Schools must be top priority

I confess that I had to brace myself to read Steven Paterson’s column in your newspaper last week, anticipating correctly his predictable comments about nasty Westminster and the same boring, tedious, old rhetoric.

He clearly misses the irony of his comments about the narrow interests of a political party.

This is from the representative of a party whose sole aim is to achieve independence at any cost, to the exclusion of attending to the many serious domestic matters which our country so desperately wants his party to address.

This generation of schoolchildren is completely ignored as his party tramples over them and their right to have a good education in a desire to achieve their transcending-all dream of independence.

Children are being taught in larger than ever classes, the 2007 manifesto pledge of reducing class sizes to 18 for P1-3 and 24 for P4-7 a distant memory. Over a quarter of children leave primary school without achieving an adequate level of English and maths.

At secondary school, pupils could be in a situation where their teacher is having to teach Nat4, Nat5 ,Higher and Advanced Higher simultaneously in the one class.

What can be done to help these children? Baby boxes and other populist initiatives do not improve the hopeless situation that they, their parents and teachers are trapped in as a result of SNP education policies and lack of governance.

Respect should be shown to the majority of Scots who do not want another divisive referendum.

We do not want to take a leap in the dark over an independence cliff. Our schoolchildren deserve to have this educational mess addressed urgently now so the focus should be on taking responsibility for this and not on not on humouring Nicola Sturgeon on her relentless, destructive path to achieving her teenage dream.

name and address supplied