DOUGLAS Hutchison has taken over as Glasgow's executive director for education - the first new schools boss in 14 years.

We asked him to give his views on the hot topics in education, as asked for by Glasgow Times readers.

Here's what he had to say.

LEAGUE TABLES

I think they're an absolute disgrace. I think they are a travesty of what education's about. They are reductionist and they don't acknowledge the incredibly hard work that goes on in every school, every day.

The league tables are like an end point in a race but the reality in that race is that some children start the race way back there, some children get a big helping hand and some children don't have the right clothes to wear in the race and yet we're all judged on the end point of that race.

It's deeply unfair and it doesn't reflect the work that it took by this school here to get those kids to the finish line whereas this school here, where the kids all got a helping hand from their families the school might have added no value at all but it gets credit for the kids finishing first.

It just doesn't reflect the reality of what's going on in schools every day but they're seductively simple and that's why they shift papers.

They are the essence of English education, it's performative. It's taking one indicator of quality and making that the definition of quality. It's just simplistic and wrong.

This year's in particular just seemed insane. Why is nobody asking the question how can these school attainment possibly go up because these kids were out of school for four months, five months, and attainment has gone up. So what are we saying? That children can do better being home educated than they do in school?

It seemed obvious that attainment was going to go down across the country.

We should be asking the question 'How did some of your people manage to raise attainment when your kids were home educated from January to April?'

FACEMASKS AND VENTILATION IN SCHOOLS

Back to the beginning of this I can remember National Clinical Director Jason Leitch interviewed on Tam Cowan's programme and asked if we should be wearing facemasks and he was saying the evidence isn't there yet.

And the evidence did come and the evidence was that it did make a difference. So why would we not want the safest possible environment for everybody?

I recognise it's not the most comfortable thing, if you're a teacher teaching with a mask on then it's not an ideal environment, if you're a young person with a hearing impairment it's not an ideal environment.

But nor is sitting at home with covid because no one was wearing a mask.

We hear a lot of the voices saying we shouldn't be wearing masks but we don't hear the sensible voices saying, 'Actually, if we didn't take sensible measures then we'd have more people off with covid.'

Our focus will still be on good ventilation and the CO2 monitors, we're moving towards one to one, so one in every teaching space and ideally we'll move towards them being able to remotely gather the information from those monitors to get a real time sense of where there's an issue in a classroom.

Some people are focused on us getting HEPA filters but they are hugely expensive and would they work in a real life situation like a school? We don't know, so the focus is on what we know works and what works is good ventilation.

THIS YEAR'S EXAMS

The position that we've agreed is to have an exam diet and I think that's right. In terms of the proposals around support, they seem reasonable.

I think people in schools will be content that at least they know now we are moving to scenario two and scenario two is clear, the SQA is giving a clear indication of what is going to be in the exams so we can focus on that and we'll have that information by March 7.

That seems reasonable. My view was always that the sooner we had that information the better and March 7 is ok. It's still a few weeks before the Easter break.

They're also saying they will adjust grade boundaries to take into account the whole system has been disrupted so what they are saying sounds ok.

I think we collectively still have to have a public discussion about high stakes exams. That's the fundamental problem.

Did a high stakes exam system handle the stress of a global pandemic? No. It didn't. And so once we've got Ken Muir's report we need to look at what's the system we want. What's the system that genuinely accredits young people for the learning they've done and not just the learning they can produce in one high stakes exam.

Do we need to have exams in fourth year, fifth year and sixth year? Do we need to put young people through that three times?

There's a good discussion to be had and it could be one of the potentially helpful things to come out of this for the Scottish education system. How can we accredit young people in a way that allows them to demonstrate their genuine abilities and skills that don't depend on how they perform one Wednesday morning for two hours in an exam hall.

But for now, what's being proposed is as good as can be expected.

SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT'S NEW HEALTH AND WELLBEING SURVEY

We need to know what's actually going on in young people's lives rather than what we hope is going on in young people's lives or what we believe is going on in young people's lives.

The survey looks at the drug, alcohol, tobacco use, social media, health lifestyles, sleep patterns, gambling as well as sexual health and relationships.

So it looks at a range of things. In order to be able to provide services and supports that meet young people's real needs, we need to ask them.

We can't live in a land of illusion where we think we know what young people are doing. We need a sense of what's going on so we can provide services around their genuine needs.

And that's why it's going ahead in Glasgow. But every young person, every child, every parent or carer has the right to say no and I absolutely respect that.

If a young person is uncomfortable then they can just say they don't want to answer the question. No one is forcing them.

I think calling it a sex survey is a good headline but it doesn't tell you the whole story.

It's almost as if there has been a desire to create a sense of moral panic around it when there are sound reasons for asking these questions so it has been narrowed down to a sex survey when it's looking at a whole range of issues that impact on young people's lives.

We need to know what's going on in young people's lives. Things like sharing sexual images is now almost seen as normalised. What impact's that having? We need to know. What pressure does that put on young people?

I think as adults we have very little insight into that so if we have little insight then we don't know what the impact of that is so we need to ask. If young people don't want to answer then it's as simple as that but we should ask the question.