Vocational alternative to Highers expected

- The government will make its long-awaited announcement on Monday about the education of 16- to 18-years-olds, which has been in consultation since autumn 1979. In the FE colleges, particular interest will centre on whether the government will recommend one national FE certificate to replace the current multiplicity of awards.

Compulsory transfers

- Edinburgh’s secondary school heads are preparing plans for staffing next year on the basis that more than 70 compulsory transfers will be necessary. This does not take account of any further cuts which might be made by Lothian’s Conservative-controlled administration. Since the principle of compulsory transfers was agreed by the region in 1979, about 79 teachers have been moved within Edinburgh secondaries.

Dinner ladies ‘deeply hurt’

- School kitchen staff in Strathclyde are “deeply hurt and suffer sleepless nights” if people make unjustified attacks on the standard of meals, Mrs Avril Robertson, the region’s principal catering officer, told the council in Glasgow. She said many attacks were made by people who had never tasted school food. Councillor Gordon Murray recently claimed that teachers in Cumbernauld said meals were disgraceful.

Region lodges maternity appeal

- Tayside Region is appealing against a decision by Sheriff Graham Cox at Dundee Sheriff Court that teachers should not have maternity benefit deducted from their salaries. Tayside claimed it was entitled to make the deduction under regulations dealing with absence on account of illness.

Facing up to anti-Semitism

- Canadian schools have begun, somewhat belatedly, to discover the Holocaust. None is Too Many, subtitled Canada and the Jews of Europe, is being adopted as a reference text. It documents government policy that resulted in the admission to Canada of fewer than 5,000 Jewish refugees between 1933 and 1945. The title refers to a comment by an official when asked how many Jews would be allowed into Canada after the war.