As a parent who wants only the best for her children in terms of education I’ll be watching the responses to this. My eldest is in P4 and is one of 33 in his class – however, his teacher this year is a wonderfully engaging teacher with over 30 years of experience and my son’s report this term showed a marked improvement from last year when he was one of 25 in a classroom taught by two newly qualified teachers who had done the one year postgraduate qualification.

Personally I’d like to see a scenario where newly qualified teachers are placed into a classroom with an experienced teacher and given more guidance and assistance from the ‘old hacks’ as it were. With so many of our teachers being forced to temporarily leave the profession after their first year due to lack of jobs this would make more sense than these teachers (who have been trained with public funds after all) taking other jobs to maintain an income.

I have to say I’m uncomfortable with your proposal to devolve more decision making to schools rather than the local authority, mostly because this scheme does not seem to have worked well for the service user in the NHS health trust model. The so-called ‘postcode lottery’ would surely apply in schools if this were to happen and we’d be left with an education model like the English with parents fighting to get their children into what are perceived as the best schools rather than their local catchment schools.

Also – call me a cynic but I would take a guess that the reason GCC have cut investment in education is an attempt to solve the deficit brought on by a massive payout to workers previously discriminated against on the basis of gender.