John Hodgart is a former English teacher, a member of the Scottish Goverment's working group on Scottish Studies, a member of the Scots Language Centre's Council and an honorary fellow of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. In this article he explores the place of Scots in school education. A short version of this presentation, which was first given at the Scots Language Society Annual meeting in Musselburgh 2011, appeared in Lallans 79. We are grateful to John for giving permission to publish this article.