Exit excellence

How refreshing it was to read Kirsty Gunn’s article (Perspective, 25 June), about results being the main – almost sole – focus of the Curriculum for Excellence.

Creative Writing should be part and parcel of the entire curriculum, which is now controlled almost completely by the need to satisfy its bureaucratic system, dominated by ticking boxes. Sadly, the Curriculum for Excellence has turned out to be anything but excellent. Even 20 years ago, one of my teachers had a notice on his desk saying, “And when do we teach?”

Kirsty refers to the tutorial system at Oxford and Cambridge. Critics might think this is elitist nonsense. Far from it. Students there are encouraged to think out of the box, and even to make mistakes, so that they can learn from them, as critic Peter Mcdonald, whom Kirsty mentions, suggests. That, too, should happen in schools. Sadly it does not.

The Scottish education system used to be the envy of the world. Now it languishes near the bottom of most international league tables, despite the government’s attempts to disguise the reality. Let us now be bold, allow our students to make mistakes and to think for themselves, and not to be restricted by the far from excellent curriculum which is currently destroying their creativity. FRANK GERSTENBERG (former Principal, George

Watson’s College) East Links Road, Gullane