I WRITE as a retired teacher of Modern Languages to express my anger and dismay at the way in which the senior phase of Curriculum for Excellence is being implemented in West Dunbartonshire. This phase, which covers S4-S6, is deliberately non-prescriptive about the number of subjects pupils should take in S4, suggesting between five and eight. The director of education in this authority, however, is imposing a six-subject model on all secondary schools, whether they want it or not, insisting that this will raise attainment.

I beg to differ, and believe that both the rationale and process adopted by the Education Department are deeply flawed.

Having been obliged to read a great deal of educational literature during my 40-year teaching career, I encountered no reports which concluded that standardisation across a small authority raises standards.

Though serving the same community, all of the many excellent schools in West Dunbartonshire are individual learning communities with their own ethos.

Such diversity, rather than conformity, encourages both educational initiative and cross-fertilisation of good practice.

I attended a meeting at Our Lady and St Patrick's High School in December during which the director of education presented his case.

I left distinctly unimpressed since no evidence was cited to support his view other than a two-man consultancy report which he himself had instigated.

What was more shocking, though, was that parents had not been consulted and, along with the headteacher and staff, were utterly opposed to the director's model.

This school was commended in a 2012 HMIE report as having "outstanding" leadership and "exceptional" results.

That the director is forcing it down a path it does not wish to follow defies common sense.

Your readers know as well as I do that a significant number of families in West Dunbartonshire live in deprived circumstances - all the more reason to aim high in educational terms.

The director of education is paid a six-figure salary to foster educational ambition, not curtail it.

I urge him to either lift his diktat or seriously consider his own position.

Elspeth Crocket address supplied