BOARD OF EDUCATION.

HC Deb 23 April 1929 vol 227 cc721-800

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £26,649,899, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1930, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Board of Education, and of the various Establishments connected therewith, including sundry Grants-in-Aid."—[NOTE.—£15,000,000 has been voted on account.]

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Lord Eustace Percy)

In presenting these Estimates, the fifth for which I have been responsible, I hope the Committee will allow me to range rather more at large over the field than is customary on such occasions. I need not enter much into finance or statistics. Hon. Members have before them the usual Memorandum on the Estimates which they have had rather earlier this year, and they have before them also the Board's Report for the year 1928. Little need be said about the detailed problems of administration which ordinarily occupy attention when we are discussing the Estimates. I would rather ask the Committee to consider how profound has been the change in our whole conception of educational policy which has taken place during the last few years, and how great, and in some respects novel, are the responsibilities which that new conception will throw upon Parliament in the future.

Perhaps the Committee will pardon a little personal retrospect. I approached my task eagerly four and a half years ago as a difficult and very interesting administrative problem. To me it meant the unsolved problems of teachers' superannuation and salaries, defective school buildings, large classes, insufficient secondary school accommodation, and so forth. It meant, also, certain less obvious problems in which. I was personally very interested; in particular, the reorganisation of elementary schools into senior and junior schools, closer relations between training colleges and universities, a better understanding on the subject of religious education, a simpler and cheaper machinery of administration and smoother co-operation between the partners in educational administration and teaching—the Board, the local authorities, the teachers and the voluntary bodies. In short, I looked at it as a problem of peace, continuity and efficiency. For three years we were working these things out, with a certain substantial measure of success. I do not say that with any self-complacency. The success achieved has been mainly due to the efforts of the partners of whom I have spoken, and not least, here let me pay a tribute, to the officers of the Board itself, who have given me an efficient and loyal support during these years which could not be surpassed by the staff of any Government Department in this or any other country in the world. In this connection I should like to mention a great public servant who has retired since the last Estimates were discussed in the House, Sir Hugh Orange, who occupied the position of accountant-general for many years, and to whose direction and efforts the sound finance of education in this country is very largely due.

Much remains to be done. We have, for instance, a Superannuation Act and a national settlement of salaries, now universally recognised and applied, but that settlement has not yet given final security to the teaching profession. We have such a problem as the downgrading of head teachers which still awaits complete solution. We can quote figures showing approved plans for the elimination of over 1,050 blacklisted school premises and the actual removal of more than 720 from the list, but the work is not yet half completed. We can show a great reduction in the size of classes, notwithstanding a stationary or rising school population and a great increase in the number of certificated teachers, but classes are still too large and some training college students still find it difficult to obtain posts. We can show growth in secondary school accommodation, in free places, in scholarships and all the other points in our programme. We can show definition, settled aims and progress, but no finality. Still, a year ago I felt that effective measures had been taken over the whole field of these reforms, that these measures had already proved successful and that they would operate with cumulative force during the next few years, thanks to the practice of friendly co-operation and consultation which we had been able to establish with those whom I have called my partners in the work of education. But this point was no sooner reached than it became evident that such reforms in themselves and by themselves would be ineffectual and meaningless. It is our duty to see that children are taught under the best possible conditions, but good conditions are only a starting point. I am reminded of a sermon by an evangelical preacher of the old school who said to his congregation: "Make no mistake about it, you will none of you be saved because of your general niceness." That is true of education. The education of any child at any age must have a purpose, it must be part of a course and that course must be part of a long process of education, whether in school, college, factory or counting house, which will carry the child at least to the threshold of manhood.

The reorganisation of elementary schools into junior and senior schools has been in a peculiar sense the policy of the present Government, announced at the last election, embodied in Circular 1350 two months after the Government came into office, reinforced by a campaign of speeches in 1925, which amused hon. Members opposite, confirmed by the Hadow Report and finally defined by Circular 1397 of last year, in pursuance of which local authorities will next Autumn be submitting their second set of three-year programmes definitely devoted to the establishment of a complete provision of senior schools, offering a four-year course of higher education for children from the age of 11. But all this policy is meaningless if it is simply the division of children into two neat compartments according to age and it will remain meaningless by whatever name we call the senior school. Parents will not willingly abandon the old elementary school, provided or non-provided, with its convenience of access, its traditions, its intimate connection with the life of the village and parish, merely in order to produce a school divided into more homogeneous classes. They ask what is the purpose of this reorganisation. Hitherto, we have been prevented from giving a satisfactory reply to this question by our inveterate national habit of building up our educational system piecemeal and leaving the pieces lying about without any coherent connection with each other.

4.0 p.m.

Let us indulge in another retrospect, not a personal one. One hundred years ago our educational system consisted of a number of public and grammar schools and the ancient universities. Those public and grammar schools were recognised feeders of the universities. During the nineteenth century besides greatly increasing the number of universities, we were mainly occupied in creating a complete platform, as it were, of elementary schools, and in building up a quite new type of educational institution—the technical schools and colleges. But our new elementary and technical schools were not connected in any coherent way either with each other or with the grammar school and the university. The elementary schools remained tied to the ground, the technical schools remained hovering in the air. The Act of 1902 was our first, and has remained hitherto our only effort at coherent educational architecture. That Act did establish an intimate connection between the elementary school and the grammar school, it saved many old grammar schools from extinction, and surrounded them with a wider family of secondary schools drawing selected pupils from the elementary school. But the technical school still remained a thing apart, and it soon became evident that the needs of the older pupils in the elementary schools could not be adequately met merely by offering opportunities to a few selected students to enter secondary schools.

