THE UK Government has pledged to provide every region

in England with funding for a specialist maths school. Surely no other subject is victim to such unremitting negative sentiments. Far too often one hears comments like ‘’I hated maths in school’’ or ‘’I was rubbish at maths’’ expressed openly and almost proudly.

Somehow it’s okay for people to chuckle about not being good at maths. Yet if I said “I never learned to read,” they’d say I was an illiterate dolt.

The present lamentable attitude to mathematics will not change until parents themselves show a positive attitude towards the subject, and those who teach it truly love it and are enthusiastic to share that love with their pupils. Mathematics is a verb – a doing subject.

The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, clearly understands the power and value of mathematics to both our society and the economy. While England produced Isaac Newton and Alan Turing, Scotland produced James Clerk Maxwell, whose genius was recognised by Einstein. Let us hope that the Scottish Government matches this wonderful initiative south of the Border.

As the recently deceased African-American mathematician Katherine Johnson (a subject of the movie Hidden Figures) said: “Some things will drop out of the public eye and go away, but there will always be science, engineering, and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics.”

Doug Clark
Currie, Midlothian

A FEW weeks ago Emeritus Professor of Education Brian Boyd wrote a letter to The Herald about the links between poverty and underachievement in education, and I must confess to letting out a cheer on reading it.

He also made mention of people without any educational expertise confidently commenting on the issues. Another cheer! I’ve been thinking about his points since then.

Of course we can always do better and should be constantly seeking to improve, but I believe there has been a campaign from critics of the Scottish National Party to unfairly malign Scottish education.

I should declare myself to be a retired teacher having taught in a variety of situations from early years to adults with literacy problems. I loved teaching and would declare it to be the most rewarding and creative job that you can do. But it is not an easy job and the more society becomes fragmented and distanced from the social norms of the past, the more difficult it becomes.

There are key questions about the place of private schools in any society and how they disadvantage the majority population.

Not only do private schools absorb some excellent teachers from out of the public sphere, but they also put on display a physical manifestation of hierarchy and difference.

The United Kingdom is one of the most class-divided countries in Europe, deeply attached to conservative ideas and hostile to change and modernity. We see this daily in the institutions of the monarchy, the aristocracy, the House of Commons and its culture and the House of Lords.

Poor children who have grown up in this decade of inequality and food-bank culture are also going to be affected by the mental stresses faced by families who struggle to pay the bills. This is a psychological process which breeds shame and inadequacy.Those who are more priviledged develop stereotypes about poverty and inadequacy. Private schools, on the whole, for all their claims of fairness, develop in children confidence and superiority which may not be entirely merited.

This does not provide the basis of a happy and tolerant society which looks to the future.

An independent Scotland should develop excellent comprehensive schools.

Maggie Chetty
Glasgow

IN these strangest of times I found the most chilling words in Thursday’s edition to be: “I can see why some MPs would want to go to Holyrood. If you’re a talented SNP MP would you really want to spend the next five or 10 years at Westminster or would you prefer to get into Holyrood, become a minister and achieve things.”

With a perspective like that we have ample evidence of the navel-gazing currently under way in the upper echelons of the alleged party of independence.

I had thought that it was the British state which was the agency behind the Machiavellian proceedings currently under way in another part of Edinburgh but it would appear that that’s not the case and we have yet another instance of the perfidy of party insiders.

Once upon a time the SNP represented the entirety of the independence movement, but now that movement is much greater than the sum of its parts, of which the SNP is only one, and it is clear – if Kathleen Nutt’s report in yesterday’s National is accurate – that the Yes movement must be rid of these corrosive “insiders”. We cannot possibly wait for five or 10 years for SNP MPs spectating at the Wastemonster panto to destroy our country’s future.

Iain Bruce
Nairn