Listen to the teachers

IT should hardly be a surprise that the response by opposition parties to the publication of the OECD report is to pull out their bingo cards of appropriate political cliches and call the report a “damning judgment” while trotting out vague suggestions about how reform should take place. Education is, after all, one of the biggest open goals in politics. There is always something to criticise but, in the end, everyone is happy when it’s somebody else’s responsibility to fix it.

We now find Curriculum for Excellence, roundly bashed from all quarters, being described as “visionary” while our qualifications system with its “gold standard” Highers is seen as a 19th-century relic which is a barrier to the aims of the curriculum. While many have agonised over our slide down international league tables few have been keen to acknowledge that countries doing well have tended to praise Curriculum for Excellence and express disbelief at what they see as our obsession with testing and exams.

If anyone is serious about achieving excellence or even just improvement in our education system is it not beyond time to put aside political and critical, and replace them with collaborative and analytical – funnily enough, two of the skills that CFE tries to inculcate? Listening to teachers’ concerns and working co-operatively with them to solve any problems that arise would be a start.

Robin Irvine,

Helensburgh.