Five things you need to know today Edinburgh
More teachers promised
Recycling your Christmas trees
OBE for Faith Liddell
Exhibition at Hula
Edinburgh’s historic win in the 1872 cup
The Scottish Government has promised £2m of funding to make available an extra 250 places for people to start teacher training next year has been announced.
The planned increase of 150 primary and 100 secondary teaching places will bring the total teaching university intake to around 3,230 for 2015/16, a rise for the fourth year in a row.
This breaks down as:
- 1,170 post-graduate primary places, up 150 since last year
- 710 undergraduate primary places
- 1,165 secondary places, up 100 since last year
- 185 undergraduate secondary places
It follows a further increase, of almost 8,000, in primary school pupils this year and the lowest teacher claimant count rate in the UK.
Education Secretary Angela Constance said:
“This Government has been successful at addressing teacher unemployment and stabilising teacher numbers over the last few years.
“As we look to the future, we are providing extra funds for a further planned increase in available places in initial teacher training for the fourth year in a row. The additional £2 million investment to support a further 250 teacher training places next year comes against a backdrop of a 10 per cent fall in our budget since the current UK Government took office.
“We want our schools to have the right number of teachers with the right skills to ensure our young people continue to benefit from Scotland’s world-class education system.
“Our priority is to maintain teacher numbers in line with pupil intake. In the coming year we will also work with universities to address issues attracting student teachers for hard to recruit and priority subjects such as maths, physics and languages.”
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You can recycle real Christmas trees through the council’s garden waste service. Place your tree at the kerbside, next to your brown bin by 6am on your garden waste pick up day. Bases should be removed and trees over 6ft tall should be cut it in half.
You can also take Christmas trees to any of the Community Recycling Centres. The sites will be closed 25, 26 December and 1, 2 January.
If you live in a communal bin area, just leave your tree beside the nearest shared bin on one of the dates below. They will be turned into compost and used in parks and gardens.
City Centre and Leith – Monday 5, 12, 19 January
North – Tuesday 6, 11, 20 January
East – Wednesday 7, 14, 21 January
South- Thursday 8, 15, 22 January
South West- Friday 9, 16, 23 January
West – Saturday 10, 17, 24 January
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Faith Liddell, Director of Festivals Edinburgh, was revealed as the recipient of an OBE on the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.
In response to the news, the city’s Festivals and Events Champion Councillor Steve Cardownie says the award was well deserved.
He comments: “For seven years now, Faith has steered the way for Edinburgh’s 12 major festivals. Over that time, the festivals have continued to get bigger, audience numbers keep going up, and we’re welcoming more acts than ever before. The numbers under Faith’s watch are impressive and the festivals generate £261m of economic impact for Scotland and employ well over 5,000 full time jobs. Faith is a tireless advocate for the festivals and this recognition is rightly deserved for the work she does to sustain Edinburgh’s pre-eminence as the world’s leading festival city.”
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Hula Juice Bar in the Grassmarket are holding an opening event for the first of their 2015 art exhibitions on Thursday of this week and everyone is invited.
To begin the series of exhibitions for 2015 at Hula they will show the artwork of Daniel Tysen.
Daniel is an Edinburgh based artist and Illustrator whose work incorporates many forms of printmaking from Linocuts to Screenprints.
This exhibition will include an exciting series of new prints by the artist and Hula are looking forward to having them on their gallery walls.
“We will be holding a wee party on Thursday 8th of January to officially open the exhibition and we would love to see you there for yummy Hula cocktails and canapés.”
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John Preece was busy with rugby this weekend, firstly at the Edinburgh Rugby v Glasgow Warriors game at Murrayfield on Friday night and then with the postponed Watsonians match. You can read these and our football coverage from the weekend on our Sports section.
If you are a sports team who could do with more coverage then get in touch and we will work out how to do just that!
