§ In all schools, colleges, or institutions aided or maintained by contributions from the local authority or from money provided by Parliament teachers shall be appointed without reference to religious creed or denomination.—[Mr. King.]
§ Brought up, and read the first time.
§ Mr. KINGI beg to move, "That the Clause be read a second time."
I have several new Clauses on the Paper, but I do not intend to move all of them, and those which I do move I shall endeavour to move as clearly and as concisely as possible, with the object of completing the Report stage by to-morrow night. This Clause raises a very old standing question which has not hitherto been raised in the course of our discussions upon this Bill. I myself hesitated about raising it, but representations which I have received from outside have gone to show that there are a large number of persons who think that the Bill ought not to go away from this place without some reference having been made to what has long been and still is regarded as a great blot upon our educational system. At present practically the whole cost of elementary education is found by public money. The amount found by private voluntary subscriptions is very small indeed. Yet many important posts are reserved for nominees of privileged societies or institutions. The fees and salaries are paid entirely out of public money, but the control is exercised by special or denominational interests. This is felt to be a great grievance and an administrative or educational difficulty. Educational authorities, when they have a large number of posts to fill, must think not of the educational or vocational attainments of the applicants, but of the special 730 creed or denomination of the candidates. The result is that many of the best educational authorities—I can speak with confidence, having served for a considerable time upon an education committee—find it a real difficulty. Although the feeling and the strong desire which created the grievance is growing less and less, yet the grievance itself resulting from this double class of teachers remains.
It has a very particular difficulty, which I myself have come across over and over again. Take a large county educational authority with a large number of schools. The head teachers' places in the elementary schools in that area are very desirable posts, and their system of advancement naturally is to give the posts of head masters in the large schools to those who have done well as head masters in the small schools. Here they come up against this difficulty: The large schools are almost entirely council schools provided by the local authority, while, on the other hand, the small schools are almost entirely voluntary schools non-provided by the local authorities. If they want to carry out their natural scheme of advancement from the small schools to the large schools by advancing the head teachers in that way, they are met with the difficulty that they have no small schools to which they can go for head teachers who are not members of the Church of England. The result is it is a great difficulty in some counties that the prospects of a Nonconformist teacher becoming a head teacher in a large council school or non-provided school are less by far than they were before the Act of 1902 and have become increasingly less since that time.
I know myself of two families, one of them a family with whom I have been long associated in my own Constituency, a number of the members of which are teachers and are very strong Nonconformists. I have often wondered whether they were more devoted to their teaching profession or to the Baptist church of which they were members. Five or six years ago the young people were coming on, and had the prospect of securing scholarships and becoming teachers or of going into some other profession. The father of this famly and his brother, also the father of a family, definitely decided that they would discourage their own children from entering their own profession on the very definite ground that the prospects of advancement of Nonconformists to the head teacherships at the 731 present time were worse than they were before. I can give chapter and verse. I do not want to raise grievances or to raise claims of injustice. I put it to educationists that, in the interests of education and of administration, sooner or later you will have to abolish the present system of tests for teachers.
I am not at all disinclined to make certain provision in schools which are predominantly Catholic or Church of England schools for religious education to be given by persons who have the confidence of members of those denominations, but that is a totally different thing from reserving the higher places of head teachers in these schools by means of the test of religious denomination. On the ground, therefore, of educational progress, apart from justice, and on the ground of educational administration and efficiency, if you want to prevent choking off a considerable class of the most sincere, earnest, really the most seriously-minded, devoted people you could get, the sooner you do away with the present system of tests the better. The whole charge for elementary education now practically falls on the public purse, either on the rates or the taxpayers. The amount to be received from taxes is to be very much increased under this Bill. At the present moment, roughly speaking, each child in attendance at an elementary school gets something like £2 out of the rates on an average all over the country, and £2 or £2 10s. or £3 from the taxpayers. That £2 10s. out of the taxes is certainly going to be raised to £3 10s. and even to £4 in many cases. You are giving to the managers and administrators of schools all over the country an immense increase of public money. Is not this an occasion when you ought to say that you will relax in some way the special denominational tests and privileges which were set up under a very different system of public support fifteen to twenty years ago? Apart from the question of injustice, which we should be glad to forget but which still rankles in some quarters, I put the case on the grounds of educational efficiency, administrative consistency and simplicity, and especially on the ground that, as the cost of education comes out of the pockets of us all, without any consideration of our creeds or why we give, these tests ought to be abolished.
§ Mr. R. LAMBERTI beg to second the Motion. I do so not altogether on the 732 same grounds as those advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Mr. King). He speaks for Nonconformists; I speak as a member of the Church of England. At a time like this, the more we can avoid tests for teachers and bringing up religious differences the better. It is mainly on that ground, and also on the ground of educational efficiency, that I second the Motion.
