THE continuing tale of the decline of Scottish education under the so-called Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) continues. This year, Higher pass awards fell by two per cent ("Higher pass rate at lowest level since new exams began", The Herald, August 7). And this was in spite of the maths pass mark having been reduced from 48 per cent in 2018 to 44 per cent in 2019. In addition, the threshold for the award of an A grade in maths was reduced from 73 per cent in 2018 to 67 per cent in 2019. There have been 30,000 fewer passes at Higher grade since the CfE was introduced in 2010, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands fewer passes at S4 level.

The Scottish Government likes to talk about "record numbers" of qualifications being achieved. One can only assume that these are at some lower level. As the saying goes, you educate a child only once. The Scottish Government needs to make a much better fist of doing so if Scottish children are to compete with those of other nationalities who have better outcomes. Of course, the Scottish Government has partly solved that problem by withdrawing Scottish schools from international comparisons. There, that’ll fix it.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.