§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Barber.]
§ 6.5 a.m.
§ Dr. Horace King (Southampton. Itchen)In October, 1953, I asked the then Minister of Education to institute an inquiry and make a report on progress since secondary education for all began in 1946. Now that Political and Economic Planning has published such a report on secondary modern schools I repeat the request for a Ministry report. The P.E.P. report is, of necessity. sketchy. At times it fails to see the wood of achievement because of the trees of difficulty remaining, and the forests ahead.
Britain ought to be proud of what has been done in secondary education so far. It all began under grave handicaps—the established status and prestige of the grammar school; inadequate buildings, most of them, at first, only the old elementary schools, manned by the old teaching staffs; the new problems confronting teachers who faced for the first time in 1947 youngsters of 15, and were perhaps a little afraid of the new task and of the adolescent; the battle to persuade local education authorities to give the equipment, laboratories, workshops, textbooks, playing fields, even school prizes.
Moreover, with an increasing demand for grammar school education, teachers in secondary modern schools encountered parents who had cruelly discouraged their children because they had failed to win special places; parents who regarded the secondary modern school as a disappointment, and who were unkind and unwise enough to let their children and the staff know it. The children left school at 15 instead of the grammar school leaving age of 16 and later. The wide range of ability was from children who ought to be in grammar schools to those who were educationally sub-normal. The dice were loaded against the new schools; but at once things began to happen.
What has been achieved so far? A successful battle against the illiteracy which had grown, perhaps not surprisingly, during the war. We have not abolished illiteracy. There will always be 535 a few children who cannot be taught to read, but work in small classes for backward children, with teachers today volunteering for such work, and specially training for it, is having its effect.
The Ministry's pamphlet, "Reading Ability", should now be supplemented by the striking figures of what is being achieved in this field. At the other end of the scale is what is being done for bright children. In 1955, 5,550 secondary modern school children entered for the General Certificate of Education. In a single county in 1953, 102 children passed in 115, and in 1955, 440 children passed in 679, subjects.
Last year, a girl in a secondary modern school of which I am a governor passed in six subjects—most grammar school children would be happy to do as well as this. Some children in Hampshire who began in a secondary modern school are now at the university. In 1949, 13,000 secondary modern schoolchildren stayed on after 15, and 1,500 after 16. In 1954, the numbers were 21,000 and 3,000. Secondary modern school education has proved really worth while for these children, most of them victims of the 11-plus selection system.
Secondary modern schools have developed new courses of study. Mr. Richard Hickman, in a recent lecture under the auspices of the National Union of Teachers, at Blackpool, gave a striking list of about 20 different types of such courses, including rural science, auto-engineering, pre-apprenticeship, practical crafts, and electrical science. What is significant here is the vital and natural opening up of new avenues.
This is a far cry from the "projects" which were all that official documents could visualise in the raw days of 1945, on the one hand, and on the other, the reaching out to types of work traditionally associated with grammar and technical schools; the beginning of the seeping away, which I believe inevitable, of the clumsy tripartite system which still fetters us, and faltering though unconscious moves towards comprehensive secondary education. Able children from fifth forms of secondary modern schools are transferring to sixth forms of grammar schools and are doing well there; and all this apart from the deliberate setting up of comprehensive 536 secondary schools by some forward-looking local education authorities.
But, important as all this is, much more important is what is being done for the average child. Recently, Dr. Thomas, Director of Education for Leicester, paid a tribute, which I echo, to the maturity, poise and confidence of our secondary modern children. Anyone who visits the schools and sees the children on sports day, speech day, school excursion or, school camp, or who sees their work in education exhibitions, must know that things, vital things, are happening here just as surely as free milk is building their fine young bodies.
I often wonder why the Press does not write about the splendid average young children of Britain. It is because I know what is being achieved that I am alarmed about the immediate future. All that has been won so far is in danger. One and a quarter million more children are now coming into our secondary schools. Some of the newest buildings can take the extra children, but senior schools built between 1931 and 1939, good as they were, will not be adequate and cannot cope with the bulge. Perhaps one third of our children are in neither new schools nor in "senior" schools, but in old, cramped buildings, which are already full to capacity before the bulge hits them.
Worst off of all are the quarter of a million children in the all-age schools, for whom the glory of secondary education has really not yet begun. I know that the Minister has wisely set the local education authorities the target of complete reorganisation of all-age rural schools within the next four years. But he still withholds a similar programme for urban schools. This is the most urgent demand that I shall make in this debate.
