The businessman and philanthropist Sir Tom Hunter has called for failing teachers in Scotland to be sacked.
Sir Tom said that the "taboo" subject had to be tackled in a speech at the Scotland Office in London.
"If a teacher is not so good then they need to be moved out. Because our children's future depends on it," he said.
"It seems to be this taboo subject. 'Oh no we can't go there.' But we must go The Ayrshire-born businessman said that Scotland should also treat many of its teachers "like the heroes and heroines that they are".
Sir Tom, who founded high street chain Sports Division, also called for schools across to teach pupils a "can do" attitude.
"We have got to change our mindset," he said.
"We need to educate our young people in the skills of 'can do', the skills of confidence."
In his talk, entitled "Scotland's future: The 2nd enlightenment", he called for a combined approach that focused on what he described as 'scale up' companies - those growing by 20 per cent a year- and education.
"Let's build upon the good that is there (in Scotland's education) system to make it great, he said. "Let's learn from countries like Singapore".
He also quoted Larry Page, one of the co-founders of Google, who said that he had found too many people tended to assume that things were impossible rather than applying real world physics to discover what was actually possible. Sir Tom also also hit out at the "madness" of educating university students from outside the EU and then "kicking them out".
"Are we mad?", he asked an invited audience.
"This is the positive side of immigration. This is where people make a real contribution to our country and we are not allowing them to stay? I think we are mad."
He said he would be happy to talk about the issue with the Home Secretary Theresa May.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel