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L Analysis
slightly greater reduction. The total intake to B.Ed. and comparable undergraduate courses would be limited to 1,750 rather than the 2250 recommended and is 35 per cent less than the actual entry of 2750 in 1981. Also he decided on a 25 per cent cut in the intake to post-graduate one-year courses for secondary school teacher-training, compared with a 20 per cent reduction recommended by Acset. It is these figures which have been translated into cuts for colleges and polytechnics.
For most of the 14 institutions the cuts mean the loss of a teacher training segment — the equivalent of a department — and in this respect they have come off lightly. But for the voluntary colleges, the two Catholic colleges and a Church of England college, the loss of teacher-training is the loss of their principal function.
The Department also says that in the detailed planning it took account of a working agreement that 10 per cent of teacher training places should be in the Catholic voluntary sector — roughly in line with the proportion of Catholics in the school age population. But maintenance of this figure was not ensured by the Catholic education authorities without a struggle. The Department officials wanted to reduce the Catholic share but the Catholic Education Council stood firm.
However, it appears that the C.E.C. had no direct say in how the cuts should hit specific institutions.
There is no reference to economic argument in any of the DES documents, though no doubt this will come in to the bargaining once the college authorities have made their representations for survival. Officially it is not the Government's decision that colleges should close, only that they should cease training teachers.
One of the planks of the case to be made for De La Salle and Newman will surely be that other Catholic colleges are projected to increase their teacher training intake in the three years under consideration. This is particularly so in the colleges specialising in junior primary school work like the Roehampton Institute which includes Digby Stuart. Primary school teacher training is the growth area as defined by the DES. But Newman College also specialises in primary schooling, and while there is no reference to it in the college prospectus, two-thirds of De La Salle student-teachers are primary trained.
The Education Secretary, Sir Keith Joseph, in making known the DES view, said the proposals follow the sharp fall in the birth-rate and the school population, which is down by more than 11/2 million in the decade from the mid-seventies. "But the number of children in primary schools will begin to rise again in the mid-1980s. The logic of the situation impels us to treble the number of newly trained primary teachers and to cut by about one-third the number of new secondary teachers.
"We also want to strengthen professional and subject expertise in the schools — to provide better education over the years for children — and our proposals are an important step in that direction" he said.
The colleges have until September 17 to make their representations, then a final decision will be made by the end of October.