ON May 16 you carried a winsome photograph of an 11-year-old Inverness Royal Academy schoolgirl with a violin and her mother's reported refusal to pay Highland Council tuition fees of #90 for a once-a-week lesson. The director of education is quoted as asking why ''children whose parents refuse to pay tuition fees should be allowed to hang on to instruments when there could be other children who want those instruments''.
Your report leaves some unanswered questions. In fact, maybe your reporter never asked them. The use of the words ''there could be'' seems to imply that there are no other children waiting to use those precious instruments. In that case, what gives the director of education the right to impose tuition fees?
We all have to pay council tax to fund a whole range of local services, and we accept that some people are bound to benefit from those services more than others. Ask anyone in Wick or Durness how much benefit they get from our wonderful Aquadome or Sports Centre in Inverness. Or ask any penniless student whether they grudge the money spent on social services for the old and infirm. Obviously, people who have no children get no direct benefit from the huge sums of money expended on education.
But if people are going to be charged for their child's education in addition to council tax, why then discriminate against music? Is there no longer any place for this valuable aspect of our culture in State education? And what next? Will there be extra ''tuition fees'' for art materials and language tapes and sports equipment, or what?
Is there any chance you could send your reporter back to ask the questions he/she should have asked in the first place?
Iain W Cameron,
30 Souter Drive, Inverness.
May 18.
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