Scotland

Yet again I find myself writing about the Isle of Harris in the negative. This is something of an update on my post “Harris School Provides Teacher In A Box“ in that the complaint made against the Council with regards to the lack of music lessons in the Harris School – Sir E Scott, Tarbert, Isle of Harris, has been concluded in favor of the lazy teacher who refused to teach!

Cover-ups are bad at any time but this latest cover-up by the Western Isles Council (Comhairle nan Eilean Siar) is beyond reason. Where in the world is there a class size of 2 pupils? The School on Harris often has only a handful of pupils studying music to Higher level and yet it would appear that the results gained in all music exams are far below the national average (awaiting verification). How can this be explained? Are all children on the Isle of Harris unable to learn music? Is there something really strange going on here that causes a brain disfuction in that part of the brain which relates to music.

The old saying “White men can’t dance” springs to mind here. Could it be said that all Harris folk can’t dance? Now this might sound a little light hearted when the seriousness of the issue is considered. A teacher on the Isle of Harris gets a very reasonable salary which is considerably higher than the local average. If a teacher refuses to teach but still takes the cash is this theft? It is certainly abuse, all children in Scotland are entitled to an education but it would appear that, on the Isle of Harris, for the last decade or so, the children have been denied an education in music!

If you read this and think it is a joke, think again. If this was your child in a class of 30+ you would be furious but we are talking class sizes of less than 5 here. These kids should be passing their highers with the very top grades but all seem to fail on the theory part of the exam, the exact part which is supposed to be taught by the school.

Although the Western Isles Council has denied that the said teacher has behaved in such a way the person complaining has vowed to continue pushing and has, today, requested all supporting material with a view to taking the Council to court. I was going to place a quote from the complaining parent here but when I deleted all the bade language there was not much left to print. Let’s just say he is a little annoyed.

Update

A calmer parent said “My son’s school report said in music that he had been making interesting progress in jazz scales, I found this rather amusing as my son doesn’t even know what Jazz is nor does he understand what a scale is”.