The National Association of Head Teachers has appointed Alun Jones as its new director for Wales. He will take up his post, created to reflect the growing independence of Welsh education under the Welsh Assembly, on Monday March 1 - St David’s Day.
Mr Jones is already well- known to many in the Welsh educational scene as he has been regional officer for the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers for more than 12 years.
Paul Roche has been appointed education officer of the National Space Science Centre, the pound;46.5 million millennium project that will open in Leicester in February 2001. He will set up and run the NSSC’s schools outreach programme before its Challenger Learning Centre - the first to be licensed outside North America - opens in autumn.
Dr Roche, formerly a lecturer in physics and astronomy at the University of Sussex, ran an 18-month programme called “Telescopes in Education”, which allows schools to control a Californian telescope in real time through remote control from their classrooms.
Stephen Feber has been appointed chief executive of the pound;37 million Magna Millennium Project, an attraction that will use the story of steel production to explore the elements of earth, air, fire and water.
Mr Feber, who is currently director of the World of Glass visitor centre and museum in St Helen’s, Merseyside, was formerly development director of Eureka! in Halifax, chief executive of Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire and director of the York Museums and Galleries Service.
He confesses to having been bored at school and says his father’s workshop was the school he would like to have gone to. Now he wants Magna to be “not a museum but an informal learning centre - a place where everyone from a young child to a grandparent can learn outside the education system”.
The Magna Millennium Project, which is housed in the derelict Templeborough steelworks in South Yorkshire, hopes to attract 300,000 visitors a year after it opens at Easter 2001.
Yve Buckland has been appointed to chair the Health Education Authority (HEA) for three years from May 1. Ms Buckland, who has been deputy chief executive and city secretary for Nottingham City Council since 1992, has been active in developing effective partnerships between local government and health agencies.
She succeeds Tony Close who has been chairman of the HEA for the past five years.
Lord Dearing is to be chairman of the University for Industry, David Blunkett, the Education and Employment Secretary, has announced. Tony Greener, chairman of Diageo plc, the international food and drinks group, will be vice-chairman.
