Money for supervision is still on the agenda but for now ASTI is exerting much of its energies on Sopranos-style in-fighting. Judging by the awful turnout in last week's ballot many ordinary members have little confidence in their union.

The question exercising the bigwigs at ASTI is how to reform the organisation so that the dreadful mess of this year can never be repeated.

For a start, how about slimming down its huge 180-member executive? After some internal manoeuvres, Charlie Lennon now has a solid majority of like-minded moderates on the powerful 23-member standing committee, which sets the ASTI agenda. Can we expect big changes?

You know the stereotypical view of students as right-wing, uncaring and capitalists-in-waiting. Bad news. Apparently, its all true. Word has reached TP of a survey in UCD showing a majority of the students are opposed to the accommodation of a halting site on campus. The students, it seems, are none too keen on refugees and asylum-seekers either, according to a poll in UCD's student newspaper, the College Tribune. Just as well they were not asked for their views on the Islamic world.

Trinity College currently has the only school of pharmacy in the State, but UCC may be about to get the second one. A recommendation to give the college this honour is sitting on the desk of Michael Woods.

The main losers if UCC get the school would be the Royal College of Surgeons. They have been lobbying for years for a pharmacy college. However, regional considerations are likely to win out and Munster power looks set to triumph again. As one critic snidely said of the RCSI application: "Do we really need two pharmacy schools within a stone's throw of Grafton Street?"

Those nice folks in the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) are spending £47,000 reviewing the Exploring Masculinities programme, the PC masterplan for schools that irritates Irish Times columnist John Waters so much.

But they can only meet the National Parents Council (Post-Primary), one of the few groups with interesting views on the programme, on Saturday morning. Why? Because those good people, Marie Danaswany and Barbara Johnston, must juggle NPC work with job and family commitments.

Isn't it quite extraordinary that parents are still represented by part-timers while the rest of the education "partners" are full-time professionals? So much for parent power.

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