It's foolish to give children the idea that rules are optional

Unfortunately, Professor Boyd, bullies do "roam corridors" safe in the knowledge that nothing much will happen to them. Professor Boyd is correct that senior management in all schools put much effort into a discipline policy, however, it is mainly centred on "restorative practice" and telling out-of-control young people that they "have just made some poor choices today" and so on. Parents may be called up as a last resort, however exclusion for more than a day or two is virtually unheard of.

Few would want the belt brought back, however Prof Boyd must realise that giving young people the idea that rules are optional is doing no one any favours.

Joe Kerr, Glasgow.

• IN my letter on school discipline of August 4, I began by identifying the problem, namely that that 23,010 violent incidents were logged in the last school year, that those figures entail an increase of 53% since pre-pandemic, and that police disarmed children of weaponry 191 times.

We need a solution but I criticised the fact that when the issue is debated in these columns, your learned contributors instantly take up their default positions, whether it be attacking a return to effective corporal punishment or fining the parents of the feral kids.

One is then left with the awkward question: why should the decent well-behaved bullied pupils cower at home while their assailants prowl the corridors? What solution is offered by those taking up the default positions?

As if to exemplify my very point, Professor Brian Boyd wades in. He condemns corporal punishment at considerable length but he will be well aware that the Scottish Government looks enviously at educational attainment in South-east Asia, where these countries have retained corporal punishment. He skirts around the option of fining parents (which works well in European countries), and tries to distract by highlighting my use of the term "feral kids" though the Oxford Dictionary defines the adjective as aggressive, menacing and untrained. Finally, he ascribes to me something I did not say, namely that schools are not trying so many methods. I argued that soft-touch methods are being employed which blatantly do not work. Yes we would all welcome more teachers, smaller classes, more support for children with additional needs; but with so much experience in education, I invite Professor Boyd to proffer his solution in the current economic reality.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing.

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Top marks for exam articles

WITH the publication of last week’s SQA exam results it was no surprise that some of the usual suspects were quick to condemn what they saw as the continuing failures of Scotland’s high schools. So it was gratifying to read the considered articles by James McEnaney and Andrea Bradley, EIS General Secretary ("Why Scots pupils still suffer from the fall-out of Covid-era damage”, and “'There is a price to pay for political choices resulting in underinvestment’”, both August 11). They correctly reminded readers of the challenging circumstances that our teachers, students and their parents are having to endure, not least the punishing long-term effects of the pandemic coming on top of the brutal years of austerity.

Eric Melvin, Edinburgh.

We must boost ASN funding

AS a coalition of organisations that support vulnerable children and young people, we have for a number of years shared the concerns of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) over a lack of staffing and resources to support educational recovery post-Covid.

The number of those with ASN, such as autism, dyslexia and mental health problems, now amounts to more than a third of pupils, a doubling in numbers over the past decade. This has increased due to greater identification, as well as rising levels of poverty and mental health problems, exacerbated by the damaging ongoing impacts of Covid-19 lockdowns and the cost of living crisis.

However, this scenario is set against the increasingly challenging backdrop of a lack of specialist teachers, support staff and the resources needed to support those with ASN. The number of specialist ASN teachers, for example, has declined by over 540 from 2012, with a slashing in spending of £1,870 per pupil from 2012/13 for those identified with ASN.

This is putting an incredible level of pressure on teachers and other staff, with an impact also in terms of surging levels of school violence and poor behaviour we are witnessing.

Our schools require significantly increased investment from the Scottish Government and local authorities, without which we are facing a lost generation of vulnerable children and young people.

The Scottish Children’s Services Coalition: Kenny Graham, Falkland House School; Lynn Bell, LOVE Learning; Stephen McGhee, Spark of Genius; Niall Kelly, Young Foundations, Edinburgh.

Carstairs wing a waste of money

I NOTED with interest in Dani Garavelli's interview that Angela Constance is insistent that a completely new facility is being planned to be built at Carstairs solely to house female prisoners, instead of the existing perfectly satisfactory arrangement of them being sent to Rampton in England (“Scotland’s Justice Secretary: ‘I had to account for a harsh reality’”, August 11).

From other freely available press information, these individuals are few in number - only three or four - and are therefore currently treated on a cost-efficient basis along with others in England, there being a critical mass across both countries. It therefore beggars belief that in the current financially-pressured environment, and presumably simply so that the SNP can state that these people are being treated in Scotland, and not (whisper it) in England, the Scottish Government is even considering spending large sums of money to build a complete "new wing". Perhaps Ms Constance could share with us the existing annual cost at Rampton, and the cost of the proposed new construction project at Carstairs, for us to make our own comparison.

I am sure that the hundreds of patients in Scotland currently suffering from increased waiting times and delayed cancer treatments will be absolutely delighted that the SNP is prioritising funds to build a facility simply to house a handful of women already receiving perfectly good treatment a five-hour drive away. Once again economic reality and the efficient use of our higher Scottish levels of tax are alien concepts when faced with the petty nationalistic politics of the SNP.

Steph Johnson, Glasgow.

Angela Constance (Image: PA)

Why the council secrecy?

FOR some time now our local council (East Renfrewshire) has decided that we are in a need-to-know category when it comes to details of their income and expenditure figures.

In years gone by we were provided with that information in a leaflet enclosed with our council tax demand.

Recently I have been attempting to tease the figures from them but for reasons best known to themselves they have seen fit to keep us in the dark.

Their cagey attitude leaves us with no choice but to believe that there is something to hide.

Anthony McCarthy, Barrhead.

Hold off on defence review

FOR me the really insightful stuff in David Pratt’s latest Ukranian war report ("Battle of Kursk 2.0 may prove to have profound significance", August 11) is his description of the continuing economic intercourse of the two protagonists.

We know that they have come to some sort of modus operandi over grain production and its export through the Black Sea. This is partly to do with the development of shore to ship-missile-technology which has turned many semi-enclosed waterways into a scenario of shooting fish in a barrel.

However it’s the flow of Russian energy supplies, quite literally underneath a battlefield, to some of “our friends and allies” that’s really intriguing.

The “butchers bill” in Ukraine, as mass slaughter is sometimes termed, is high; thousands of young and apparently on the Ukrainian side, not so young, men are dying. Yet quite literally as the carnage goes on in real time so does a real live ongoing double-entry financial bookkeeping relationship between the Ukrainian state and Russia’s Gazprom.

There is a case to be made that this current war in Ukraine has key hallmarks of an 18th century “cabinet war”, with aims and objectives less than existential. The main determinant of cabinet wars is that they are about national interests rather than “national security”.

Successive UK Defence and Security Reviews (SDSRs) fail to clearly differentiate one iteration of security from the other. The new SDSR of the new government may be no different in that regard, it will almost certainly be as delusional of those that have gone before. To hold off writing it until at least after we have the outcome of the US presidential election would at least nod in the direction of geopolitical reality. Is that too much to ask of the government of Great Britain.

Bill Ramsay, Glasgow.