More secondary school teachers have degrees and more lessons are taught by teachers with degrees in their subjects than in 1996, according to the latest figures on school staffing. They also show that the problems in maths teacher recruitment have not been fully overcome.The 2003 Secondary Schools Curriculum and Staffing Survey – the first since 1996 shows a – 12% rise in the percentage of full time teachers with a degree and an 8% increase in the overall percentage of subject periods taught by full-time teachers with a degree in those subjects. There has also been a 4% improvement in the overall percentage of full-time teachers with degrees in the subjects that they are teaching.

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In an unprecedented move nine members of the Royal Commission on Long Term Care are calling today for the implementation of the recommendation, made in the Commission’s report of 1999, that personal care should be free.In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the state supports nursing care for the elderly but pays for personal care only on a rigidly means-tested basis. The Scottish Executive has already adopted the recommendation on free personal care. The nine Commissioners today welcome that move but say that the situation in the rest of the country is unstable and “if not dealt with in the near future will implode”.They point to what they call huge ethical, conceptual and practical difficulties in distinguishing nursing care from personal care in the cases of ill and disabled older people. They say too that the system of making decisions on entitlement to financial support dependent on the type of carer rather than on the care that is needed puts providers before patients.

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