Cuts to grants and teacher numbers must be reversed
AS one who grew up in one of the most deprived areas in Scotland, I welcome any measure which gives students from poor background a fairer chance of accessing university (“Extra places vow to help out students” , The Herald, June 29). Indeed, as somebody who works in a Scottish university and runs one of the UK’s top engineering programmes I know the challenges students from poor backgrounds face.
The problem universities face, however, is that schools serving deprived areas are simply not producing enough students to enable universities to meet the aspirations of the Scottish Government. This is a situation which is set to worsen if the real drop in literacy and numeracy standards in Scotland is evidenced in S5 and S6 exams results.
Universities have responded to this in three ways. First, there is now more competition for the few students from vulnerable areas who have the entry qualifications. Secondly, they now work harder to get more students from deprived areas to consider a university education. Thirdly, universities have lowered their intake scores for deprived areas to below the minimum acceptable. This approach has had some success, but access to university in Scotland still lags far behind the rest of the UK and the drop-out rate is a challenge.
While Universities Scotland has announced a welcome enhancement to this approach, it does not address the real problem – schools in deprived areas are not producing sufficient numbers of students which meet the entry criteria.
The real solution is obvious – we must invest in our most vulnerable communities. In the short term, the SNP Government’s significant cuts to the grant for poor students must be reversed. Above all else, however, we must reverse its cuts to teacher numbers and education spending. Only by doing this can we reverse the decline in literacy and numeracy we have seen in Scotland’s schools. This will give the next generation of Scots the grades they need to get to university and ensure they reach their full potential. Dr Scott Arthur, 27 Buckstone Gardens, Edinburgh. YOUR report on research from the Read On, Get On campaign (“Poverty link to language skills”, The Herald, June 29), highlights the most crucial problem facing Scottish education today –the fact that we have failed to make a significant impact on child literacy among the disadvantaged. The factors against progress are well known, are endlessly churned over and have left a trail of promising but failed ideas behind them.
Sadly, many of the young people at risk of falling through the system are brought up in households which do not even have a single book. Such children are not used to being in the company of an adult reading anything but captions on the TV. The form of English used in communication which they are exposed to at home is sometimes very far from what would be acceptable in many workplaces and is often of limited utility in a wider society. This is borne out by the Scottish Survey of Adult Literacies 2009 which stated: “Around one quarter of the Scottish population aged 16-64 (26.7 per cent) may face occasional challenges and constrained opportunities due to their skills but will generally cope with their day-today lives. Within this quarter of the Scottish population aged 16-64, we find that 3.6 per cent face serious challenges in their literacies practices.”
When teachers work with pupils on developing their communication skills they are perhaps inferring to the child at a subconscious level that what they are used to at home is somehow wrong. To young people who are already vulnerable this can feel like an attempt to undermine the only source of security they have.
The emergence of texting slang in constant use has perhaps only distanced our young people from what many educators would consider the right road to Scotland climbing the international league table of literacy skills.
It is easy to imagine that the parent or guardian should be more in partnership with the school. However many were themselves failed by the system which was ineffective in meeting their own learning needs and have a jaundiced concept of the value of schooling. This vicious circle requires a huge leap out of the box and while no one would wish to dumb down language we perhaps need to redefine our own concept of skill levels in the 21st century.
If the Scottish Qualifications Authority can now present a mathematics examination paper for Gaelic speakers perhaps it needs to take a much more comprehensive and critical view of appropriate language use and demands. This should be for all levels of society and in all parts of Scotland to address language barriers to learning and examination success in all subjects. Bill Brown, 46 Breadie Drive, Milngavie. YOU say in your editorial on the restructuring of promoted posts in West Dunbartonshire’s secondary schools (“School cuts could damage the life chances of pupils”, The Herald, June 29) that the plans involve the removal of depute head teachers from the majority of secondary schools. In fact, there will be a reduction from five to four or from four to three deputes in our largest secondaries.
In preparing these plans, we benchmarked our promoted post structure against four similar councils. We found that the West Dunbartonshire structure was much more generous, in terms of the numbers of deputes and principal teachers, than any of the other councils. Our new structure will be similar to that which has existed for several years in other parts of Scotland.
You say that, because of high levels of deprivation in West Dunbartonshire, it would be inappropriate to create “faculties” of cognate subjects, ignoring the fact that several other councils with very high levels of deprivation have successfully introduced similar models.
You imply that the removal of subject-specific principal teachers will adversely affect pupil attainment. There is no evidence of this in councils which have previously introduced faculties, or in those West Dunbartonshire schools which have had faculties for several years.
Raising attainment, like excellent learning and teaching, is not dependent on any specific structure. West Dunbartonshire has a proud record of raising attainment, particularly for the most disadvantaged young people. We will continue to do so in future, regardless of our staffing structures. Terry Lanagan, Executive director of educational services, West Dunbartonshire Council, Garshake Road, Dumbarton.