EVERY YEAR IN EARLY JANUARY A GREAT GET-TOGETHER TAKES PLACE called the North of England Education Conference. It continues for three days and it brings together teachers, administrators, inspectors, professors, educational publishers - the lot. Usually it is addressed by the Minister of Education. Last year Mrs Shirley Williams gave the presidential speech, this year Lord James presided; he is better known to many of us as Eric James, formerly High Master of Manchester Grammar School. Looking back I notice that I had the privilege of presiding over two earlier conferences, at Scarborough as Minister in 1938 and at Morecambe as a university Member of Parliament in 1947: between these two dates a coalition government passed the famous 1944 Act.