Time to go back to basics

Sir, - What on earth has happened to our education system?

We are hearing that almost a quarter of our primary school teachers are ‘not confident’ in their ability to teach numeracy.

If this is the current case we must reflect upon the fact that there has to be something seriously wrong with the concentration and direction of the training of probationary teachers.

It has been well documented that a growing number of pupils are leaving school devoid of an ability to effectively read and write.

At the risk of repetition our Scottish education system was once the envy of the world.

Sadly, that is not so today.

In fact statistics reveal we are well down the educational league compared to other countries.

We are all aware that the system has been starved of cash input over a number of years which has had an obvious impact upon performance.

Equally there seems to have been a shift from concentration on the traditional three Rs toward more abstract forms of supposed creative learning.

This appears to be a grievous error, and as an analogy of the need to return to basics my old granny had a saying, ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’.

Nothing is truer than that, and those charged with overseeing our education system would do well to adopt this simple philosophy and make basics a priority.

In my day even the most educationally challenged were able to leave school with at least a basic ability to read, write and count.

David L Thomson. 24 Laurence Park, Kinglassie.