Falling rolls help end catchment areas

- School catchment areas have finally disappeared in Scotland, but parents’ demands for alternative schools for their children are still low. These are conclusions from a TESS survey of the number of placing requests received by education authorities from parents.

Lothian to monitor suspensions and exclusions

- Lothian Region will monitor closely the number of suspensions and exclusions from school following the abolition of corporal punishment. Mrs Joan Miller, formerly deputy head at Castlebrae High, said there was a risk of creating “educational nomads”, pupils who were repeatedly suspended or excluded and were passed from school to school.

Emergency schools plan for Lebanon

- So many Palestinian schools have been destroyed or taken over by squatters as a result of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that a plan for temporary schools is being rushed through for the new term. At least 100 Palestinian teachers have been arrested by the Israelis, with many more dispersed.

Woman lost job after talk of use of pill

- A training supervisor with Scottish Amicable Life Assurance lost her job of 17 years after allegedly telling pupils at a Roman Catholic school, during a lecture on “communication”, that she did not mind her daughter sharing a sleeping bag with her boyfriend on holiday because she was on the pill. An industrial tribunal heard that the depute rector of St Modan’s High complained to the company.

Linking the thinkers and doers

- The World Association for Educational Research, which this month held a five-day conference in Helsinki, has come a long way since its first meeting in Ghent in 1953. Educational science was an academic Cinderella, a philosophical backwater that boasted few chairs at universities and was satisfied with teacher training built around systems and curricula handed down from the 19th century. Today, it is widely accepted that education is a meeting ground for every science.