'Semi-literates' teaching

Producing qualified secondary school teachers is now more urgent than producing specialists like economists, Mr. Jack Shallcrass said at Congress.

Secondary schools were at present taking as staff "any semi-literate person of the street."

Fewer than half the staff at secondary schools were now graduates or had post-graduate qualifications.

"An increasing number have no academic qualifications," he said.

"You can't just say we want more economists, under-pinning all this is the need for a continuing flow of people with a broad education from the universities who can put back into the universities from which you are the cream."

Mr Shallcrass also said the role of the sixth form in secondary schools could be made terminal at the fifth form and the school certificate examination could be eliminated. This would leave the secondary schools the job of giving a broad general education — a process of exploration of the individual, not domination and destruction by an examination system which failed students at a ratio of two to one.

At the junior universities. intellectual requirements should be made tough and demanding in the academic tradition as the students progress. Teachers within these colleges should help people decide whether their talents were best suited to a technical institute or to a university.