I AM an educator, but I am, out of choice, no longer a teacher. The hard facts around Scottish education resonate deeply about us, and for my family are deeply rooted within, as I have three children of school age.
Dissatisfied with the direction of teaching generally, I had opted last year to try something different, having taught for nearly 20 years within the secondary system. The Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) had spelled the death knell for my enthusiasm for teaching, and had sucked the joy from education for myself, many of my colleagues and the students themselves. My sons attend one of the council’s new and impressive PFI-funded schools and are about to embark on senior phase course choices. Like many other parents, and the teaching staff of the school itself, I am appalled by the limited subject choices on offer to students.
Subjects appear in one choice column only, and there is little or no apparent flexibility within the choices on offer. Contemporary subjects such as computing and physics are pitted against one another, while in another column, the only moderately academic subject is biology, as the remainder come from the technical department mainly. What has become of ensuring that children benefit from a broad and balanced curriculum? Why can my child not fit a language or physics into a basic s4 timetable?
The appalling lack of contemporary subjects geared towards the future as each school takes its own approach, lacking a firm and well thought out structure, has become glaringly obvious. The lack, too, of a level playing field over time spent in coursework, and opportunities on offer vary from authority to authority and school to school. My dilemma is: should I uproot my family to a completely new location and region to ensure the academic opportunities that all children should be entitled to?
Veronica Lynch,
Keepers Cottage, Laggan Estate, Crieff.
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