Education Follow

Have you noticed how David Blunkett is becoming rattier and rattier with every interview he faces?

Students at Glasgow University staged a "die-in" outside the Student Representative Council offices last week.

The Times Educational Supplement advertised over 4,000 vacancies for teachers' posts last week. It's not only in London that the teacher shortage crisis is biting hard. In Hertfordshire young teachers find the cost of living intolerably high. In areas like this over 65 percent of teachers are aged over 40.

Scottish Teachers are being asked by their union leaders to vote for longer working hours and the right of management to control every minute of their lives. This is what the pay and conditions deal we are being balloted over really means.

The Scottish press slammed teachers as "greedy" last weekend for not jumping for joy at a proposed pay deal. Papers claimed negotiations between the Scottish Executive, teachers' union and local government representatives had come up with a once in a lifetime offer, worth a 21.5 percent pay increase over the next three years.