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Not even those who have been in technical education for many years can foresee clearly what the impact of current industrial training developments will be, but the discerning eye can see emerging certain problems and dangers. If for the purposes of this article these are frankly discussed, the writer should make clear his own view that for many years industrial training has been scandalously neglected, and that its proper development as part of technical education is perhaps the most important single domestic issue for this country today.

It is extraordinary that such an apparently forbidding aspect of education as examinations has become so charged with emotional attitudes and language that, before one even begins to survey any sector of the field, some cautionary words are necessary. It is salutary to remind ourselves that in this, as in all organised human activities, we are not likely to find perfection, but only a serviceable balance of opposing factors:

Attention was called in the March number of this Journal to the promotion of a Bill for the reconstitution of the Local Government Board, and the opinion was expressed that the renovated Department should contain among its staff “experts of the first rank in all the branches of science from which the knowledge essential for efficient administration can be drawn.”

On several occasions I have called attention in this magazine to the contrast between the centralized control of content and evaluation of student performance in further education, and the recent developments in other branches of education such as the Schools Council and the CSE, especially mode 3 of the latter, which is in some ways what National Certificates were intended to be in further education in the 1920s. In 1965 I voiced fears that the Industrial Training Act as it stands might well result in ‘our young people being pulled in different directions by two armies of teachers under different commands and with differing objectives’. In July 1966 I made a plea for a National Council to strengthen and democratize further education, and in December of that year I suggested the replacement of external examinations by other forms of assessment and measurement. Now, after a year's absence overseas, I am asked to comment on present trends.

Sir Alec is no doubt referring to experiments in the West Riding and elsewhere which, in the words of the Schools Council, “show that provided that the teachers in a group of schools share certain characteristics (viz discrimination and like‐mindedness), there is good reason to think that they can combine effectively to run a system of examining under which each school sets and marks its own examination or assesses its own course or craft work”. The purpose of this article, which is based on experimental work by the Yorkshire Council for Further Education over many years and particularly since 1963, is to show that a devolution of responsibility for the assessment of student performance is at least as necessary in further education as it is in secondary schools. Nothing less than a major operation by central and local government and teachers will be satisfactory, and this operation will not be mounted if the present centralized, costly, and confusing state of affairs is allowed to continue, otherwise, the vested interests referred to by Sir Alec will see to it that there is endless delay and frustration until the momentum for reform has ground to a halt.

There is a close similarity between the present world positions of Britain and the Netherlands. Both countries have lost the bulk of their colonies and all that went with them in wealth and self‐esteem. Both are relatively small countries largely dependent on their export trade. Both have had to recover from the devastation of the last war. Both have long imperial histories and could be tempted to live on past glories.

The statements which have recently been made in various quarters to the effect that Danish butter is losing its hold on the English market, that its quality is deteriorating, and that the sale is falling off, are not a little astonishing in face of the very strong and direct evidence to the contrary furnished by the official records. As an example of the kind of assertions here alluded to may be instanced an opinion expressed by a correspondent of the British Food Journal, who, in a letter printed in the March number, stated that “My own opinion is that the Danes are steadily losing their good name for quality, owing to not using preservatives and to their new fad of pasteurising… .”

Mature student numbers across England’s Higher Education (HE) sector have been declining since the rise in tuition fees in 2012. Leading up to Brexit, there is a need to upskill the national workforce to provide services and skills currently sourced from the EU. Mature students play a key role in this process, as HE study can add to existing industry experiences, knowledge, and skills. Hence, the HE sector in England is beginning to evaluate and change the way in which universities and colleges can provide support to mature students from recruitment to the completion of their course.

Institutions can encourage a sense of belonging in mature students through the use of mature student mentors and ambassadors at open days, and as points of contact throughout any course. It is important to create a mature student community to provide an appropriate support network, but equally academic staff should encourage the engagement of mature students with their younger peers.

This chapter provides an insight into relevant research literature and uses examples from a case study based in a small HE provider setting to make practical recommendations for academic staff, support staff, and areas of institutional practice.

The institution of food and cookery exhibitions and the dissemination of practical knowledge with respect to cookery by means of lectures and demonstrations are excellent things in their way. But while it is important that better and more scientific attention should be generally given to the preparation of food for the table, it must be admitted to be at least equally important to insure that the food before it comes into the hands of the expert cook shall be free from adulteration, and as far as possible from impurity,—that it should be, in fact, of the quality expected. Protection up to a certain point and in certain directions is afforded to the consumer by penal enactments, and hitherto the general public have been disposed to believe that those enactments are in their nature and in their application such as to guarantee a fairly general supply of articles of tolerable quality. The adulteration laws, however, while absolutely necessary for the purpose of holding many forms of fraud in check, and particularly for keeping them within certain bounds, cannot afford any guarantees of superior, or even of good, quality. Except in rare instances, even those who control the supply of articles of food to large public and private establishments fail to take steps to assure themselves that the nature and quality of the goods supplied to them are what they are represented to be. The sophisticator and adulterator are always with us. The temptations to undersell and to misrepresent seem to be so strong that firms and individuals from whom far better things might reasonably be expected fall away from the right path with deplorable facility, and seek to save themselves, should they by chance be brought to book, by forms of quibbling and wriggling which are in themselves sufficient to show the moral rottenness which can be brought about by an insatiable lust for gain. There is, unfortunately, cheating to be met with at every turn, and it behoves at least those who control the purchase and the cooking of food on the large scale to do what they can to insure the supply to them of articles which have not been tampered with, and which are in all respects of proper quality, both by insisting on being furnished with sufficiently authoritative guarantees by the vendors, and by themselves causing the application of reasonably frequent scientific checks upon the quality of the goods.