Education quest

Michael Kelly's article ('Why educational choice must be limited to provide equality', 26 January) sums up an all-too-common attitude that is dragging Scotland to the bottom of the educational swamp.

Comments such as "…we need curbs on people's right to pick a particular school" and "…parents playing the system for their own selfish ends, we should expect citizens to make sacrifices for the common good" could come straight from the Stalinist phrase book of the 1950s.

How arrogant of Comrade Kelly to assume that the only people pushing to get their children into successful schools are "middle class activists". Does he not think that the desire to achieve the best for their children from the current, inadequate education system is the natural ambition of most parents of whatever class?

Thankfully, the judiciary continues to support the rights of the individual in the ever-intensifying battle against the state and people like Dr Kelly.

While he and his ilk claim that the shortage of high quality state schools is "mainly due to skewed demographics", of far greater significance is lack of parental involvement and an excess of unimaginative local authority and educational establishment "we know best" thinking.

In the longer term we can achieve the kind of society which I and many others want where the state education system is so good that no-one wants to go private any longer.

This will never be achieved by coercion, but rather by the force of exactly the kind of pushy parent that Dr Kelly seems to so despise.

ARCHIE STIRLING

Leader, Scottish Voice

Craigarnhall

Bridge of Allan