Education is a topic that has long been an issue that matters a great deal to Herald readers, and in recent days there has been much to debate.

Last week, columnist Rebecca McQuillan discussed an Institute of Fiscal Studies report that noted Scotland’s “disappointing” performance in core subjects.

Read her column here 👈

The following day, we exclusively revealed the findings of an EIS survey which highlighted startling levels of violence and aggression in our schools.

Read our report here 👈

Today, one of our readers points the finger at the Curriculum for Excellence.

Michael Sheridan of Glasgow writes:

"It is painful indeed to read of Scottish schools plummeting in international rankings and of an increasing epidemic of distracting misbehaviour including physical assaults in the classroom. Given the tradition of excellence in Scottish schools it is ironic that these departures from excellence should coincide with the implementation in Scotland of a new curriculum entitled the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). One wonders whether the whole thinking behind the CfE needs to be re-examined.

For example, the General Secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, Andrea Bradley, is quoted saying “Education shouldn’t hurt.” This sentiment seems to reflect the comfortable world inhabited by adults who have achieved the security of successful outcomes rather than the real educational requirements of school children who have not yet achieved that security and may feel great and even behaviour-challenging anxiety about doing so.

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The achievement of many of life’s most valuable and positive outcomes hurts; childbirth, dental treatment, training to run faster or jump higher, climbing Munros in Scottish winters, learning French irregular verbs or Burns poetry by rote and so on. To teach schoolchildren otherwise may be a grave dereliction of duty towards them. No pain, no gain may be one of the most useful mantras to pass to our children.

Another example of questionable thinking behind the CfE is the experimental exclusion of the actual knowledge which school pupils normally require in order to achieve successful outcomes in adult life. English schools, for example, which have now overtaken Scottish schools in international and UK ranking, are served by a curriculum which provides schools, teachers and pupils with a detailed programme of what is agreed to be essential knowledge. Instead, the CfE describes the skills which are thought to be needed in order to acquire that knowledge but, for the most part, omits to identify the content of that knowledge.

There may have been some theoretical argument in favour of the change to CfE in Scotland but that change was made about 20 years ago and the painful outcomes described above are surely strong evidence that it was a wrong turning and that it has deprived a generation of Scottish school pupils of the educational experience enjoyed, or suffered, by previous generations and which took Scotland to the top strata of international ranking.

These painful outcomes might also force us to ask whether there may have been a serious wrong turning in the current policy regarding the streaming of pupils according to ability and inclination.”

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