Additional ideas

The recent report by exam officials noting the poor calculator-free skills of “advanced” maths examinees highlights the fact that several illthought-out changes to the Scottish curriculum have turned simple arithmetic into complex arithmetic – to the disadvantage of all.

A lifetime passes for many of us without finding any use for maths, yet not a day passes when we don’t use arithmetic. I suggest the former is irrelevant until the latter is mastered. Sadly, all that was lost when Scotland dropped the O Grade Arithmetic exam. I suggest that this is immediately reinstated as a compulsory subject for every pupil (and not just a few teachers, too).

TIM FLINN Beech Cottage, Garvald, East Lothian

Instead of bemoaning the poor standards of basic numeracy highlighted in Higher Maths exams, why not just update the assessment programme to better reflect the emphases of Scottish schooling?

The candidates unable to perform relatively simple calculations unaided could excel if tested on their human rights, inequality, climate change, drugs types, gender stereotyping, internationalism, multiculturalism, diversity, religious pluralism, feminist principle, and queer theory.

The answer, of course, is that such indoctrination should not be allowed to distract from the proper objectives of education, but will any Holyrood party point this out? Of course not, because they all espouse the philosophies being thrust onto kids in our schools.

RICHARD LUCAS Scottish Family Party, Bath Street, Glasgow