RUTH Wishart’s article was a breath of fresh air on the subject of education (There’s a bigger problem than grades: exams, The National, August 10).

Politicians across the UK have shown themselves to have more concern for the integrity of “The System” than for the well being of young people. Square pegs and round holes does not begin to describe the cruel stupidity on display around the issue of exam results.

I don’t have children, but I would like to give a personal view on education using a literary link. In 1968 Barry Hines gave the world what I consider to be the greatest working-class character in the English language, namely Billy Casper, in A Kestrel For A Knave. In the following year he was made flesh by Dai Bradley, when he gave a stellar performance as Billy in the film Kes. Having been born and raised in a pit village in the East Midlands, Kes is a documentary, not a film, and I always wonder after watching the film, “where did Billy go from here?”. For a brief moment a teacher noticed that Billy was much more than the bag of rags hunched at a desk, but was that his one and only day in the sun?

Some contemporaries of mine who entered the daunting world of education on the same day as me were already sentenced by their family circumstances and the blindness of the state system to 11 wasted years, staring blankly at a blackboard, as ever larger quantities of facts, figures and dancing numbers were shovelled at them.

Only a tiny fraction of us had the good fortune to come into the orbit of a teacher who saw the spark of genius we all carry. For the vast majority of us, it was a case of make the best of it if you can, take it or leave it.

I was lucky in catching the reading bug early, which has left me reasonably literate, but if I was put up against an 11-year-old and tested on maths, I’m sure I’d be handed my *rse on a plate. I’m aware that state education is much better than when I experienced it in the 70s, but it could still room for it to be much, much more.

So here’s a challenge for all elected politicians across the UK. Do you think state education should produce worker bees, or rounded human beings capable of making sense of the world around them, armed with the skills to navigate the real world?

If it’s bees you want (or sheep, as the House Martins sang about), then carry on with “The System”. If not, then use the opportunity of this horrible year to reshape education provision from the cradle to the grave. Have a slow, play-based introduction to education.

Delay any formal education until children are seven years old. Introduce languages early in a play and song-based setting, as starting on foreign languages at 11 and delivering them as subjects leaves them as dead as Latin or Attic Greek to most youngsters. Make music a core part of school life from the beginning. Make the timing of any exams flexible in accordance with the uneven nature of development in young people.

And finally, fund a lifetime education budget, which would allow those who, for whatever reason, could not make the most of their formal education years to have an educational “booster jab” when it best suits their needs. Can we stop for but a moment, a minute or an hour, and view the world with wonder as we once did as a child? Or is our fate to blindly dig like a mole rat underground?

Jon Southerington

Deerness, Orkney

IT is unfortunate the Government has felt it necessary to capitulate to the “we was robbed” lobby across Scotland. I have no doubt at all that quite a large number of injustices did occur but surely something could have been put in place to fast-stream appeals rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The implication of the Government’s surrender is we don’t need an SQA, let us just accepted the teacher’s assessment. It does appear that a great deal of marking up has gone on. It would seem the SQA algorithm has failed in the current very unusual situation, something which must be looked at.

R Mill Irving

Gifford, East Lothian

YET again I wonder why no-one seems to have joined up their thinking, this time about the US tax on whisky, which is being maintained, while that on shortbread is removed (Scotch whisky fury as Johnson fails to stand up for national drink, The National, August 14).

Shortbread is not something of great importance to the US in terms of trade deals, but whisky most certainly is. Donald Trump proclaimed some time ago that, if the UK wanted a trade deal, the definition of Scotch must be changed from matured for three years in a barrel in Scotland, to matured for one year in a barrel anywhere, so that they can make “American Scotch”.

Is it therefore not obvious, even to the casual observer, that this unfair tax will be retained until it can be the make-or-break demand in the trade negotiations? Change the definition or the tax remains. If this becomes the final US red line, then our whisky industry is on a hiding to nothing, with the negotiations in the hands of Boris and co. One could say that it is the Trump card.

P Davidson

Falkirk