Readers' Letters: Scotland must do more to support its teachers

The term "Assisted Special Needs” says it all. In an ideal world, these special needs would have professional support. I have a daughter whose love of the classroom is being severely jeopardised by the relative lack of that support.

The status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable, both for teachers and pupils, with and without special needs. Support takes time and effort, which should be used for actual teaching itself. The main solution is money, or the lack of it, dedicated to support of our stressed teachers.

It's beyond time our teachers were valued for the often thankless job that they do. Teaching is described as a caring profession and it's time we showed care for them, before it’s too late, and we lose them.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Fear or friends

Scotland has long been known for the quality of its education, though in recent years we may have lost our way. For most of my adult life I have worked in primary and nursery schools, and I have seen how the best of Scottish education fosters empathy, social awareness and civic responsibility.

So when I saw videos of settler violence in the West Bank, what struck me most was how young the perpetrators seemed – their faces expressionless, their actions casual. I had to ask why. I looked at their education.

Studies have shown that both Israeli and Palestinian textbooks often fail to foster empathy, presenting exclusive national narratives. In some Israeli settlement schools, Palestinians are portrayed only as enemies bent on Jewish destruction, while Palestinian Authority texts have been found to glorify violence and erase Israel from maps. Teaching fear strips away humanity and plants violence in the next generation. That fear becomes the future.

It must also be said that the spiral of abuse is not simply Jew against Palestinian or vice versa, but parents, teachers, rabbis and imams teaching fear to their own children.

The choice is simple, if taken at the right time: live in resentment and fear, or in forgiveness, reconciliation and peace. Fear or friends – that is the choice each generation must make, and we can give them space to choose peace.

Judith Campbell, Portree, Highland

Trans loophole

Jane Lax implies that the Scottish Government is acting illegally in allowing a transwoman to use facilities in a female prison in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling (Letters, 28 November). Well I’ve read through the judgment and it makes no such reference to the prison estate.

The Equality & Human Rights Commission has since issued guidance which states that if a biological male seeks access to a female-only space then it could remain a single sex space provided that access was at a different time. In other words it would be possible to accommodate a transwoman within the female prison estate provided there was suitable segregation.

The guidance cites other situations where a person of the opposite biological sex can use a single sex facility. For instance, it says a mother can take her son into a female changing area provided he is under the age of ten because at that age he is deemed not to be a threat to women’s safety.

However, it’s unclear what the situation would be for, say, a man with an 11-year-old daughter. Clearly she also would not be deemed a threat to a grown man. But do ten-year-old children not pose a threat to those of the opposite sex who are younger than them and who may be using the facility?

I warned previously that this judgment would open up the proverbial can of worms. It’s no surprise, then, that the Scottish Government is struggling with issuing its own guidance. I also asked For Women Scotland and their supporters how they would address the anomalies it throws up, but so far to no avail.

For women who won’t wheesht they’re staying surprisingly silent when it comes to dealing with the practicalities.

Robert Menzies, Falkirk

Who cares?

“Sturgeon: No female leader ‘any time soon’” (The Scotsman, 29 November). Is the silly season upon us?

With so many other newsworthy items like war in Ukraine and the Budget competing for space at the moment, why on earth does this story merit front page headlines? Apart from a few diehard Sturgeonites, who actually cares any more if Nicola Sturgeon thinks there still aren’t enough women in public life?

Unsurprisingly, this gender politics fanatic suddenly quit her job as First Minister just before her party became engulfed in multiple scandals.

Ms Sturgeon – aka “Wee Selfie” – now spends more time promoting sales of an unreadable book than representing the inhabitants of her impoverished constituency.

Short-lived prime minister Liz Truss – a female politician, incidentally – may have got most things wrong, but she was absolutely right in dismissing Nicola Sturgeon as “an attention seeker”.

Martin O’Gorman, Edinburgh

You need hands?

First Minister John Swinney's most prominent feature is his hands. He is constantly conducting his political orchestra with the fully outstretched fingers of both hands, both in Parliament, and in public.

If his Ministerial style was half as good as his highly expressive fingers, the concept of a Scottish Government might just be acceptable.

Unfortunately, the regional government at Holyrood has not proved to be a success. Following the May 2026 Scottish Parliamentary Elections, let us hope we Scots choose a route which will see the whole of the UK governed from Westminster again.

Robert I G Scott, Northfield, Ceres, Fife

Windless words

It is important Scotsman Readers are aware of the fact that the claim in the letter of 29 November by Sally Romilly – “renewables are now the cheapest way to generate electricity” – is only correct if you ignore the laws of physics that declare “low wind power cost claims fall apart when no wind means no power output”. Greenpeace is obviously unaware that large tracts of rural Scotland are being scarred by myriad battery units built with thousands of pounds of debt to maintain grid output when there are lulls in wind speed.

Neither Greenpeace nor the SNP Include this insurance cost in the overall price of wind output. Insurance costs are high and must be paid – if in doubt, ask any motorist.

However, what Greenpeace ignored but, to their credit the SNP recognised, is that under dunkelflaute weather conditions, even battery power cannot keep the lights on in Scotland, hence the SNP draft energy paper, issued just prior to the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister, proposed the installation of 25GW of hydrogen fuelled plant to maintain power to schools, hospitals and supermarkets. To date, just like the plans for a gas turbine plant at Peterhead, there has been no approval from John Swinney to start work on this project, although it would be a fantastic shoo-in at either Grangemouth or Mossmorran as both sites have staff skilled in the handling of gas products. Greenpeace should note that, once more, it is another insurance policy that increases the cost of wind power to the Scottish consumer.

There is one question supporters of wind power could answer, which is why, if wind projects are given a strike price for their output, does electricity from gas turbines affect the price of wind output? Any rise in the generation price above the strike price is paid back to maintain a level playing field for the Scottish consumer.

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway

Bad medicine

There is another storm gathering on the Scottish NHS horizon, and it's another potential self-inflicted wound. Apparently doctors in Scotland are surprised and dismayed by the SNP administration's announcement of staffed walk-in clinics.

One GP, Dr Neil MacRitchie, has said on record that they feel the new clinics “will be inefficient and may widen healthcare access inequities”.

It is hard not to get the feeling that this is another SNP special advisor’s back-of-a-fag packet idea that has palpably not been thought through and will be added to the mountain of SNP failures.

Still, it got the quick headline – that, most likely, was the thinking behind it.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Drone on

According to the Sunday Telegraph, a Freedom of Information request has revealed that local authorities are buying unmanned aerial vehicles and encouraging employees to qualify as pilots to give their town hall bosses eyes in the sky.

Is this not the solution to the Channel-crossing illegal immigrant problem? A system of 24/7 drones monitoring the halfway line between the UK and France would enable us to give immediate warning to French coastal authorities of possible immigrants leaving French beaches. We could also simultaneously monitor any action or inaction by the French.

Doug Clark, Currie, Edinburgh

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