Technical Education

The myth that Northern Ireland has a world-class education system has been exploded after an audit found that 538 schools here are unviable either educationally, financially or in terms of pupil numbers.

>> Click on More Pictures to view the nine grammar schools that are failing educationally

The Education Minister John O’Dowd has revealed 46.5% of primary schools, 83.8% of secondary schools and 35% of grammar schools have been identified as being in some form of difficulty.

And last night he admitted that he would have no hesitation in closing failing schools to protect children’s education.

“If that decision is needed in individual cases, then that decision will be made,” said Mr O’Dowd.

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Just when it appeared the South Hills High School baseball team was ready to run away with the local spotlight, Joe Gil and Charter Oak slapped the Huskies back to reality.

Gil delivered a two-out hit to the right-center field gap off of Huskies reliever Ty France that scored pinch-runner Alejandro Sanchez from second for a 2-1 Charter Oak win in eight innings on Wednesday afternoon in the Sierra League opener for both teams.

“He started me off with a curve ball and I knew he was going to come back with a fastball and I had to sit and wait for it because he was really bringing the heat,” Gil said. “He (France) got me the first at-bat and I wasn’t going to let it happen again.

“I knew it was in the gap. I was just waiting for him (Sanchez) to get home so we could start celebrating. It was just a great victory. We’re the two best teams in this league, I think. It was just a fight to the end.”

The win improved Charter Oak, this newspaper’s No.

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GL’s ATM Analyzer is used to analyze and decode different ATM protocols like ATM, AAL2 Protocols (CPS-SDU, SSSAR-SDU, and SSCS), AAL5 (CPCS), UNI etc across U plane and C plane of UNI and NNI interface.

GL Communications Inc. a leader in providing PC-based test, analysis and simulation products and consulting services to the worldwide telecommunications industry, conveyed today the availability of its product ATM Protocol Analyzer software.

Speaking to the press, Mr. Vijay Kulkarni CEO of the company said, “Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a flexible network, which carries voice, video, and data in the same way, i.e. fixed length cells. It has generated a number of revenue opportunities because of its different classes of service support for multimedia traffic, efficient bandwidth management for burst traffic, support for LAN/WAN architecture and high performance via hardware switching.”

He added, “GL’s ATM Analyzer is used to analyze and decode different ATM protocols like ATM, AAL2 Protocols (CPS-SDU, SSSAR-SDU, and SSCS), AAL5 (CPCS), UNI etc across U plane and C plane of UNI and NNI interface. The a

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The Academy of Technology, Engineering, Math and Science will host its first “Academy Nights” for prospective students and their parents tonight at the campus of Texas State Technical College, 650 E. Highway 80.

Meetings will be held throughout March from 6 to 7 p.m. Thursdays.

Tonight’s “Academy Nights” is for Madison Middle School eighth-grade families.

Other dates are:

March 8 for Craig Middle School eighth-grade families

March 22 for Clack Middle School eighth-grade families

March 29 for Mann Middle School eighth-grade families

ATEMS is a campus designed for high school students interested in pursuing careers in engineering and computer science.

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The number of UK students applying to start university this autumn has fallen by almost 9%, official figures show.

In total, 462,507 people have applied for courses beginning in September, compared with 506,388 at this point last year – a drop of 8.7%, according to statistics published by Ucas.

Tuition fees for English universities are due to triple to a maximum of 9,000 this autumn.

Overall application from all students, both home and abroad, are down by 7.4%, the figures show,

The figures show that the number of applicants have fallen from all parts of the UK.

In England the number of applicants has dropped by 9.9%, Northern Ireland 4%, Scotland 1.5% and Wales 1.9%.

Education experts warned that the Government’s plans to raise tuition fees could be having an impact on application figures.

But Ucas chief executive Mary Curnock Cook suggested that population changes could be a factor in the fall, and said the drop in demand was larger among wealthier students than poorer ones.

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