A statement by Mr Robert McClement, general secretary of the Scottish Schoolmasters’ Association, said this week that 1972 could be a make or break year for education in Scotland: 20.4 per cent of all teachers in secondary schools were women. Many of them intended to leave teaching if the school leaving age was raised to 16 in 1972. A substantial number of teachers of both sexes who have qualified for pension had already intimated their intention to leave if the leaving age was raised. Only a substantial salary increase would save the education service from the serious consequence of the loss of large numbers of experienced staff.

* Scotland’s colleges of education have turned away some 350 qualified applicants for the three-year primary diploma course. This is the first time the colleges have done this, and this year’s intake is a record 2,960 candidates.

* (From a leader) Just how many headteachers have any kind of check on whether already in the new term some of their staff are trying the old threat: “Now any more of this carelessness and I’ll have to get out the belt.” How many pupils know for sure the categories of offence for which they are liable to be belted? How many feel they dare protest (and to whom?) if corporal punishment is not being used according to “the code”? How carefully or determinedly do headteachers instruct their staff about how, when and why the belt is to be used? It would indeed be strange if the profession which is so identified with discipline were to object to the imposition of discipline upon itself.

* (Advertisement) Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Head (Pounds 4,650 under review).

TES Scotland, september 10, 1971