Thursday’s correspondents discuss the Curriculum for Excellence, carbon capture, Angus art in excellence, the Supreme Court and Scotland, and a reader asks about a change to Islay’s trees.
Exam change will not help Scottish scienceSir, As a teacher of chemistry for almost 30 years, I am concerned for the future of science education in Scotland as a result of the proposed changes to the examination system associated with the Curriculum for Excellence.
In January, Colin MacLean, director of the learning directorate of the Scottish Government sent a letter to all heads of schools and local authorities.
He stated, “The management board (for Curriculum for Excellence) recognises the need to tackle more assertively the mistaken assumptions about the new qualifications, such as that schools will be limited by national policy and structures to offer only five subjects in S4.”
After attending two recent meetings where SQA representatives have detailed the timescale for the implementation of the new National 4 and National 5 exams, I feel that his statement is incorrect.
The only way pupils could sit more than five of the 160-hour courses and be examined in S4 is to start the courses in S3.
At my school we have been looking at ways in which we can do this. The SQA timescale means we are not going to be able to achieve this aim as the final arrangements for National 4/5 do not come out until April 2012.
This would only leave two months to prepare courses before the first CfE cohort reaches S3. The exemplar assessment material will not be ready until they have almost finished S3 in April 2013.
Teachers will only have time to prepare the new national courses for when pupils reach S4.
I believe that this will reduce the number of pupils choosing two sciences for examination at the end of S4.
The result of this will be reduced number of pupils who are qualified to undertake science and engineering in higher education.
Robert Evans.29 Dunmore gardens,Dundee.Carbon capture system requiredSir, Stuart Allan (May 30) says he has no doubts about the accuracy of the figures I used to counter his previous claims and yet he states they are still erroneous. Which is it?
It would appear that he accepts that the carbon emissions at the locality of the proposed biomass plants will be at least as much as that from equivalent sized coal-fired power stations, which is progress indeed.
This being so, then the addition of a carbon capture system must be a requirement as it is for new coal fired power stations.
On the matter of the impact on forests we continue to disagree. However, with a fuel demand equivalent to 70,000 acres of forest per year per plant, and hence some 300,000 acres per year from the four plants, I maintain my position that this represents significant deforestation, even on a worldwide basis. G M Lindsay.Whinfield Gardens,Kinross.Wonderful art in AngusSir, This weekend I spent a very pleasant and enjoyable time touring the Angus countryside and visiting the Angus Open Studios. This year the studios changed their format and instead of gathering together at one venue, over 60 artists and craftsmen threw open the doors of their studios and galleries in the largest celebration of arts and crafts that Angus has ever seen.
A superb booklet was produced with an artists’ directory listing the studios and showing clearly where they could be found.
Unfortunately, my daughter only heard of the event late on Friday, missing the first two days of the event, so on Saturday we set off, completely unplanned and headed up to Lunan Bay, returning via Auchmithie and Arbroath.
Each studio made you feel very welcome, even offering free food and drinks.
It was a thrill meeting the artists and viewing their wares, not to mention being able to purchase them as well. Yes, we did come home with a lot of goodies.
It was a wonderful way to spend the weekend and I thoroughly recommend it to everyone interested in supporting our local, very gifted artists. I would suggest the directory is made available in all our local tourist centres, allowing the tourist to be introduced to the many talented artists living here in beautiful Angus.
George Gavine.The VeldtMonikie.Advantage of Supreme CourtSir, The function of the UK Supreme Court is to ensure people in Scotland accused of a crime have the same human-rights cover as people in the rest of the Britain.
Many of us welcome its oversight in these matters because the Scottish Court of Appeal has an indifferent record and is all too prepared to sit back in lordly self-satisfaction.
When push come to shove, it can demonstrate a woeful lack of moral fibre, such as its handling of the appeal against the manifestly unsafe conviction of Abdelbaset al Megrahi.
Alex Salmond was outraged when the Supreme Court overturned the verdict in a high-profile murder case and demanded the right to refer appeals directly to Europe.
In fact, Mr Salmond is shooting rather thoughtlessly from the hip because the EU will be much harder than London on any breaches of human rights by the Scottish judiciary.
(Dr) John Cameron.10 Howard Place,St Andrews.Mystery of island treesSir, As a result of recent gale force winds the leaves on a large numbers of deciduous trees on the island of Islay have turned from green to brown and on many trees have fallen off.
The bushes at the side of the road are also brown. It looks like the recent weather has tricked the trees and bushes into thinking it is now autumn.
Perhaps some of your readers can explain why this has happened.
Douglas W. Tott.Bruichladdich,Isle of Islay.
Get involved: to have your say on these or any other topics, email your letter to letters@thecourier.co.uk or send to Letters Editor, The Courier, 80 Kingsway East, Dundee DD4 8SL.