Education errors

I hope education secretary Mike Russell will heed Frank Gerstenberg's observation that "it's only when we run out of cash that we start to think about whether there might be a more effective way of doing things" (Opinion, 4 March).

These straitened economic times underline the need for an urgent and radical reassessment of the Scottish education system.

For years, the only answer successive governments have had to a system in obvious distress is to indiscriminately throw more money at it with no positive return. Despite massive increases in schools spending, Scotland continues its inexorable descent on the international ladder of educational achievement.

ARCHIE STIRLING

Scottish Voice

Craigarnhall, Bridge of Allan