A complicated question
I WAS a primary teacher and sometime union activist for 38 years. During that period, when every main political party had a role in government at some point, I had to read or listen to regular bouts of distortion, exaggeration, economy with the facts and, occasionally, downright lies regarding the state of Scottish education. Trust me, despite some of those involved in this assuring us that they were not having a go at teachers but rather criticising government incompetence, my colleagues and I took it personally.
Therefore I find it significant that Brian Wilson, with his experience of being Education Minister, chooses not to bash the current Scottish Government in his piece about closing the Attainment Gap (“If we care about closing attainment gaps, throw everything at early years”, The Herald, August 8), but rather highlights some of the limitations that plagued him and, no doubt, his predecessors and successors in their attempts to effect positive change. Education is not like an unsuccessful racehorse that suddenly becomes a serial winner after a change of jockey. It’s complicated.
It would be nice if the occasional journalist resists the temptation for a juicy headline and acknowledges some more of the successes achieved and problems faced by Scottish schools (James Mcenaney gets a B+ in this regard, but he is a member of a very small class) and also asks opposition politicians some awkward questions about what they would actually do were they to come to power. “We couldn’t do much worse” does not count and has never counted as a serious educational policy.
Robin Irvine, Helensburgh.