He is an eclectic man who is interested in many things especially matters spiritual and philosophical

He is an eclectic man who is interested in many things, especially matters spiritual and philosophical. He is not necessarily a believer, but he is interested to see if we can shed light on some of these things we don't have answers to."The puzzling patterns in the crops have spawned a host of theories embracing everything from alien spacecraft to freak wind conditions.Mr Andrews, who now has a database of 10,000 crop circles all over the world, admits he is largely a sceptic."Many crop circles - perhaps 80 per cent - are hoaxes," he said. "But there is that remainder of perhaps 20 per cent that remain inexplicable, such as complex patterns that appear in a field in a short time, when a farmer had seen the field was empty I don't think they're the skidmarks of UFOs. Our research is to discover what they are."He plans more observation flights over Hampshire and Wiltshire this year..

JILL DANDO made an eerie appeal to the public to solve her own murder on the BBC's Crimewatch programme which last night staged a reconstruction of her death. The programme segmented old footage of Miss Dando with tributes from her fiancee Alan Farthing and co-presenter Nick Ross. Miss Dando told viewers: "We rely on you to spot the clues and recognise the details that hopefully will lead to criminals being caught." The programme centred on witnesses who saw the mobile-phone carrying suspect near her home and police efforts to trace an aggressively driven blue Range Rover in the area around her Fulham home on the morning of her murder.Detective Chief Inspector Hamish Campbell, who heads the murder inquiry, reiterated the theory that two men may be implicated in the murder. One acting as look-out for the killer.Last night's Crimewatch was the first edition of the programme since Miss Dando was gunned down outside her home on 26 April.At least eight million viewers were estimated to have tuned in. Hundreds of calls were received including some from Range Rover owners and a new witness who was on a bus nearby at the time of the murder.. THE PUPILS at Alexandra High School look well turned out in their grey and cornflower blue uniforms. The classrooms are well equipped and attendance is of the order of 97 per cent.

Yet the pass rate for matric (the A-level equivalent) among these township 12th graders stands at 13 per cent. "There is no motivation any more," said the deputy principal, Kenneth Mangwedi, 59, shaking his head. A diploma on the wall proclaims Alex High as the school with the best pass rate in the huge Johannesburg township: 60 per cent. That was as recently as 1995. Of all the areas the African National Congress government has tried to remedy in its first five years in power, education, on paper at least, has proved the biggest let-down.

The more so because mass resistance to apartheid had its genesis in the 1976 Soweto schools' uprising.Yet in the run-up to South Africa's second multi-race elections, on 2 June, schools are hardly mentioned. The ANC will be handed a landslide victory by voters who are still grateful for any education they can get. It took a recent television drama series, Yizo Yizo, to get a cross-section of people talking about the need for parental involvement in education and to highlight the dope-smoking, knife-pulling antics of very real playground characters with names such as "Papa Action" and "Zakes".Mr Mangwedi, who teaches history and geography at Alex High, said: "We are not at the Yizo Yizo stage but standards have undoubtedly declined and there is a crisis of commitment and attitude." He blamed unemployment and shortages of books and furniture for the decline. Others blame poor standards of teaching, including bad time-keeping and even drinking in the classroom.Township schools have also been hit by a "brain drain".