Readers' Letters: Maybe it's time to bring back the cottage hospital

I sometimes feel my hopes dented for 2024 when I read of our Government’s attempts to fix the Health Service. They seem to think that the ambulance service needs a boost because they can’t discharge but in the same breath roll back the “improvements” to the care service which are at the heart of bed blocking.

A cottage hospital in 1941 - could a renewed focus help the Scottish National Health Service? (Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

It is now at least 15 years since I led a campaign against the closure of a cottage hospital but was assured the highly paid executives had taken on board an aging population and increased bed need!The same executives had further reduced capacity by turning ward single capacity units into clerical bases. I suggest that the same cottage hospitals would have made a real difference today. They were often close to a medical hub which could have provide emergency back-up; the supremos could also have reintroduced state enrolled nurses and nursing assistants, who could have been recruited locally.

These local hospitals could also have offered respite for carers, thus increasing the number of people willing to look after their loved ones at home.

James Watson, Dunbar, East Lothian

Rise of Right

I don't often agree with Kenny MacAskill, but feel he has a point about the rise of the populist right (Perspective, 14 December), ie, it is in part a failure of mainstream political parties. If they stray too far from popular opinion, some will vote elsewhere. In Britain, roots go deep – the Iraq war, the financial crash and resultant austerity, and immigration out of control.

We see the rise of Geert Wilders in Holland, the rise of the far right in Germany, and should not think we are immune. For all the criticism aimed at Rishi Sunak for his Rwanda scheme, maybe he just understands the need to be seen to do something about this – the whole issue is potentially explosive!

William Ballantine, Bo'ness, West Lothian

Higher marks

John McLaren sets great store on England’s seemingly better Pisa results (Perspective, 14 December), but these are probably skewed as just 4.7 per cent of English secondary schools took part in the Pisa exams, whereas 32.8 per cent of all Scottish schools did.

Also, the Nesta and Education Policy Institute (December 2023) education report outlines 11 damning facts about the education system in England, particularly with regard to the attainment gap, and notes that a quarter of students in London completed compulsory schooling without achieving a standard pass in English or mathematics.

Just this week a House of Lords report, led by former Tory education minister Lord Baker, said the (English) education system for 11-16-year-olds is too focused on academic learning and written exams, resulting in too much learning by rote and not enough opportunity for pupils to pursue creative and technical subjects.

The committee recommends instead that schools and teachers should be allowed to offer a more varied range of learning experiences, to help pupils develop a broader set of skills that will better meet the needs of a future digital and green economy.

The Curriculum for Excellence is not prescriptive of specific subjects or timings. Instead, the Scottish Government sets guidelines for learning and teaching, allowing schools to make their own decisions on what to teach based around pupil needs and interests.

The improved Curriculum for Excellence levels for reading, writing, listening, talking and numeracy is welcome but it is rather insulting for Professor Lindsay Paterson to claim, as reported, this was teachers “marking their own homework”.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh

Towers of Pisa

I am intrigued by the apparently random subjects which are used in the Pisa report to rank countries’ educational success or failure. Mathematics, reading and science seem a very strange mix. I could read well by early primary but found maths and science difficult. I scraped a B in Higher Maths but gave up all Science after Senior 3 as I didn’t enjoy it and wasn’t good at it. However, I gained six Highers, four As and two Bs, and proceeded to St Andrews University, where I graduated MA Honours in French and Medieval History.

The reason for this walk down memory lane is that on the Pisa scale, I would have struggled in two out of three subjects. However, I consider I had a fine education and I was successful academically.

Would Scotland, or anywhere else actually, have scored better if the Humanities and Languages had been measured? I have grave doubts about the usefulness of this report and the pathetic point scoring from all sides of the political spectrum rather makes my case!

Brian Bannatyne-Scott, Edinburgh

Look to poverty

“So why have England’s fortunes improved while Scotland’s have worsened” is a question posed by John McLaren. This somewhat misleading question masks a number of salient omissions from John’s detailed assessment of OECD Pisa scores of 15-year-olds from 81 countries in the primary measures of reading, mathematics and science.

England’s Pisa scores in all three primary measures have declined since the last survey in 2018. The UK’s results in mathematics and science are the poorest since 2006, with reading remaining at the same level. Wales, which did not adopt Curriculum for Excellence, has the lowest scores across all three primary measures.

England failed to meet two of Pisa’s Technical standards and scores may have been favourably distorted because of a disproportionate underrepresentation of lower achieving students and low levels of school participation (5 per cent compared with Scotland’s 33 per cent).

Generally, highlighted Pisa rankings selectively focus on measures that do not reflect the broad scope of CfE (students in Scotland leaving school and reaching a positive destination in the following year was 93.5 per cent against 82.6 per cent in England). According to the OECD the UK now has the second-lowest “life satisfaction” ranking for this student age-group across all participating countries.

While undoubtedly there may be some lessons Scotland can learn from educationalists in England, it would appear that more than a decade of austerity, as well as the pandemic, has detrimentally affected schooling across the UK. Therefore, perhaps the most significant step the Scottish Government could take to progress education in Scotland would not be to follow England, especially if that encouraged more selectivity in nominating schools\students for the next Pisa study, but to eliminate child poverty.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Stand up for Nature

On the same day that we hear seven wind turbines in France were denounced as a “cemetery for birds” and are to be dismantled after a court ruling as they caused “serious and proven” environmental damage, we are told that NatureScot is bracing themselves for a whopping 15 per cent funding cut in next week’s Scottish Budget (your report,14 December).

We have already witnessed the decline in NatureScot’s ability to scrutinise and respond to wind farm applications for over a decade due to their lack of resources. This, of course, suits the Scottish Government and developers down to the ground as there is less opposition to their plans – unbelievable profits for developers and mega millions in rent and non-domestic rates for the Government when planning permission is granted for development on public land. This is a gross conflict of interest as it is the Scottish ministers who give consent to large scale-wind farms and they are therefore effectively lining their own pockets. Our new National Planning Framework (NPF4) tells us that the Biodiversity crisis is equally as important as climate change and stipulates that it should be enhanced rather than merely maintained.

Who is going to stand up for nature if our experts on the natural heritage are gagged through lack of funding?

Aileen Jackson, Uplawmoor, East Renfrewshire

Useless promises

I seldom agree with Dr Richard Dixon but he was correct in the article “Dismay as COP28 shapes up to be another cop out” (Scotsman, 13 December). There was no definitive “phase down” of fossil fuels or “phase out” of fossil fuels but the text on Wednesday merely called on countries “to contribute to global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels”. Note that no timescale was mentioned and no compulsion and no penalties.

The United Arab Emirates national oil company, Adnoc, is still planning a massive increase in production capacity. Developed countries and oil producers will not be forced to move as fast as the climate scientists say is essential. China and India will continue to use increasing amounts of coal and mouth “renewables” to a gullible green audience. It should be remembered that China has said it will not be net zero until 2060 and India by 2070, long after net zero 2050. Promises, promises, nothing but useless climate promises.

This COP28 deal does not represent any progress and, as Dr Dixon said, is “another cop out”.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Any angels?

With the failure of the West, are there any reports of Wise Men from the East on the way to Bethlehem this Christmas?

And where are the angels when they’re so urgently needed?

Jack Kellet, Innerleithen, Scottish Borders

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