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The provision of facilities for sport and recreation cannot be a primary factor in the discussion of educational policies and plans. But this provision is an essential part of an educational service and is of great importance to students. For many young people the sporting reputation of a college and the availability of sporting facilities are significant in assessing and selecting an institution of higher education. Who can deny the cachet of St Lukes and Loughborough? Some attention to this question is necessary in improving the image of the ‘other institutions’ of higher education and the government may find that a modest investment and interest will yield good political returns.

Conditions of service overshadowed all other questions at the ATTI Conference despite the imminence of salary negotiations and difficulties. The Association's executive were given clear notice of trouble if they fail to make progress on a national agreement.

It now seems certain that for the first time the salaries of teachers in technical colleges will become the subject of arbitration. The salary scales so determined are not likely to be settled before the end of November and teachers may expect a boosted cheque by Christmas.

The Joint Committees for national and higher national certificates in engineering are insisting upon the inclusion of liberal studies in courses and this is bitterly resented by most teachers and students. One HMI who was trying to justify this in a recent meeting of engineering teachers was challenged to take a show of hands on the question; it went overwhelmingly against him. But official policy is unlikely to waver and another nail will thus be driven into the HNC coffin. The teachers may protest in vain but the students can vote with their feet; and how many men trying to study in addition to doing a full‐time job will willingly spend an extra evening in college to be liberalized? The teachers of engineering are not necessarily illiberal in opposing the introduction of liberal studies. Is it not important for a liberal educationist to have regard to the wishes of his students? And is not the overloading of the curriculum a most illiberal thing? The rationale of liberal studies in a HNC course implies a confession of the essential illiberalism of the technological course itself. And this illiberalism is mainly the responsibility of the Joint Committees themselves. Before adding further subjects they should surely take a careful look at the existing curriculum and at the constraints which they themselves place upon its development.

Despite the ATTI's affiliation to the TUC and the NUT's perceptible move in the same direction, the teachers' worst enemy during the next three months will be Mr George Woodcock. He is struggling to reconcile the trade unions with the government's wages policy and will not be helped in this by a decision to grant teachers a substantial rise — his members are still very bitter about the doctors' award. Teachers regard themselves as lower‐paid workers but this is not their image in the labour movement. The government, somewhat surprisingly, has given the green light to the Burnham Committee but Mr Crosland probably has troubled times ahead. If he can persuade the government to offer nothing more than a nominal increase he will wish that the thaw had been postponed because the teachers, as always, are in a quarrelsome mood. If a substantial offer can be made the situation will be of uncommon interest educationally as well as politically. For it is now clear that substantial sums of money, if available, should be used to make structural changes and not merely to give all‐round increases.

Substantial progress has been made towards unifying the leading professional associations of accountants. It is now hoped that in the spring of next year a definitive scheme for the integration of the institutions of chartered accountants, cost and works accountants, certified and corporate accountants, municipal treasurers and accountants will be placed before members for their approval. This is a move that will have the blessing of most teachers of commercial subjects and it could not, from the educational viewpoint, come at a better time. There seems a real prospect that the bad old days of cram courses, of professional qualification by spare‐time study, of commerce as the runt of the further education litter, are at last coming to an end. Full‐time and sandwich courses in business studies are really getting under way and business houses are beginning to realize that they have responsibilities in education and training. The worse the sinner the greater the joy in heaven when he repents.

When Sir David Eccles went from the post of Minister of Education to the Presidency of the Board of Trade he was generally congratulated on his promotion. Subsequently he left the Board of Trade to become Minister of Education. This, we were told, was a further promotion — the importance of education happened to be increasing just as rapidly as that of Sir David. Since that time education has become so important that it rates not a mere Ministry but a Department of State. The head of this Department, Mr Anthony Crosland, has now become President of the Board of Trade, and the lobby correspondents have hailed his promotion. Evidently Trade is booming.

I'VE said it before, and I'll say it again: Eastbourne is an excellent place for a conference, and I set out for it after five years' absence with the hope that its handsome and genial presence would produce something better than the mixture of ordinary, obvious and sometimes inaudible papers that have been a constituent of more than one intervening conference. That towns can affect such occasions is no doubt a farfetched conceit, but they certainly affect me; as soon as I arrived the environmental magic worked, and old friends and new faces were seen in the golden light of perfect autumn weather.