Just before the close Saturday’s stormy Scottish Union of Students conference, an office-bearer rose to announce for the special benefit of the TES Scotland, the half-time scores of the day’s football matches: nil, nil; nil, nil.
After six hours of debate, albeit generally reasonable discussion, it seemed as if the national conference had achieved little more than the national players: at the end of the day, the union’s constitution remained virtually unchanged, though its membership seemed to shrink by more than a half, and its interest to narrow dramatically.
* The Government intend to relax the restriction on attendance of school pupils at further education colleges, said Mr Edward Taylor, Under Secretary of State for Education at the Scottish Conservative conference in Aberdeen last week.
The main teacher unions later reacted without enthusiasm. Mr Fred Forrester, assistant secretary of the EIS, said they would oppose what they regarded as a departure from comprehensive education. What the Government proposed was 15-plus selection, since it would be non-academic pupils who would go to FE for part of the week.
* “A tragic and frustrating travesty of all that I consider education to be about” is one honours graduate’s opinion of the training for secondary education given at Moray House College of Education, Edinburgh. The students’ representative council of the college have just submitted an unfavourable report to the working part of the General Teaching Council of Scotland which is investigating the training of graduates. The students say that in general the course is not demanding enough: what is given could reasonably given in half the time.
* Glasgow geography panel is organising a steamer excursion on the Clyde in September for the benefit of senior pupils, young teachers entering the service and foreign language assistants.
