Readers' letters: Goodwill cannot sustain additional support needs in classrooms

Teachers and support staff are doing everything they can, but goodwill cannot substitute for properly resourced services.

We support the presumption of mainstreaming, but inclusion must mean more than simply placing a child in a mainstream classroom. It requires specialist teachers, classroom assistants, educational psychologists, and other professionals needed to meet individual needs.

Without sustained investment, we risk failing not only staff under intolerable pressure, but a generation of vulnerable children and young people.

Scotland needs an education system where additional support is properly planned, staffed and funded – not one dependent on goodwill to keep it going.

The Scottish Children’s Services Coalition; Patrick Gannon, Falkland House School, Lynn Black, LOVE Care, Kenny Graham, Spark of Genius, Niall Kelly, Young Foundations, Edinburgh

Shrinking students

Clark Cross (yesterday) considers lecturers are overpaid and should not strike as that would damage attracting fee paying students. Unlike our schools, our universities remain centres of excellence, if academics are not paid adequately that advantage will be lost, we get what we pay for. My concern is that now the growth in overseas students has tailed off does this spell the end of universal free tuition for Scots? The latest data from HESA for 2024-25 shows Scots made up 62 per cent of students for all higher education courses down from 76 per cent in 2003 while those from non EU overseas students increased from 10 per cent to 23 per cent over the same period. The remaining 12 per cent were from the rest of the UK with 3 per cent from the EU.

There should not be a situation in Scotland where Scots are in the minority at Scottish universities such as at St Andrews and Edinburgh. It seems farcical that more students from London and Surrey attended Edinburgh University in 2024-25, for example, than from Edinburgh itself. Those coming to Scotland from the rest of the UK are not contributing as much financially as overseas students, typically around £9,700 against up to £40,000 pa from overseas. If tertiary education courses are to remain free for Scots then more overseas students will require to take the place of those from the rest of the UK but visa restrictions are preventing this. HESA data shows a decline of 10,000 overseas students in the academic year to 2023-24, as Mr Cross acknowledges, with struggling institutions like Dundee University most affected, down 27 per cent. 2024-25 saw a further decline of 4,000 overseas students.

Unless something changes quickly to ensure more overseas students come the SNP will face having to charge Scotland’s undergraduates tuition fees or watch our higher education system, once the envy of the world, crumble away.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Education issues

Theres were two letters (yesterday) criticising various aspects of Scottish universities and whilst they both raise important issues, there are points I’d like to make.

Firstly five Scottish universities appeared in the recent Sunday Times rankings top twenty, with St Andrews taking top spot, this is fantastic news.

Even those not making the top twenty overall, have world leading departments such as computer games and digital arts at Abertay.

So, Douglas Cross is discussing AI as a solution for universities, well they are already using it for many of the reasons he raises, but he suggests it wholesale as a sustainable way forward - sustainable perhaps for universities as institutions but not for the environment, not for critical human thinking and not for human creativity.

It’s currently destroying all three and unless we get a handle on that we cannot promote AI as a sort of miracle future for any education.

Then Clark Cross’ phrase about university lecturers “leading sheltered lives and earning high salaries” I find most unfair and I m not sure quite what he means (by the way I’m not nor ever have been a lecturer).

The average lecturer earns a similar amount to a senior teacher. Unlike them though it will have taken many years to get tenure. A lot of university courses are taught by post docs on short term contracts, who, like workers in other fields of course, have the stress of trying to get contracts extended or new ones every two to three years.

Both post docs and lecturers have to produce research as well as teach and indeed try and apply for the funding for that research from various, increasingly small, pots available.

The old ways of long vacations for professors and lecturers disappeared many years ago.

Cuts and redundancies are far more prevalent than, for example, in the civil service or teaching.

As for pensions, those for civil service, NHS and teachers are all as generous, if not superior, and tax payer funded.

I can assure Mr Cross that university lecturers feel the cold wind of reality blowing far more than he imagines.

Lorna Thorpe, Perth and Kinross

Rehashed revamp

The SNP draft proposals for a revamp of Scottish Local Government (up to 10 Regional Authorities and up to 160 community authorities) appears to be a rehash of the 1970 set up (9 Regional Authorities

and 53 District Councils).

If the concept failed in the 20th Century why does John Swinney assume it will work in the 21st Century?

The current proposals have two failings namely there are no outline maps detailing the locations of the 10 Regional Authorities but it would appear that it will be a revamp of the 1970 scheme with Argyll & Bute being pulled out of Strathclyde. The second problem is there are no costings included in the proposals or the increase in staff to cover a 3-fold increase in the number of units sitting under the top tier of Local Government.

That raises the question as to whether it is the SNP plan to cover the £5 billion black hole in the Holyrood budget by increasing the current Council Tax by £5bn and allocating the extra cash between Holyrood, Regional Authorities and Community Authorities. It would also mean additional public sector staff to meet a 300 per cent increase in Units supplying local services.

That only leaves a decision by Holyrood as to whether Household budgets can absorb a £2,000 a year increase In their Council Tax!

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway

Nations united

I’m heartened to hear Gordon Brown calling for new principles of global partnership excluding the United States and China pending a meeting of the United Nations on this issue (Monday). The UN in its current form has surely reached the end of its shelf life, given the veto powers of countries like Russia, China and the US on the (misnamed) UN security council in stymying its effectiveness in dealing with conflicts in Gaza, Iran, Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen, south east Asia, etc.

A grand alliance of the “willing” among middle ranking states is required, possibly drawing upon (in the first instance) article 42.7 of the EU’s founding treaty, which covers armed aggression against member states (and which could be extended to like-minded non-EU states, such as Canada, Norway, the UK and Ukraine, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and beyond). This alliance would in effect be a reconfigured UN, with a constitutional and funding framework developed by founder member states, with the security council left to wither on the vine.

Graham Atherton, Edinburgh

Lost seats

British politics are reshaping themselves dramatically. We have Reform storming up the electoral charts and Restore trying to stymie them. At the same time, the SNP is disappearing up their own fundaments by focussing on yet another failed attempt to get a referendum on independence. I should add that I am not a time-traveller telling everyone that their attempt will fail. It just will and we all know it. They all know it, but it's more fun than doing the day job, ken whit Ah mean?

No. The big news today is the Lib Dems actually voting themselves into oblivion at their conference. Ed Davey doesn't seem to know what they voted for, as he claims that they are trying to make sure that the Supreme Court decision on gender is 'implemented properly'.

In fact, the Lib Dems voted for the precise opposite saying that the rights of women and 'trans people are not in competition', so women and girls had better get used to men coming back into female-only single-sex spaces like changing rooms and lavatories. That caused a few headlines recently, but maybe they didn’t notice.

The remaining sensible Lib Dem women have described this as a 'massive act of self-harm', but I would call it electoral suicide. In fact, since the vote to treat women as 'second-class citizens', Zoe Hollowood who chairs Liberal Voice for Women says that two members have already left and that's in twenty-four hours. Many more to come, I suspect and lots of seats up for grabs at Westminster to add to the ones the SNP will lose north of the border.

Peter Hopkins, Edinburgh

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