Exclusive:Invest in private primary schooling or risk lifelong damage to children's education, warns head teacher
Antonia Berry of The High School of Glasgow warns parents should invest in primary schooling to give their children the best academic chance
The head of Scotland's oldest school has issued a stark warning to parents that a "disappointing" state school start will damage their child's learning potential for life.
Antonia Berry, rector of The High School of Glasgow, said parents are being forced to make stark financial choices in the wake of Labour’s introduction of VAT to school fees.
But she claimed parents who choose to save money by delaying independent school until secondary level are making the wrong choice.
Pupils who come to the independent school from state primaries lack skills in numeracy and literacy that mean they struggle to keep up, she claimed.
Writing for The Scotsman, Ms Berry added: “We see this every single year. We see it when pupils who join us later are bright, articulate and well-motivated, yet face disproportionate difficulty with the academic load.
“We see it when literacy limits performance across subjects, not just English.
“We see it when numeracy anxiety appears not in Maths, but in Chemistry, Physics and Economics.
“By secondary, it is rarely intelligence that holds pupils back. It is foundation.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said the state system remains “committed to ensuring every child and young person has the same opportunity to succeed, and that education remains ambitious, inclusive, and supportive, as outlined in the National Improvement Framework”.
Ms Berry points to international research that shows early education has the longest-term impact on pupil learning.
In a damning indictment of the state school sector, the head teacher said children in the private sector learn “resilience, independence and curiosity” as the norm.
At the High School of Glasgow, 90 per cent of pupils who join in primary one become a year ahead of their chronological age in reading and maths by the age of six, Ms Berry said.
One in two of those pupils go on to achieve 5 As at Higher when that figure nationally is one in 20, she added.
For pupils who arrive from state primary schools, the “foundations for success” have not been laid and “secondary then becomes a rescue mission rather than a launchpad.”
“Educational leverage does not come at 15. It comes at six,” she added.
“And the difference lasts a lifetime.”
In her opinion piece, Ms Berry described the experience of a fee-paying school pupil at the age of seven as one who “reads fluently, decodes unfamiliar words confidently and approaches written work without fear.”
A state school pupil of the same age “still labours over basic decoding, avoids reading aloud and quietly dreads anything that involves a page of text,” she said.
Scottish Labour Education spokesperson Paul O’Kane said “the solution” to giving children an equal playing field is “not to fork out thousands on private school fees”.
He said: “Teachers and staff at Scotland’s state schools are working tirelessly to give children the education they deserve in the face of nearly two decades of SNP mismanagement.
“Every child in Scotland deserves an education system that unlocks their potential, regardless of their postcode or their parents’ ability to pay.”
The Scottish Government spokesman added: “Scotland’s state schools are delivering for children and young people.
“Scotland continues to have the lowest pupil-teacher ratio and the best paid teachers in the UK. “Attainment levels are at a record high in literacy at 74.5 per cent and numeracy at 80.3 per cent.”
The High School of Glasgow was originally founded as the choir school of Glasgow Cathedral in around 1124, making it the oldest school in Scotland and the 12th oldest in the UK.
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