A furious row has broken out in Scotland about a plan to merge the separate funding councils

A furious row has broken out in Scotland about a plan to merge the separate funding councils for further and higher education. Universities and colleges have united in accusing the Scottish Executive of trying to introduce a centralised planning council by stealth. A seemingly technical reform to bring the two sectors together and create a seamless route of learning has touched off fears that the proposal is a charter for government control.
Principals are adamant that this is a bad idea and are campaigning against it. Finally, university apathy – or opposition – to reform of the admissions system appears to be crumbling. One or two prominent vice-chancellors, including Eric Thomas, of Bristol University, have shown some leadership and said they would be prepared to move the start of the autumn term on a week to enable admissions tutors to select students after A-level results rather than before Now, with any luck, a bandwagon will start to roll. Instead of being the laughing stock of the world we will be able to put in place a sensible admissions system that matches students to places according to results they have received.. Last year, the number of work permits granted to Commonwealth teachers went down from 7,261 to 5,564.

Figures for the first six months of this year show there is unlikely to be any further reduction and Mr Sinnott said that figures from the Department for Education and Skills only revealed half of the picture.”Many don’t require work permits,” he said. For them to be placed in such circumstances was horrendous.”Now agencies can only recruit to fill specific vacancies and cannot bring staff over to Britain on the promise of supply work This has had some effect on limiting the numbers. The Independent highlighted the case of 30 Zimbabwean teachers who were threatened with deportation as a result “Some of these teachers were destitute,” said Mr Sinnott. “One teacher was placed in a house by an agency which was run as a brothel and it was raided Some of these people were devout Christians.

It would take the employment of five million extra teachers in Africa alone to fulfil that pledge.There are 110 million children around the world who do not receive any schooling – 85 million in Commonwealth countries.The Government has already taken action to curb the agencies’ recruitment drives after stories last year of teachers from the Commonwealth arriving in Britain only to find there was no job for them. A deal to crack down on the poaching of teachers from developing countries was agreed yesterday by the Government and Commonwealth states.
Representatives of more than 20 African and Caribbean countries have expressed alarm at the rate at which Britain has been recruiting their teaching staff on higher salaries – denuding their own schools of qualified staff. Figures show more than 5,500 teachers from Commonwealth countries were recruited to British schools last year – the largest number (1,492) coming from South Africa.Other African and Caribbean countries who lost staff include Jamaica (523), Zimbabwe (268), Ghana (126) and Kenya (116).Private agencies sign up handfuls of teachers at a time to bring back to schools and education authorities. “You have to get out of that mentality that it’s a race, and that children have to reach a certain level at a certain time,” says Jake’s father Mike.