Many of them have tried a life in industry and found it unfulfilling

Many of them have tried a life in industry and found it unfulfilling. They also bring an understanding of life beyond the confines of education into the classrooms in which they teach. At present, two-thirds of our teaching staff are over 40, and likely to retire over the next two decades. Recruiting thirtysomethings to replace them puts the problem off for another decade but no more. We still desperately need to persuade more students that teaching is a worthwhile career, and – once we have enticed them on to teacher-training courses – offer them an attractive enough package to persuade them to stay in the classroom.There are hopeful signs in this direction, though. Applications to traditional teacher-training courses are 14 per cent up this year, and the TTA is about to embark on an aggressive marketing campaign with final-year undergraduates this September – sensing that industry is pulling back because of fears over the economy leading to a dearth of vacancies in the private sector next year.

Also, the extra billions being poured into education as a result of Chancellor Gordon Brown’s comprehensive spending review will – in addition to alleviating the workload of teachers and offering them a better remuneration – allow schools to become more “family-friendly” employers. One of the schemes outlined by Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education, in her vision of the future for secondary schooling was of the 24/7 community schools (open 24 hours a day, seven days a week), offering cr?e facilities for staff with children. This is the kind of thinking that our schools need to adopt if we are to ensure that staffing shortages do not make a mockery of the investment that is now to be ploughed into education by the Government.. Manchester is a city whose insistent talent for invention and reinvention is allied to an unshakeable self-belief and tempered by that great Lancastrian ability not to take anything too terribly seriously. Let the games begin! And time today, too, to salute Manchester, a city whose insistent talent for invention and reinvention is allied to an unshakeable self-belief and tempered by that great Lancastrian ability not to take anything too terribly seriously, including itself. Can you imagine London being able to survive Engels, Coronation Street, Sir Alex Ferguson, Tony Wilson, Bernard Manning and the Gallaghers?
Which is why Manchester can survive jeers from outside about these Commonwealth Games, mostly from residents of a capital that has been so successful at maintaining a decent stadium and attracting top international sporting events. In any event, Manchester has made the best jokes itself already, combining the renaissance typified by Urbis, Libeskind and the Northern Quarter with the official Games staff uniform of flat cap and shell suit.

As for that other perennial question, borne with equally good grace: no, not today, but it might be quite heavy tomorrow.. So far the performance of our public services has been good on most major disaster incidents. That is no reason for complacency, of course; procedures must be constantly reviewed and funding may well need to be increased. Britain is not equipped to defend itself against an 11 September-style attack, says the Commons Defence Committee. The Government believes the balance of its security structures are right, replied Tony Blair in Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday.
Normally that would be enough to have us all fleeing to the bomb shelters, on the simple principle that whenever a minister expresses him or herself satisfied with safety, you know the worst is going to happen.And, indeed, the Defence Committee does make some worrying points about the lack of co-ordination and full revision of procedures since 11 September. The awful lessons of the poor communications between police and fire departments in New York in the immediate aftermath of the attack should be written on the heart of every public service across the Atlantic.But to suggest, as the committee does, that we need a whole raft of new laws and a “strong central authority” headed by a cabinet minister to co-ordinate the work of various departments is to get carried away with the drama of September. Unlike the US, Britain has had 30 years’ experience of dealing with terrorism, including direct mortar attacks on Number 10, the bombing of a hotel being used by the Prime Minister and much of the Cabinet, and the attempted destruction of the Stock Exchange.The lesson, as we have learned, is that the greatest priority has to be given to intelligence and prevention.

Nine-eleven presents huge challenges but – for obvious reasons – little information by which to judge performance. It is the attacks avoided that matter – and those we rarely know about.The response to an attack from al-Qa’ida, on the other hand, is no different in practice from the reaction to an IRA outrage, or even a civilian disaster. So far the performance of the public services has been good on most major disaster incidents. What we do not need, however, is more ministers, another expensive department and a bigger Cabinet.. Pressure must be put on paramilitaries on both sides to end the criminal gangsterism that is a stain on the Northern Ireland peace process, but the bottom line remains, better a stained peace process than none at all. There are those in Northern Ireland who say that the latest crisis in the stumbling peace process has been manufactured by the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble That would be understandable.