Happy birthday, ESTA!

Fifty-nine years ago today, on Sunday 24 September 1967, 140 people at the University of Keele voted unanimously to form an association for teachers of geology.

They had arrived on the Friday not knowing whether there would be one. The weekend was called by a sub-committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science to find out whether teachers wanted an association at all, and the answer only came on the Sunday morning, after a discussion of the draft rules Dr John Harpum had circulated beforehand. The vote was carried without opposition. Subscriptions were set at £1, or ten shillings for students, and a Steering Committee of six was elected to sort out the constitution.

Immediately after the meeting, ninety-six people queued up to pay the treasurer. A pound was close to an afternoon's pay for a teacher in 1967, yet 96 people signed up there and then, with another two joining before the month was out.

The Association of Teachers of Geology became the Earth Science Teachers' Association in 1988. It has met every year since 1968, and today it turns fifty-nine.

That also makes today the first day of our sixtieth year, and it ends where you would expect.

Next September we gather at the University of Plymouth for our 60th Annual Conference, sixty years on from Keele.

Consider this your invitation. Come and help us celebrate sixty years of ESTA.

Read the full story of how ESTA began here.