Mr. Andy Pike:

There are many aspects of the 2005 contract that need to be reviewed, updated and changed. We hope that work will start shortly. It is well behind schedule. It will not be easy because you cannot negotiate a national contract for a staff group in the public sector without specifying what qualification you need to do the job. In our list of things that need to be negotiated in and around the contract, no. 1 is what qualification a person needs to do the job. If the Department of Education is taking a view that it will not discuss the qualification until after the contract talks are over then I am sorry to inform them that the contract talks will include a negotiation on the qualification or otherwise those negotiations will fail and there will be a failure to agree.