Teachers in crisis

Trinity Academy in Edinburgh has resorted to appealing to parents to help after failing to fill two maths teacher vacancies (“Teacher crisis leaves school to beg for paren-

tal support”, The Scotsman, 13 September).

Let us not kid ourselves any longer – the teaching profession in Scotland is in dire crisis, and it is our responsibility. How often must it be said that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing?

Just consider some of the things which our current teachers are expected cope with: very heavy workloads (often extending into home time), bad behaviour from both pupils and parents, insufficientpreparationtime,syllabuses which change with the weather and administrative duties that are as mindless as they are pointless.

We give our teachers the responsibility of nurturing the next generation, hamstring them with the above baggage, and then expect them to implement the six principles of nurture.

Let us not force our teachers to resort to the only weapon available to them – striking – in order to motivate us as parents to demand from the Secretary of State for Education a teaching profession of which we can all be proud.

DOUG CLARK Muir Wood Grove, Currie I travelled from Skye back to Edinburgh on Wednesday.

What should have been a straightforward journey, one I was anticipating with pleasure, was turned into an interminable slog as the result of being stuck in a lengthy queue of vehicles crawling along behind a very slow-moving convoy carrying wind turbine blades from the south end of Skye to Invergarry.

This was exacerbated as the A887 road running through Glen Moriston was closed due to roadworks.

That meant that all traffic had to turn right at the Glen Moriston junction and head