SNP in denial on education

Sir, – The SNP’S statements on the state of Scottish education are becoming ever more disingenuous.

After a decade of SNP control, during which they have knowingly squeezed local council budgets, forcing them to cut services including resources available to our schools, the SNP once again seek plaudits for a relatively modest increase, this time in the number of teachers, hoping people have forgotten the massive cuts that these follow on from.

Education Secretary John Swinney surely forgets that most of us were educated before he and his party got their hands on education.

We therefore know that the latest year’s increase of 543 teachers

provides little comfort against the net 3,570 teachers that we are still short of, compared with when the SNP came to power in 2007.

It is just the same with the £120 million attainment fund he and the First Minister refer to time and again, as if we will be fooled into thinking this is more significant than the many hundreds of millions of pounds that have been squeezed out of education budgets over the last decade.

The SNP promised class sizes would come down and they have not.

Teachers continue to do their best despite inadequate resources and having to work with the dysfunctional Curriculum for Excellence that seems to deliver anything but what its name implies.

Sadly, when it comes to education, denial appears to be the SNP’S default setting. Keith Howell. White Moss, West Linton.