I WORKED in Scottish education for 34 years, 20 of them as a secondary school head teacher. Although retired I will never lose my passion for pupils achieving their full potential. I am greatly concerned about the current debacle around P1 testing (“Swinney to ignore Holyrood vote over P1 tests”, The Herald, September 20, and Letters, September 21) because I see it as a hindrance rather than a help. Can I use a simple example to show why I think the government is wrong not just on P1 testing but on its whole approach to assessment?
I do not know if Mr Swinney is a football fan but let me use that sport to justify my beliefs. Teaching is like being a football coach. You watch the players, you see their strengths and weaknesses, you work with them on a daily basis. You set up training regimes to help them develop their skills. When they play you see how possession is won and lost, you see and analyse how goals are scored and lost. Most importantly you build a picture of your players' ability and their needs by working with them on a regular basis.
What you don't need is to go home and watch the results programme at 5pm, all that gives you is the score. You as the coach do not need that because you know, not just the score but how the score was achieved. How it was achieved will give you the evidence to move your players to the next level. The current standardised test is simply Final Score (there are other results programmes available).
The Government needs to look seriously at its approach to assessment. We do far too much of it in Scotland. One of the best quotes I learned many years ago was "you don't fatten a pig by weighing it". The way forward is trusting teachers, giving them the resources to be the best coaches, reward them well and stop wasting time with meaningless, bean-counting assessment, so loved by people who do not understand education. Spend more time educating our children and watch their abilities increase.
David A MacKenzie,
12 Torridon Place, Kinross.
OUR education system is slowly sinking in the west. The sun has gone down on our traditional excellence.
So maybe it is time to restructure the school year and the school day in such a way that we create opportunities for improving the quality of our education. It is time for common sense to rear its head once more.
Unless we ask what the purpose of schools is and what they are best suited to achieve not only for the individual but also for the community, we will continue on our downward spiral.
Preparation for work in the modern world is one aspect of education. Also to be taken into account is exposing our youngsters to the best in literature and the mythologies which infuse our literature.
Sharpening the critical faculties of our school cohorts so that they can make dispassionate judgments is essential to creating a proper body politic.
Where today we spend so much time on reinventing the wheel, as it were, we should be getting back to drilling our kids in the basics of literacy and numeracy Without a sound grounding in the basics, it is not really possible to build up the expertise which underpins all three intertwined aims of education.
The traditional classroom framework has to play a part in our classrooms where the teacher instructs and leads the class instead of being, as teachers are expected to be in modern parlance, facilitators.
Once the essential drilling in the basics is achieved,there is room for co-operative class discussion and collaboration.
If the school year were divided into four blocs of 10 weeks with three weeks holiday after each bloc for the youngsters, teachers having only two weeks holiday, the other week devoted to preparation and in-service training, this would, in my view, be more productive for the pupils and allow teaching staff to concentrate their efforts on ways of ensuring a return to the high standards we all once took for granted.
As for the secondary school day, the morning from nine to one would be devoted to academic and vocational subjects, the afternoon from two to four-thirty reserved for drama, music, art and sports' activities.
Youngsters would not enter primary school until the age of seven, their day being somewhat similar to the secondary day except that inculcating the basics in literacy and numeracy as well as introducing them to the stories which have stood the test of time would take up their morning, aesthetic subjects filling their afternoons.
Thus there would be a balance between individual performance and group activity with an element of competition to keep everyone sharp.
Unless some drastic reshaping occurs on such lines, we are doomed to flounder in the morass which is dragging our standards down.
It is time the soft woolly thinking which has dominated our decline for so long was replaced by clear-headed thinking to arrest and to reverse the steep nosedive which has our youngsters in an unnerving spin. Without such a blueprint, we will get nowhere fast.
Let teachers teach.
Denis Bruce,
5 Rannoch Gardens, Bishopbriggs.
AS the Education Secretary presses ahead with the testing of pupils in P1, I can only conclude that all wills of the Scottish Parliament are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Mike Flinn,
17 Avondale Road, West Kilbride.
MUCH blame is heaped on Government and schools with regard to children's attainment. Many people overlook the fact that parents are the primary educators of their children.
A readiness for what follows at nursery and school depends on whether children have been talked to, played with and read to. The parks and libraries are free. Young children absorb their surroundings from birth.
The foundations laid down at this time are essential. Pity any child whose parent spends more time perusing their mobile phone than talking to the child. The initial assessment of children when they start school can highlight shortcomings in the children's early years, providing teachers with a basis for learning.
Margaret Pennycook,
42 Aytoun Road, Glasgow.
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