Why retired teachers could help close the attainment gap
YOUR report (“Quality state schools can phase out private rivals”, April 19) highlights the attainment gap in education.
Poverty and educational inequality have co-existed for a long time. I started teaching at the age of 19 in a Fife mining community, where deprivation stared me in the face.
I came across one wee girl whose attendance at school was very erratic. When I questioned her, she tearfully explained that she could not manage to school every day because she had to share a pair of shoes with her brother. The “shoes” were a pair of leaky welly boots.
My sister came to the rescue with some second-hand shoes, which led to an immediate improvement in attendance and attainment.
There were great hopes and expectations that the comprehensive revolution of the 1960s would narrow the attainment gap.
When he was Secretary of State for Scotland, Willie Ross introduced comprehensive education without even the need for an Act of Parliament. He simply sent out a circular to all local authorities telling them to abolish selection and fee-paying in all state schools.
Such radical measures certainly helped, yet here we are, over half a century later, still talking about the need to narrow the attainment gap. It would be wrong, of course, to confuse equality of attainment with equality of opportunity. The former is unachievable but the latter is both achievable and desirable.
What, then, can be done to improve the attainment of pupils from deprived areas?
First of all, extra resources must be concentrated on those who are most in need. Smaller class sizes, homework clubs and the provision of home internet connection would help, but I have always believed that the most valuable educational resource is a good teacher and sometimes good teaching requires one-to-one communication, especially for pupils who experience difficulties.
An increasing number of parents seem to be paying for extra private tuition for their children but many parents on low incomes simply cannot afford the additional cost. The inevitable result is a widening of the attainment gap.
The Scottish Government should intervene by organising and paying for the recruitment of a pool of unemployed and retired teachers who are willing to give a few hours’ or even one hour per week’s tuition to young people from deprived home backgrounds.
Most retired teachers understandably want to enjoy their retirement but there may be some with time on their hands who would be very capable of giving one-to-one tuition, possibly in the comfort their own home, when Covid restrictions are eased.
At the start of the current pandemic, retired NHS staff were asked to consider helping out. The same pandemic threatens to widen even further the educational attainment gap, with long-term devastating consequences for a whole generation of deprived young people. Would enough retired teachers respond to the challenge? An imaginative recruitment campaign is worth a try.
Dennis Canavan, Bannockburn.