The Minister has caused a second lag in school building. I know that his defence for cutting building programmes is that the local education authorities are not building quickly enough the schools he has already permitted, but what is wanted now is a bold and rapidly expanding building programme with an assurance of steel and materials and labour. We want more schools and fewer petrol stations and blocks of offices. I do not like the new check the Minister has recently imposed on the local education authorities, who now have to submit each new school to him for approval before 537 going out to tender, even though each of these schools is already in an annual programme which the Minister has already approved.
My own local education authority has an emergency, prefabricated hut programme to provide the extra teaching spaces needed by our older secondary modern schools if we are to get through next year without a tremendous increase in the size of classes. I urge the Minister to encourage such first-aid action throughout the country.
The position is worse than many imagine. By law, secondary school classes ought to be a maximum of 30. Yet in 1948 nearly 70 per cent. of the classes were over 30. By 1954 the percentage had dropped to 54, but it will now rise again unless speedy action is taken. In January, 1955, there were 22.000 over-large secondary modern school classes, 1 million children in classes over 30, and even 120,000 in classes over 40.
If we are to extend the ablest pupils—and everyone who believes in secondary modern education believes that that is one of its most important tasks—and I believe the ability is there; if we are to feed the new demands of a technical age with new cadres of ability which can only be drawn from the 75 per cent. of our children now in secondary modern schools; if we are to develop what is being done for backward and delicate children, all this demands smaller classes. Yet at the moment they are getting larger.
One and a quarter million more children means that at the height of the bulge, in 1961, we ought to have another 40,000 secondary teachers for classes of 30, or 30,000 more if only to keep classes below 40. How far does the Minister think he is providing that number?
I note with pleasure his suggestion that local education authorities should release teachers for special training for secondary school work, and I hope they will respond to his suggestion and make adequate financial provision for such teachers seconded.
It would be wrong to think the teaching problem of secondary modern schools can be solved merely by transferring primary teachers and so make primary education foot the bill this time as it has been made to do throughout the century 538 every time an educational advance has been made. At the same time, it will be a tragedy if the children who have been educated in classes of 50 in primary schools have to have their secondary modern education in similarly large classes. This may be the fate of many children unless the Minister acts quickly.
I am sorry that the Minister has abandoned the quota system for teachers. With all its faults it meant fairer sharing over the country of the new teachers available. I know that the teaching profession does not share my view on this, but with some local education authorities, like Birmingham, facing a desperate shortage of teachers and the bulge at the same time, I think that the Minister will be compelled to put the children first and not let things just drift.
I hope the Minister will think again about secondary modern leaving examinations. Nobody wants these schools to be tied to examinations, or children to be sacrificed to an examination syllabus. The grammar schools are just escaping from the slavery of examinations, but parents, employers, teachers and the children themselves have something to gain from the sense of purpose, the incentive, and the guidance of a leaving examination. The decision should be with the school itself. Some groups are making their own leaving certificates. Others wish to send some of their children in for examinations such as those offered by the London College of Preceptors. I do not think that they should still be discouraged from taking and even forbidden, as they are under the grant regulations, to take such examinations.
The development of secondary modern education varies from place to place and school to school. We do not want uniformity, but we do want equality of opportunity for our children. There are still areas where children who are fit and able cannot continue at school after 15 in a secondary modern school because no five-year course is provided. I believe that the great 1944 Act means that every child has the right to the length of secondary education from which he is able to profit, and if the G.C.E. course or similar five-year course is not available in the school in which the child happens to be, then there ought to be somewhere under the local education 539 authority a school to which he can be transferred if he is fit and able to profit by such a course.
We have not solved yet the problem of the 11-plus selection; and I do not think that we ever shall, under the tripartite system. At least, however, the Minister can pool the best experience of the local authorities on methods of selection. I welcome the advance made by Kent and similar local education authorities in their attempts to break down the nightmare of the examination at 11 plus, but some local education authorities are moving backwards, not forwards. I know of one which recently boasted that it was giving greater weight to attainment tests than to intelligence tests, despite the fact that attainment up to 11 plus depends on other things besides ability, among them being the nature of the primary school in which the child is educated—and primary schools range from the large, well organised, and well staffed junior school to the often cramped and ugly village slum school or the all-age school.
The evils of coaching for selection still remain. I have not time to discuss as I should like to in a longer debate the content and quality and the purpose, the moral and spiritual value, of what secondary modern education is beginning to be, its intellectual content, and the importance of a sound, basic, common curriculum, including, incidentally, the vital and much maligned "three Rs". This is allied to recruitment from secondary modern schools for advanced technical education. The need for raising the school-leaving age to 16, or, as a first step, to the end of the school year in which the child becomes 15—and, here, a summer examination would be an inducement to parents to allow their children to stay—demands more teachers.
