Sir, Education Minister Angela Constance is to make it a requirement for councils to reduce the attainment gap between poor and better-off pupils in state schools.
While the additional£1 million in resources is to be welcomed, it seems pointless that every local authority will be given money to appoint chief education officers. These posts alone will cost close to £1 million and are unnecessary whencouncils already have quality improvement officers, senior education officers anddirectors of education.
As a teacher of almost 25 years’ experience, may I say that if the government is serious about committing money to reducing the attainment gap, then they should explore the following options.
Free breakfast clubs and free school lunches for all pupils. Some won’t take up the offer and others won’t need to but if they were there for all, then the needy wouldn’t feel stigmatised and would be able to approach their lessons with the right nourishment.
There should also be more learning-support staff. Every pupil is entitled to extra support but the reality is that there’s never enough teachers to go round the poor pupils, let alone those who wish to stretch their attainment levels.
May I also suggest reducing class sizes. Some readers might remember that this was an SNP pledge but their commitment to reducing literacy and numeracy classes in the early years to a maximum of 20 pupils in both primary and secondary sectors drifted.
Education comes firstly, and always, from the home, and if parents are not forced to support the school by helping their kids acquire literacy and numeracy skills and ensuring homework is done, then the pupil is going to find attainment all the moredifficult and the work done by the school will not beconsolidated.
Jamie Buchan. Grove Road, Dundee.
Glenrothesflats need cash
Sir, How much of the £70 million set aside for council house modernisation in Fife is to be spent on the Glenwood Centre flats in Glenrothes?
Almost half of the homes in the complex are owned by the authority.
The condition of the north-facing facade is an absolute disgrace, the internal stairways and balconies are dingy and unattractive and the area has been associated with crime and squalor for some time.
Surprisingly, the matter was given little prominence in the recent Glenrothes West and Kinglassie by-election.
It would be useful ifcouncillors took the trouble to go and look at thecondition of the properties.
They might then get to grips with not just a housing challenge. Modern shops now surround an old shopping centre. There is still some enterprise in the form of takeaways and shops and community involvement in the form of a library and community cafe.
But that enterprise needs to be backed up by Fife Council action to bring the adjacent Glenwood Centre flats up to a standard the authority and the community can be proud of.
Bob Taylor. 24 Shiel Court, Glenrothes.
Fear or smearfrom Ms Hjul?
Sir, The clear conclusion to be drawn from yourcolumnist, Jenny Hjul, (April 15) is that most active supporters of the SNP and of the Yes campaign are undemocratic, totalitarian, xenophobic bullies, kept in check by party discipline and “the remnants of the old guard”.
That Ms Hjul appears to live in what must be a thoroughly scary country, is supported by her recollection that “the bile of the cybernats…came to dominate the run-up to last September’s ballot”.
What I remember was different – a thoroughly lively debate among lots of interested people which very occasionally got out of hand but which was predominantly conducted with courtesy and good humour.
On the one hand, I feelgenuinely sorry if Ms Hjul is scared for herself and her family.
On the other, I wonder if she is simply an extremely partisan journalist engaged in smearing her opponents.
Gordon Dilworth. 20 Baledmund Road, Pitlochry.
Scotland facesbirth-rate crisis
Sir, The fundamental issue dividing Scotland from England and Wales is growth.
Our population numbers in Scotland have been static for half a century, while the populations of England and Wales have grown rapidly.
Our birth rate is half the peak of 1963. The England and Wales birth rate has fallen too but is just 3.5% below their peak.
Meanwhile, Scots areliving much longer lives and require more state andpublic-sector pensions paid from taxation.
Pensioners need more health care, so our NHSand social care costs arerising faster than the UK average.
We used to believe we could recover these extra costs from a high oil price and by attracting a large increase in permanent immigration.
So far, both rosy prospects remain on our distanthorizon.
And, all the while, ourpension and health-care claimants rise with every passing year.
We need more children. Perhaps Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and Jim Murphy will each explain how we can escape from our population trap?
Andrew Dundas. 34 Ross Avenue, Perth.
Follow Norway’s lead
Sir, Unionist pre-election scaremongering concerning full fiscal autonomy for Scotland has to be one of the more bizarre arguments put forward by the Westminster clique against the SNP. They have all ruled out such a proposal, which means that even if the SNP are as successful as polls suggest, they would find it impossible to garner a Westminster majority in order to implement it.
For unionist parties to use Scotland’s predicament as a means to damage the SNP would require Scots of all political persuasions to have collective amnesia regarding the wastefulness of London’s control over our finances.
The unionist argument is; Scotland is a financial mess, we got you here but trust us (yet again), we will sort it out.
Coming as Norway was judged, not for the first time, to be the number one country in the world to live, onlyhighlights how poorly ourassets have been managed.
Ken Clark. 335 King Street, Broughty Ferry.
Dundee willsoak up cash
Sir, I note that the SNP government is proposing a £300 million plan forScotland’s cities and that Dundee and Perth will be major beneficiaries.
So far, the only city which has benefited from Scottish Government handouts has been Dundee, with some£38 million towards their waterfront and V&A projects, with nothing for Perth.
I would not be surprised if this theme continues and Perth and Kinross sees little of this £300 million.
Incidentally is there by any chance a General Election looming?
Councillor Mac Roberts. Ward One, Carse of Gowrie.
Formulafor poverty
Sir, While I do not support the use of nuclear weapons, I believe they are an essential deterrent.
Andrew Lothian (April 15) suggests that the SNP proposal to remove Trident from an independent Scotland would provide an extra 12p a day to feed hungry children in the United Kingdom.
I support the need to feed hungry children but calculate that with independence and the end of the Barnett formula, Scotland would be less well off by £27.8p per head per day.
Does this make sense?
Garry Barnett. The Garden House, Campsie Hill, Guildtown.
Clear choicesfor Sturgeon
Sir, Nicola Sturgeon thinks the onus is on Ed Miliband to make a deal with her or else he will be responsible for letting David Cameron back into Downing Street.
The onus is in fact on the SNP. The SNP can eithervote with Labour in the House of Commons or againstLabour and with the Conservatives.
Ed Miliband will either be Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition.
Nicola Sturgeon can choose whether she supports Miliband or not but I doubt hersupporters in Scotland or the rest of the United Kingdom will forgive her if she fails to do so after all her anti-Tory rhetoric.
Linda Holt. Dreel House, Pittenweem.
Climate-change confidence trick
Sir, When future generations look back on the alarm over global warming that seized the world in the late 20th century, they will wonder how such a scare could have arisen.
Why was there such a panic over a 0.4% rise in globaltemperatures from 1975 to 1998, when similar rises from 1860 to 1880 and 1910 to 1940 gave no cause for concern?
They will see thesemodest rises as part of a general warming beginning in the early 1900s as the world emerged from the Little Ice Age, when it had grown cooler for 400 years.
They will also see this scare relied on computer modelprojections which failed to explain why the temperature rises they had predicted came virtually to a halt after 1998.
The fact is that campaigning groups like Friends of the Earth jumped on a bandwagon of alarmism, the roots of which were in the alarmist IPCC Summary for Policymakers.
These summaries shamelessly distorted the evidence contained in the main report, picking out and ramping up scary bits which had no basis whatsoever in real climate science.
Dr John Cameron. 10 Howard Place, St Andrews.