Letters: Why the “good old days” of Scottish education are no more

As someone who worked most of his time in industry before joining teaching 10 years ago, I have first-hand experience of the contrast between the “good old days” and the current education system.

In primary school in the late 1960s, I had one friend in class whose parents were divorced. In my daughter’s primary class, in the late 1990s, there were only three pupils out of a class of 24, who had both their original parents. Whilst many single mothers do a great job raising children by themselves, there’s no denying that two parents help, both financially and to focus on their children’s education.

In 2010, when the coalition government inflicted “austerity” on the UK, the school I was in had to cut its teaching assistants by 50 per cent, as well as some teachers and other support staff. Teaching assistants are absolutely critical for pupils with additional support needs, to get the most benefit from their education.

I don’t remember any teaching assistants in the “good old days”: pupils with additional support needs in those days were either left to flounder or maybe attended a “special” school.

I didn’t regard behaviour in my high school as a serious problem, although chalk did occasionally fly across the room, and the use of the belt was not uncommon. Nowadays teachers (including myself) can have 11-year-old pupils not just disrupting classes, but swearing at faculty heads, deputes and even head teachers. They don’t care about being suspended or even being expelled.

These pupils need to be removed from classes until they do behave, but due to staff cuts and/or local authority policy, they are often allowed back into classes to continue their disruptive behaviour.

This results in teaching staff leaving these schools at the first opportunity. High staff turnover makes it difficult for any organisation, not just schools, to function well.

The best-performing schools of course are in affluent areas, mainly due to the parents. The parents have themselves benefited from education and naturally want their children to do likewise. And of course, if a child is struggling at all with a subject, they have the means to pay for private tutors. I have tutored some pupils who have had tutors for all five Higher subjects. That is around £150 per week spent helping their children get the passes they need to get to university. Even pupils at private schools call in tutors.

On the other side of the tracks, some single mothers won’t have £150 per week to feed and clothe their children.

Schools also have to deal with other “modern” issues, such as mobile phones, cyber bullying, widespread drug use, gender issues and feckless parents. Guidance teachers, who I also don’t remember from the “good old days”, are the hardest-worked staff in schools.

Financially, inequality is much more pronounced in today’s society, and as most ills in society emanate from poverty, the education attainment gap will not be closed to any great extent, until the poverty gap is closed.

It’s always easy to be critical about anything, but the devil is always in the detail.

J. McFadyen, Aberdeen.

YET again we have media headlines castigating Scottish education. Words such as “failure”, “meltdown” and “crisis” appear all too frequently in the headlines. I do not accept for one moment that we are on the downward slope to mediocrity but nevertheless there are problems that require to be addressed.

There are two initiatives that I would like to suggest that might go some way to restore confidence and attract support from teachers, parents and the wider general public. Firstly. I would propose the re-establishment in secondary schools of the post of Principal Teacher.

The re-structuring of promoted posts in secondary schools has seen Principal Teachers, the key subject specialists, replaced by Faculty Heads. It is quite clear that this re-structuring was carried through on the grounds of financial savings; it certainly was not as a consequence of an analysis of the relative educational merits of the respective posts.

We now have Faculty Heads with responsibility for a group of subject departments – for the members of these departments, the quality of their teaching, the strength of the different curricula, staff development needs, assessment, the required resources, the internal and external exam requirements, and SQA arrangements.

The Faculty Heads meanwhile may only be qualified to teach one of the subjects for which they are responsible. This has meant a loss of crucial subject expertise and experience.

In addition, the Principal Teachers, as key middle managers, played an absolutely vital part in the effective running of the school. Furthermore, the marked reduction in promoted posts in secondary schools seriously restricts career development for teachers and must be a disincentive for recruitment.

The second suggestion that I would like to make would be to restore a national staffing standard for our secondary schools. My generation was brought up in the era of the famous Red Book. This was a very detailed set of calculations prepared by the then HMI that enabled schools and local authorities to work out a customised staffing for each establishment.

On top of a basic staffing entitlement based on pupil numbers, additional staff allocations were funded to support, for example, probationary teachers and what were then referred to as “remedial pupils”.

Local authorities could, if they so wished, staff schools above nationally-funded ‘Red Book’ levels but this would be paid for by an individual local authority. If this exercise were to be brought up to date then specific allocations could be guaranteed for the education of those pupils with additional needs who are now in mainstream schooling. This would guarantee much-needed support for the commendable but poorly-resourced policy of inclusion.

Of course there would be additional costs for the Scottish budget but I think that this would a very worthwhile investment and would go some way to restore confidence in the work of our secondary schools.

Eric Melvin, Edinburgh.

JANE Lax (letters, February 22) refers to Nicola Sturgeon’s 2015 speech in which she said that she wanted to be judged on education; however, Ms Lax does not mention that in her speech Ms Sturgeon stressed that she wanted to close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Since then, record amounts have been invested in schools, children in primaries 1-3 receive free school meals, and a national minimum school clothing grant of £100 is helping more families meet the cost of school uniforms; being nourished and appropriately clad means children are more likely to thrive and enjoy their school experience.

In addition, since the SNP came to power, nearly 1,000 schools have been upgraded providing modern and comfortable learning conditions. Those who criticise Ms Sturgeon’s record in education omit to mention that a record number of students enrolled at Scottish universities in 2018/2019, with a record number of students from our most disadvantaged communities now attending university, assisted by the fact that they are not charged university tuition fees.

It is also worth noting that teacher numbers have increased with primary teachers at their highest level since 1980 and the ratio of pupils to teachers remaining at the lowest since 2013.

Everyone accepts that things are not perfect. There are challenges to be met and improvements to be made. Closing the attainment gap and improving education cannot be a quick fix, but it is significant that the International Council of Education Advisers, who are world-leading education and business experts, have advised the Education Secretary, John Swinney, not to be distracted from long-term goals, as in their opinion Scotland is heading in the right direction and taking the correct approach to improving education.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

YOUR headline on the SNP’s failings on education might well be accurate (“Cuts in specialist support blamed for poor exam results”, February 22). It is certainly true that the failure of our education system under the SNP is a betrayal of a generation of Scottish children.

It’s not just education where the betrayal is happening. Fourteen years ago the SNP took control at Holyrood with a promise of governmental competence. But after more than a decade of failure it it must be obvious to the even most dedicated SNP follower that the obsession with constitutional matters has led to serious decline in the most basic matters of concern to the actual people of Scotland.

What is the point of the SNP’s obsession with independence when our children are being failed in their schools? Or our local councils are being starved of funding for vital services? Or our elderly are denied proper care? Or when we can no longer build seaworthy ferries? Or the transport, health and education systems cannot cope with the demands placed on them?

And where a brand-new children’s hospital remains shut at enormous cost, while the other new flagship hospital actually causes, not cures, illness, because of SNP ministerial incompetence and neglect?

It’s time for the people of Scotland to awake from the nationalist nightmare and start thinking: not which party has the most flags and bedraggled marchers in support of permanent division, but which politics will deliver a unified country and decent education, health, transport and all the other matters which affect their daily lives and which they really care about. On the evidence, it’s clearly not the politics of nationalism nor the SNP.

Alex Gallagher, Councillor, North Ayrshire Council, Largs