asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will seek to repeal the Remuneration of Teachers Act.

I am prepared to listen to the arguments for change and that is why I met representatives of the local authority associations at their request in March. At that meeting they made plain their dissatisfaction with the present machinery and I repeated my readiness to consider the case for a change. I now await the submission of a written case; before coming to a firm view on the matter I would want to be satisfied that any new arrangements would offer the prospect of being a real improvement on the present ones. The Scots have different machinery yet very similar problems.