Strathclyde promises `every child is special’
Strathclyde Region has taken a decisive step towards integration of special-needs pupils in mainstream schools, placing a question mark over the future of many special schools. The region’s 160 special schools will concentrate on pupils with more complex needs. There will be an increasing number of units attached to mainstream schools, geared to pupils who are visually impaired, deaf or have language disorders.
Labour’s heaven on Vicarfield Street
If Govan speaks for the nation, Labour will romp home in next Thursday’s election with a majority of 146. That is the prediction from St Gerard’s Secondary, where pupils played host to all five Govan candidates on Wednesday. The modern studies department laid on a doubtless highly- scientific exit poll, which showed Labour picking up 35.8 per cent of the vote, the SNP 32.7, Greens 13.5, Liberal Democrats 9.6 and Conservatives 9.8.
Pay pressure builds up
Teachers’ pay talks will resume on 15 April, with both sides claiming victory in the squabble so far. Jim Martin, general secretary of the EIS, which mounted an intensive campaign to persuade teachers to protest against the 18.1 per cent pay-for-conditions offer, said the union succeeded in getting management to withdraw its salaries and conditions package.
No quality of mercy for former head
The first school investigation by Strathclyde’s quality-assurance unit has been found by an industrial tribunal to have been “heavy-handed” with “a strong element of overkill”. Although the tribunal rejected, on a point of law, a claim of constructive and unfair dismissal made by Jennifer Cullen, former head of Dolphinton Primary, Lanarkshire, it criticised the handling of her compulsory transfer as a result of the inspectors’ report.
Albanians hounded out of Kosovo jobs
Like conspirators, Albanian professors from Pristina University gather every day in a handful of coffee houses. Any other year they would be busy preparing classes. Now they sit, talk and drink coffee slowly. More than 800 lecturers, all Albanians, lost their jobs before the beginning of the academic year.
