Boosting Gaelic

Published on 17/11/2012 00:00

I WAS interested to learn from Alasdair Christie, chairman of Highland Council’s Adult and Children’s Services Committee, (your report, 15 November) that a headteacher does not have an academic role, which naïve, or perverse, professionals have always regarded as the key part of the job.

Has Alasdair Christie discussed with the profession in the Highlands this radical new concept of headteacher?

If we accept Councillor Christie’s redefinition of headteacher, two interesting possibilities present themselves. A great deal of money can be saved not just in Highland but in Scotland generally, by paying headteachers only for their managerial, non-academic role – maybe 50 per cent of current salaries, to be generous.

Another possibility is that the solution to the current ­crisis at the Inverness Gaelic School could (as has been suggested elsewhere) be solved by ­appointing a Gaelic-speaking manager, who may well be ­easier to find, and pay.

He, or she, would be able to speak in Gaelic with any teachers or children encountered on any necessary forays beyond the office and thus be part of the 
essential Gaelic environment of the school.

R MacLean

Kiltarlity

By Beauly, Inverness-shire