Teaching bar retrospective
- Reports that large numbers of Scottish-trained teachers would be barred from teaching south of the border under new regulations are misleading, TESS enquiries reveal. The General Teaching Council had said: “Scottish teachers who are not graduates - and this includes the great majority of primary teachers - will not be able to teach in English or Welsh schools.” EIS depute general secretary Mr Keir Bloomer criticised other secretaries of state for delaying in making teaching in Scotland an all-graduate profession.
About turn on policy
- A senior Scottish Education Department official told a seminar on special educational needs in North Berwick that local authorities had a duty to provide education for the handicapped beyond the leaving age of 16. This contradicts an earlier department statement.
Cosla gives 6% rise to markers
- Scottish Examination Board markers can only look forward to fee increases of about 6 per cent and not the 31 per cent asked for, following a meeting of the Cosla education committee. Dr Malcolm Green, education chairman, sympathised with the claim for a far higher increase, but it would have meant an unacceptable increase of pound;1 million in costs.
Near-battle over married women
- School staffing figures almost led to a battle at the General Teaching Council between defenders of married women teachers and those of the newly-qualified student. Dr Tom Bone, principal of Jordanhill College and convener of the GTC’s supply committee, was “distinctly disappointed” that that only a third of newly-appointed teachers in 1981-82 were college students while two-thirds were married women returning to the profession or transfers.
New ministry fudges race issue
- The South African government is finally to respond to widespread demands for a single ministry of education for all races - but will retain the essential structure of apartheid education. High-level government sources revealed that the white-only Department of National Education would swallow the separate departments for black, Indian and coloured education.
