Blame poverty, not poor schools

Sir, – Your regular unionist correspondent Jill Stephenson attacks the Scottish Government again on Monday for “a failing schools system which functions reasonably well in more affluent areas but lets down pupils in poorer areas”.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a charity working “to solve UK poverty”, state, on the basis of their 114 years of experience working in this field, that “it is well known that children growing up in poorer families emerge from school with substantially lower levels of educational achievement... educational deficits emerge early in children’s lives, even before school, and widen throughout childhood”.

Ms Stephenson, being an educationalist, knows full well that the main cause of poor school attainment is not poor schooling, but poverty.

And I’m sure she also knows full well that the powers which affect poverty, one way or the other, such as tax, benefits, economic policy etc, are held by the Conservative Government at Westminster, which has pursued a policy of austerity for the last 10 years, driving more and more families deeper into poverty, whilst, at the same time, handing out massive tax cuts to the rich.

A Conservative party which Scotland has rejected at the ballot box for almost all of my life. Les Mackay. Carmichael Gardens, Dundee.

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As we have failed to educate the vandals, it seems to me we need a new environmental service, staffed by burly, shavenheaded wardens accompanied by powerful Alsatians with the power to force litter louts to clear up