The Supply of Teachers •
If there is one field of action in which thorough planning is ' both necessary and possible it is the training and supply of teachers. This fact alone presented an attractive opportunity to the National Advisory Council, which undertook the super. .vision of these activities in the summer of 1949, and its first vreport, published on Thursday, shows that it has made very -..good use of that opportunity. The number of children to be , taught is known. For maintained and assisted primary and ., secondary schools it was 5,540,000 in 1950 and is expected to , reach a peak of nearly 6,600,000 in 1959. The number of teachers -entering training each year is not much more than 13.000, so that the problem is one which can be grasped without resort to statistical abstractions. Problems can be seen coming and preparations to meet them made in good time. For example, the difficulty that since the war the shortage of women teachers I has hit some areas harder than others has been relieved by a scheme fixing maximum local establishments—a scheme which . the committee feel should continue for a little longer. The opposite danger, which appeared in 1950, that there would be more men teachers than jobs, was overcome by a quicker intake into schools which in any case intended to increase their estab- Iishment. The difficulties that lie ahead have also been clearly qoreseen by the Advisory Council. They include the possibility that the intake into training colleges may be insufficient, unless "more potential teachers can be persuaded to stay on at school after the age of 16 or attracted into the profession from other employments ; a shortage of science and mathematics specialists ; and the need to raise standards to meet the requirements of the new General Certificate of Education. -Questions of the quality, as distinct from the qualifications, of teachers lie on a border- line which the Council cannot easily cross, and questions of pay and conditions lie outside its terms of reference. But its work and its recommendations .within its very important field of activity thoroughly deserve the respect all directly concerned with education—to whom the report is addressed.
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