§ The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Herbert Fisher)The hon. Member who moved this Clause has raised a very grave question of educational policy. It is a question which the Government is precluded from considering at this juncture, because it is an acutely controversial question, and one which raises the whole denominational problem. If the Amendment were to be accepted, it would preclude the appointment of Catholic teachers to Catholic schools.
§ Mr. FISHERIt practically would preclude that.
§ Mr. FISHERIn any case, the acceptance of this Amendment would run counter to the main principles upon which this Bill is founded. This Bill is founded upon an acceptance of the administrative and educational arrangements set up in 1902. Our problem is to obtain as great an extension of public education as possible, consistently with the preservation of the administrative system which has been left us. I feel that is the only safe ground on which we can proceed. For that reason I am unable to accept the Amendment.
§ 4.0 P.M.
Mr. RUNCIMANNo doubt the decision arrived at by my right hon. Friend is the only one open to him on the matter. Still, the Motion made by the hon. Member for North Somerset (Mr. King) affords an opportunity of bringing this question before the right hon. Gentleman's notice in a way which has not previously been done since he has been a member of this House—it brings to his notice the protest which must of necessity be made not only by Nonconformists but by many educationists against the continuance of the present system. I agree that this Bill is not the occasion for dealing with this question, whether it be viewed from the point of view of the administrator—the head of 733 the Board of Education.—or from the point of view of the parents, or from that of Nonconformists, who have felt this grievance for many years past, and never more intensely than they do at the present time. Take the position of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Education. The whole success of this scheme in the future will depend on his obtaining a sufficiently large number of well-equipped teachers, and if he is not to be able to draw them from a very wide area, without any respect for the religious denominations to which they belong, obviously he will not receive the number of applicants for entry into the profession which his scheme demands. It will be impossible for him to go on with the continuation scheme without an enormous increase in the staff of teachers. Therefore, from the point of view of the Board of Education, it is obviously desirable that there should be no obstacle put in the way of young applicants who wish to become teachers. The free circulation of teachers is very much impeded under the present arrangement, whether it be county areas or in big towns. It is interrupted, notwithstanding the great desire of education committees and officials to promote it, and on some occasions it is made altogether impossible owing to the interference under the present law of this system of tests for teachers. Let me say a single word about the children. Instead of the children in some of these schools getting the benefit of the widest possible choice of teachers they are very much restricted, because the teachers must be drawn from one denomination, and one only, and it means that the children in these schools of necessity do not get the best teaching that would be available if the whole range of the teaching profession were open to the management for choice. The opposition of Nonconformists is not less now than formerly, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will realise that if this issue is not raised now as a definite challenge yet sooner or later some effort will have to be made to deal with the disabilities under which managers, teachers, and children alike suffer. If the new Clause of my hon. Friend were passed it would make the position of the Catholic school authority, and of course the Church school authority also, entirely different from what it is at present. I would not go so far as my right hon. Friend and say that it would preclude a Catholic school from having a 734 Catholic teacher, but it would cause it to run the risk of having a Protestant teacher appointed. That is a rather different thing, and that is a very serious prospect for those who are supporters of these denominational schools. If this question wore raised in the form this Clause suggests the whole religious controversy would have to be raised from the beginning, and because my right hon. Friend, as I think rightly, suggested that this is not the occasion for raising it, I shall support him in the position which he has taken up.
§ Question put, and negatived.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI am not very clear as to the new Clause standing in the name of the hon. Member for North Somerset—(Obligation to Provide Accommodation). It appears to me to be a proposal to make a charge on the rates. It places on the local education authority a duty which under the Bill lies upon the council to develop and organise education.
§ Mr. KINGOn that point may I say a few words? This really has reference to Clause 2 of the Bill, which says it shall be the duty of the local education authority to make adequate and suitable provision in order that full benefit may be derived from the system of education. That Clause deals with the providing of schools, teachers, and equipment under the scheme, and the object of my new Clause, which I endeavoured to get by an Amendment to Clause 2 on the Committee stage, but was ruled out of order, is to provide that one of the duties of the local education authority shall be to provide buildings independently of whether there be a scheme or not. That, I submit, is a different thing.
§ Mr. SPEAKERBut how is the building to be paid for? Is it to be paid for out of the rates?
§ Mr. KINGIt is not a new charge, for it is already laid down that the buildings shall be provided. No new charge therefore is imposed. The Clause only says it shall be the duty of the local education authority, if school places are wanted, to provide them under the Bill.
§ Mr. SPEAKERBut that is already there in the Act. If this new Clause does not add to the law it is unnecessary; if it does add to the law, it imposes a new charge. The next Clause—(Size of Classes)— 735 is an administrative matter which will be dealt with by Regulation. The next Clause—(Managers to be Representative)—ought to be brought forward as an Amendment to Clause 4. As to the Clause as to teachers' salaries, I understand that the hon. Gentleman postpones what he has to say about that. I think the next Clause can be moved.