Scottish Borders Local Association

TCS turns out to be worst of all worlds

Published Date: 21 May 2009

Letters to the editor

Mr Findlay’s letter in last week’s Southern raised some important and relevant points regarding the future education of children and young people in the Borders.

Our children need to be educated and prepared to compete in a global economic environment, they must be equipped with skills in using ICT (information, computing and technology), and the education service and schools must find new, flexible and innovative ways of delivering a wide range of educational opportunities.

Although the most important skills that all our children require are numeracy and literacy (formerly known as the 3Rs), ICT is used extensively in all subjects to ensure that working with computers and technology is part of the learning process.

All of our secondary schools have had their ICT systems upgraded during the past three years and we are now introducing GLOW, Scotland’s biggest intranet, into all our schools. Fast broadband connections have been installed in all Borders schools and smartboards are used in many classrooms. ICT is used as part of teaching and learning from pre-schoolers to S6.

Information technology (IT) is also the key to delivering courses more flexibly in the future, with schools across the Borders being encouraged to work together to provide subjects collaboratively across more than one school. There are also opportunities to work with Borders College, with some of their excellent new facilities in Galashiels and Hawick.

Alongside these advances all our schools are now offering more vocational courses such as rural skills, hairdressing and construction. The expansion of these courses does have to be balanced with the provision of traditional academic courses, and thus pupils are not always able to select their first choice of course.

Scottish Borders Council does have a vision for the future of education in the Borders – it was agreed to underpin the Transforming Children’s Services programme (TCS). At a time of significant change in Borders education with the introduction of the new Curriculum for Excellence, new exam structures and increasingly-challenging budgets, it is vital that we remain true to that vision – and be ambitious for every child.

Catriona Bhatia

(SBC executive member for education)

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