Correspondence

FE council? Sir, The present position regarding the provision of external syllabuses and more particularly examinations in further education is far from satisfactory. Recent articles by Dr Leese and Mr Finch and the reply by Mr Holbein regarding the City and Guilds of London Institute are symptoms of this. For very many reasons, further education is in need of an independent guiding body analogous to the Schools Council in the secondary field. The CGLI has styled itself the ‘chosen instrument’ for examinations in the field of technical education and has become far too large to meet the changing pattern of present day needs. The regional examining bodies are in a ‘concordat’ strait‐jacket. Under ‘Comment’ in your September issue on examining at 16+, you end — “So we can welcome the teacher based examination(CSE); the nextstep is to develop the teacher and play down the examination”. This is equally valid for further education and until we get a Further Education Council actively and independently to assess our needs, the multitude of examining bodies will continue to go their own ways.