There is the need not only for teachers, but also for better qualified teachers by extending the training college course to three years; and here I would pay tribute to the great work which is being done in our training colleges. I believe that they are itching to be permitted to institute the three-year teacher training course. All these are matters for the Ministerial inquiry for which I ask, and for consequent recommendations and action.
540 My purpose in this debate is to call attention, like the Political and Economic Planning report, to the grave danger of losing the undoubted—if not nation-wide—gains of the first decade of modern education, and to urge the Government, and the country, which spends more on beer, or tobacco, or armaments, or in interest on war debt, than it does on education, to arouse itself to immediate action. I urge the nation to realise just how much can be lost.
I would like to quote from what the Central Advisory Council on Education stated in its 1947 Report, "School and Life":
The majority of children will continue to be denied adequate education, and the harmful struggle for admission to the relatively few well provided schools will persist until good secondary schools are available for all.I believe that that is still true. Recently, Lord Hives, that great and forward-looking man said,There is talent wasted in all schools, but especially in technical and secondary modern schools. The position is vitally affected by the supply of suitable teachers.There is nothing wrong with the children of Britain, or with the conception of universal secondary education. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary what the Government are doing, in the matter of buildings and teachers, to give our children their chance.
§ 6.22 a.m.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Dennis Vosper)I am sorry that the generosity and kindness of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) in deferring this debate from an earlier occasion should have resulted in his having to speak at a somewhat unusual hour and also to have deprived him of the audience to which he is entitled.
The hon. Member has raised a subject which is both important and topical and he packed a great deal into his remarks. I cannot promise to take up all the points he has raised in the limited time at my disposal, but I welcome the tenor of his speech. He has drawn attention to some of the many good things which are happening in secondary modern schools, instead of the more fashionable habit of referring to the deficiencies of which we are well aware, and which it is everybody's concern to remedy as fast as conditions allow.
541 The hon. Gentleman has based this debate on the recently published P.E.P. report, and which, in its opening paragraph, does me the honour of quoting from a recent speech in which I said, "Give the secondary modern school a chance to show its paces." I stand by that statement because I believe that the 10 years of its development is a comparatively short period, especially when one remembers the economic crises and the increase in child population which have occurred during those years. I put it to the House that it is as if we were examining the state of the local authority grammar schools just before the First World War.
Nevertheless, secondary modern schools have shown their paces in plenty of places, and the hon. Member has made a considerable contribution in this respect. A most important thing to recognise is that there is no such thing as "the secondary modern school." There are secondary modern schools—more than 3,500 of them, and they differ in innumerable ways.
About half of them cater for boys and girls together, a quarter for boys and a quarter for girls. While 3,000 have between 100 and 500 pupils on roll, they vary in size from fewer than 50 pupils to more than 1,000. Most of them are county schools, but more than 400 are Church of England or Roman Catholic foundations. They educate about 1¼ million of our children—two out of three of all the senior children in the maintained schools.
Nearly 56,000 full-time teachers work in them—approximately, one teacher to 22 children. The average size of their classes, of which there are more than 40,000, is between 30 and 31 pupils. They are housed in buildings that vary in age between 70 years and one month. Some are in the centres of crowded cities, many in suburban areas, a growing number in country towns or right in the countryside. They contain pupils who are brighter or duller than the average in varying proportions, pupils of diverse gifts and interests or backgrounds. They differ in aim, in atmosphere and in tradition. The hon. Member will, I am sure, support me in that.
It is, therefore, much easier to define the purpose of a secondary grammar or technical school than it is of a secondary 542 modern school, which creates and develops its individuality by adapting itself to its environment. Secondary modern schools, like all schools, are social institutions as well as places of instruction. Literacy and mastery of the "three Rs" must be accompanied by a respect for hard work, self-discipline and good manners. They are concerned as well to give to the duller children a sense of competence and achivement, to the average all-round development of their brains and bodies, to the brightest a challenge to stretch themselves.
How a secondary modern school sets out to fulfil this purpose varies widely, and I submit that this must be so because the secondary modern school has the opportunity to plan its curriculum in much closer relation to local conditions and needs, and, therefore, has much more freedom for experiment than the grammar school. In the best modern schools, the education is, rightly, related to the conditions in which many of the children live, with which most of them will be familiar, and in which many of them will expect to work when they grow up.
