PENALTIES mends that the upper time limit for an abortion be reduced from 28 weeks more students The Select Committee also recom With 20,000 teachers, including 13,000 newly qualified ones, facing the dole in September, the Government has found a neat way of preventing this disgraceful figure from rising much higher. As well as cutting the number or new places in colleges of education from 15,000 to 12,000 next year, they are also instructing college authorities to fail In future vou won't be an unem ployed teacher, a victim of the Govern ment's cuts, you will simpiy be a personal failure. Instead of the current 14 per cent tanure and drop-out rate the Department of Education and Science is demanding a 20 per cent throw-out rate from every college. No doubt one of the hoped for side-effects of this vicious scheme will be to increase competition amonest student teacners and deter them from taking collective action to demand jobs.
The total cynicism of the DES schemes is underined when irisre membered that the recommendations of the James Report on teacher trainingwhich, although never implemented, were themselves an attempt to 'rationalise' the system-at least called for a one vear probationary period in school itself before any decision on a trainees competence was made. ne only criterion now would appear to be the size of the Government's cuts.
Red Weekly 19 August 1976