Mouthpiece: Degree of change is needed

How people learn is more important than where, says Rod Grant

So, only three Edinburgh secondaries have made it into a UK poll revealing the state schools which send the most pupils to the country's best universities, despite Scottish schools dominating almost half the list.

This news created a little media flurry, with concerns being aired over the quality of secondary education here in Edinburgh but, I, for one, do not equate the proportion of students attending "select" universities with high-quality secondary education. This would be to suggest that only those students attending universities like Oxford, Cambridge and St. Andrews are achieving full potential. That is nonsense.

Edinburgh has a high proportion of its students going on to higher education and that is what really matters, not the particular institutions the students attend. I have interviewed first-class honours graduates from select universities that are eminently unemployable, there is more to success than the name of the institution.

We should be far more concerned about raising our expectations for our students in terms of driving them to further their education. Too often, we fall into the trap of dismissing a pupil's ability because it is not immediately apparent.

Scotland is in danger of educating creativity out of our pupils. We like conformity, we like right answers, we like hearing the answer we want to hear but we are not so good at allowing mistakes, creating the environment for free expression and for ensuring that our youngsters are given the opportunity to think for themselves.

We must stop concerning ourselves with the universities to which our students are accepted and start concerning ourselves with developing pupils who can think, create and succeed in the face of adversity. That will require critical engagement of those who teach by those who have the power to make changes.

• Rod Grant is headmaster of Clifton Hall School