While it is important for them to see subjects in their widest setting, it is not unreasonable to expect children to take a great interest in subjects connected with what they are likely to do after leaving school. In this connection—the hon. Member drew attention to this—it will be vital to forge new links between the secondary modern school and the technical college. Most authorities are, therefore, encouraging the development of an increasing range of extended courses which will be spread over a number of schools in the area. An excellent example of this is to be found in the hon. Member's constituency, in Southampton.
Some pupils may want to take the General Certificate of Education. They ought to do so if they are suitable for it, but it would be a great mistake for the interest of the rest of the children to be subordinated to what is always likely to be a small minority. The job of the modern school is to develop its own personality and not to ape the grammar school.
I thought it important to begin on this note, because while it supports most of what the hon. Member has said, it does not seem to be fully understood by some 543 of those who have within recent weeks criticised secondary modern schools.
I should now like to turn to the physical side of the problem and deal with several of the points he raised. Perhaps I should begin by bringing the P.E.P. figures up to date. By 1st February, 1956, 536 new secondary modern schools, providing places for 211,780 children, had been completed since the war and 366 more secondary modern schools, providing a total of 149,420 places, were under construction. This gives a total of 902 new secondary modern schools either completed or under construction, providing a total of 361,000 places. These figures make no allowances for new places in other kinds of secondary schools.
At the same time, by January, 1955, the numbers of seniors in all-age schools had fallen to 10.5 per cent. as opposed to the 12.2 per cent. quoted in the P.E.P. report; the percentage will be even lower at this moment and there will be well under 200,000 children now in all-age schools. Rural reorganisation is making steady progress, and while I certainly agree with the hon. Member about the importance of urban reorganisation, I can at present give him no date by which it will be possible to start this next phase.
The weight of school building programmes has, of course, been shifting from primary to secondary schools to cope with the bulge which has now begun to enter the secondary schools, which, in 1961, will have to contain three-quarters of a million more pupils than in 1954—three-quarters of a million, and not the figure of 1¼ million mentioned both in the P.E.P. report and in the hon. Gentleman's speech. This increase will require about 25,000 more teachers in secondary moderns to maintain the present staffing ratios or standards.
Despite the hon. Member's fears, the provision of schools and teachers at the present rate of recruitment and maintenance of the teaching force should be adequate, although I can hold out little hope of improvement of staffing ratios in secondary schools; and, of course, there is no doubt that it will be difficult to find enough of the many different kinds of specialist teachers now being required for the secondary schools.
544 I was glad to hear the hon. Member's appreciation of the arrangements that have already been made and are being considered at the moment by the Ministry, training colleges and L.E.As. to train and retrain teachers for secondary schools. Although it should be possible to maintain a steady reduction in the size of primary classes, it is obvious that many teachers will have to transfer from primary to secondary. In disagreeing with the Minister and the N.U.T. about the abandonment of teacher rationing, the hon. Member must not assume that if a teacher is stopped from going where he wants to go he will automatically go where he is needed.
On examinations, I can only say that I will note the contribution the hon. Member has made to the debate which my right hon. Friend deliberately provoked some months ago. As far as selection is concerned, my opinion is that each month sees further progress as L.E.As. improve their arrangements as a result of experience and experiment. I believe that, whatever form of secondary education we follow, some form of selection is inevitable. Our aim, I think, must be to improve it.
My conclusion in this very brief debate is that if each head is encouraged to employ the methods best suited to the needs of the children in his or her care, the secondary modern schools will get the increasing support of the parents. Some evidence of this is found in the steady trend in the number of children staying on beyond the leaving age, and more recent figures are even better than those quoted by the hon. Member.
In the many visits I have paid to these schools in the last 18 months, I have found much evidence in support of this statement. There are many weaknesses, but our aim must be, as far as resources allow, to improve the physical staffing conditions which will permit all of these schools to follow the lead of the best. The hon. Gentleman suggested a survey. Although I do not reject this idea out of hand, I can see dangers. We will consider it, but meanwhile I will welcome the initiative taken by some of our leading educational journals in telling the public of the good work done in these schools.
545 I only wish I had time to refer to some of the very excellent full inspection reports which I have studied in recent days describing the range of courses becoming available in these schools. There is much to be done, but I hope that this debate will be still further evidence that the first 546 10 years have not been wasted, and that the next ten, despite the undoubted difficulties, will see encouraging developments.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes to Seven o'clock a.m.