Comment

At last there are signs of progress in the developments of students‘ unions in technical colleges on a national scale. The National Union of Students for many years has included technical college students in its membership and has run an annual discussion conference for them, but it has naturally been mainly preoccupied with the interests of university students and more recently with students in CATs and colleges of education. The Department has advised LEAs and colleges that an autonomous students’ union should exist and that it should be supported by a substantial compulsory annual subscription. In many colleges rapid progress has been made and reluctant principals have been chivvied along. The students are now confident of making comparable progress in the technical and art colleges on which they will now concentrate attention. They have met the Secretary of State more than once on this question and in the summer they entertained the Minister of State, Mr Goronwy Roberts, in a lively conference which forcibly drew to his attention the gap in standards between the two halves of the binary system. The circular letter on technical college unions issued by the Department in September is a tribute to their initiative and persistence. Some of the demands of the students‐separate students‘ union buildings, halls of residence and students’ flats‐are Utopian in the context of our present crisis but in others they can have better hopes of success.