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considered that the key to quality in school education lies in expanding
the public sector so that private schools with unsatisfactory standards
are forced out of the market, leaving a corpus of private schools
providing a viable alternative to public-sector schools.
6.26
From time to time educators have called upon the government to
cease issuing permits and carry out a massive in-service training programme
for permitted teachers. The good intentions of such calls are acknowledged
but, quite apart from disregarding the technical problems involved, they
overlook the fact that the number of places allocated each year to ICTT
training has to be controlled, together with those allocated to full-time
training courses, to match the expected number of public-sector vacancies
arising in the year in which the training is completed. Any substantial
overprovision can result (and indeed has in the past resulted) in the
displacement of fresh full-time trained teachers seeking jobs in the
public sector, resulting in their having to turn to non-teaching jobs or
accepting teaching posts in the private sector at low rates of pay a
cause of considerable discontent and disharmony within the teaching
profession. The information on which intake targets to the colleges are
determined is supplied by the Education Department's Statistics Section:
this in turn is derived from a study of population characteristics, the
planned secondary school expansion programme, the state of the primary
school sector, the approved graduate/non-graduate teacher ratio, approved.
class sizes in public-sector schools and the current and projected
employment situation, other special factors being taken into account
where necessary. In determining output requirements for the colleges
account also has to be taken of the need for specialist teachers in
technical and prevocational schools and special education requirements.
Target figures are now calculated for eight-year periods in order to
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