exams have displayed that they can comply with the learning process necessary to pass and therefore be likely to conform in other ways within society. Many pupils, particularly ones from areas of deprivation, come from social environments where in many contexts, conformity is not viewed as a strength.
However, the way in which our present Government in Scotland visualises education, unwilling to embrace alternative philosophies, suggests to me that things can only get worse. Instead of preparing pupils for university we should be preparing them for life. If pressures continue as they are, schools will squeeze the curriculum as tight as possible to obtain incremental gains in annual “A” passes in academic subjects and the traditional breadth of subject choice in secondary establishments will wither on the vine.
Bill Brown, Milngavie.
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel