I’D like to warn against a creeping anti-intellectualism found in some of the arguments surrounding higher education. Coming from a place where a fairly small minority go to university, I was often told by school and workmates that if I must get a degree, I should at least get a vocational one: something that bears a guaranteed wage return on my investment. But that is both to block off vast areas of knowledge to the upper classes and to underestimate the social value of a degree itself. The attitude is so common in some places that it can feel imprisoning. When making the case for the efficacy of university for working-class students taking on a greater debt burden, we should be careful not to end up saying that the really thinky stuff just isn’t for the likes of some.

It would be good if the warning was heeded by educators of the same opinion as Professor John Lennon at Glasgow Caledonian’s business school, who thinks that some subjects are taught too esoterically at Russell Group universities. I would ask him, if a university isn’t the place for thinking about "the meaning of meaning" then where on earth is? And should we not be working towards a situation where the opportunity to do so is open to all?

Gavin Prentice,

17 Dalnair Street, Glasgow.

MARIANNE Taylor's article on tuition fees ("Times are grim enough... let's not scrap tuition fees", The Herald, September 17) hits the nail on the head when she, concisely and accurately, describes free Scottish university education as a societal choice which invests in the development of our young people for the future.

The continuation of free tuition fees should be a cause for celebration, as Ms Taylor correctly points out, at a time of tangible political and economic uncertainty for the UK as a whole and for what the future may hold post Brexit.

To describe free higher education as a "prop for the middle classes", as one anonymous senior academic recently did, is a pathetically contrived attempt to discredit the policy by implying, with a broad brush approach, that fees are waived for people who can well afford them. The quote is not only erroneous but also archaic in comprehending the multifaceted composition of our Scottish student body.

To reintroduce tuition fees would be to saddle a multitude of individual students and families with years of debt whilst being entirely counterproductive to the laudable aim of increasing the number of young people from deprived backgrounds into higher education.

In addition to assessing the possibility of additional investment to higher education perhaps the Scottish Government should have a short-term review regarding the hugely over-inflated salaries and perks for university principals for what is essentially a "ceremonial" role. This could include an examination of their remits and of their executive teams to ensure that the sector is getting value for money from those in senior positions.

As Cicero, the great Roman philosopher once said: "Thrift is of great revenue."

Owen Kelly,

8 Dunvegan Drive, Stirling.

TOMMY Sheridan went through the same state run pseudo-Catholic education system as I. Perhaps in the five-year difference between us, my generation was blessed with the tales of Wallace and Bruce in history he was denied as he claims on Russian TV ("Sheridan blames ignorance of Wallace on education", The Herald, September 17). I would however find that difficult to believe considering compulsory Modern Studies in the first two years of secondary education was cancelled just as I went up from primary, precisely because the Labourite-dominated Strathclyde Regional Council feared it was giving future generations bright ideas about voting for other parties than reflex voting for themselves as their parents had for decades for little return.

They could not however interfere in the content of the subjects that remained, so history – Wallace and all – remained intact.

Ironically, the local private school kids I met later at the University of Glasgow were taught even more Scottish history than we ever were – and if those citadels to High Toryism wished to create a generation of rabid Scottish nationalists somewhat to the far right of Siol nan Gaidheal, congratulations they succeeded, all having lurid stories of massacres at Berwick and Melrose, the Burnt Candlemas and all manner of English wrongs that had they occurred in Ireland would still be the subject of tortuous songs by bad folk acts playing grotty tarmac-roofed pubs in Glasgow's East End and Coatbridge.

Mark Boyle,

15 Linn Park Gardens, Johnstone, Renfrewshire.

IN response to Iain Macwhirter’s article on testing ("The real reason Sturgeon is taking on primary test critics", The Herald, September 12), I would point out that the overwhelming evidence from peer-reviewed research by educational experts is that standardised assessments offer data that is useless to teachers and skew the curriculum away from deep learning for pupils.

In the face of this overwhelming evidence, and compared to it, everything that John Swinney and the Scottish Government are currently saying about Scottish National Standardised Assessments (SNSAs) is quite simply propaganda, distortion and distraction, based on sheer assertion rather than evidence. Their intransigent obsession with them is bordering on the rantings of a cult.

The truth is Scottish teachers are opposed to standardised assessments at all stages, not just at P1. The best data they have on their pupils is that gleaned from the formative assessment they are engaged in every day in their classrooms – the latest P4, P7 or S3 data from SNSAs adds nothing of value to that, and the process of administering the SNSAs has been a waste of pupils' and teachers' time.

Particularly dreadful are the writing assessments which are frankly meaningless – they do not in fact test writing at all, but are purely about identifying aspects of grammar. You don't teach and assess young people pottery or sculpture by asking them to identify features of the clay they are using – you let them experiment with, and shape, the raw material they have at their disposal and you let them create. The same is true of language and writing. You assess pupils' writing after you have inspired their creativity and after you have let them write stories and poems and articles with meaningful purposes and audiences.

The results of SNSAs in writing are so meaningless, and so divorced from the Curriculum for Excellence and from the National Qualifications that await pupils in S4, that primary teachers and secondary English departments would be well-advised to ignore them completely. Hopefully one day soon MSPs will be voting on scrapping them at every level and not just Primary 1.

Allan Crosbie,

10 Montpelier, Edinburgh.