During the 20 years after the Act of 1902, the school-leaving age was steadily raised until the upper standards in the elementary school were filled with pupils who had outgrown the old elementary curriculum. Elementary school teachers have been making the most amazingly successful efforts to cope with this problem, but it became clear that something more must be done for the great mass of the rising generation of the country. Consequently, the Act of 1918 laid upon local education authorities the duty of providing practical and advanced instruction for the older children in the elementary schools, including children staying on voluntarily beyond the age of 14, and it provided for a new system of compulsory day continuation classes which would ensure that all children should pass through a continuous course of education at least up to the age of 16.

While the Act of 1918 thus aimed at prolonging the path of education for all children, that path still seemed to end in a blind alley. There was no sign that it was intended to lead to any particular point, unlike the path which led through the secondary school to the university. I do not say this in criticism of the great Minister of Education who was the author of that Act, and I quite agree with the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) who said he was perhaps the greatest Minister of Education we ever had in this country. But the fact is that the temper of the times in which the Act was passed made it impossible for him fully to carry out the scheme which he had in his mind. It was obvious to any that the path must lead to the technical colleges where the most ambitious pupils who had not gone to the secondary schools had always gone to continue their education, and in the rural areas to the agricultural institutes, about which we are unfortunately precluding from speaking on these Estimates, because they fall within the Estimates of my colleague the Minister of Agriculture. But what I am going to say about the technical college applies equally to the agricultural Institute and the rural schools which should lead up to that Institute. That does not, of course, mean that any child should be confined in his prospects to the technical school because he finds himself in a particular type of senior school. On the contrary, one of the essential ideas of our policy is to give every boy and girl a second chance at about the age of 13 of transferring to a school which will lead him to the university, but for the great majority who go to work not later than 16, the prospect of higher education above the secondary stage must lie in the direction of the technical college. We all remember the curious suspicion of technical education which was rife at the end of the War. The demand for a working-class education which should be liberal, and not vocational, was pushed to a point where it practically dismissed the whole range of technical education as a badge of social servitude. I think Mr. Fisher himself would agree that it is this defect in our post-War conception of education rather than any passing pressure of economy which chiefly accounts for the fact that the continuation school provisions of the Act of 1918 have remained practically a dead letter.

Fortunately, in this matter, as in other matters, that sanguine confusion of mind which characterised so many of our ideas has given way to a better perspective, and there is beginning to emerge a new and clearer conception of a really national and universal system of education in which the technical college occupies an essential position with the university as the keystones of the twin arches on which the structure of national education is built. It has been my chief aim in the last year or so to focus this conception and to begin actively to work it out. Observe how, once this position of the technical college is properly focussed, the whole structure becomes coherent. Without this keystone school reorganisation, even if it leads to a longer school life, and is prolonged by a scheme of continuation classes, will fail in its effect, because the new schools and classes will lead nowhere. Without it our existing secondary schools cannot properly do their work, because there is no further continuous course of education for which they can prepare the great mass of their pupils who leave school not later than 16. Without it we cannot, under modern conditions of scientific production and marketing, make the earlier years of the work of the boy or girl in commerce or industry what we all know those years should be—years of education. Without it we cannot secure those benefits to the individual worker, and to our national industry itself, which result from a proper system of apprenticeship. Purely shop apprenticeship is no longer possible except in a very few industries. Science and large scale organisation have combined to render absolutely necessary the co-operation of our technical schools with the factory and the workshop.

The Committee knows generally the steps that we have been taking to work out this new conception. We have tried to focus it in a preliminary way in the two publications issued by the Board last year—"The New Prospect in Education," and "Education for Commerce and Industry." We have undertaken a series of inquiries both into the organisation of technical education as a whole, and into the methods of education for particular branches of trade and industry. I am sometimes asked when the Committee on Salesmanship or the Committee on Engineering are going to report. These are a new kind of Committee, better, I think, than the usual Departmental Committee, and their work is not confined to the production of a formal report. The results of their labours will, of course, be published from time to time, but they are working in far closer connection with the Board than a Departmental Committee does, and the inquiries which they have undertaken, or which the Board undertakes on their behalf, are constantly branching out in new directions. For instance, we are now undertaking a special inquiry into the whole subject of the teaching of foreign languages in connection with salesmanship, and therefore, the emphasis of these Committees is less on their eventual formal reports or interim reports and more on the influence they are exerting all the time on the administration of the Board, on the local authorities, and, I believe through them, on the work in the schools.

The Board is now planning a series of inquiries on a subject which, I think, is of the very greatest importance: art teaching with particular reference to industrial art. We have already been doing some work in that direction. Our inspectors have been conducting inquiries into the whole subject of textile design on behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Education for the Cotton Industry. We are now preparing a report on the existing organisation of art education in this country generally, and, before the publication of the report of the Balfour Committee, I had already been conducting preliminary discussions to ascertain the best method of starting a series of inquiries into the art requirements of various industries. Those discussions have led me to think that the time is ripe for a really new development in our teaching of industrial art. Both artists and industrialists are now really keenly conscious of our shortcomings and of the need of co-operation in overcoming them, and if we do see great progress in the future in this matter I think it will be very largely due to the remarkable work which has been done in the last few years at the Royal College of Art by Professor Rothenstein.

In all this we are attempting to build up standards for our new system of universal higher education. I should, of course, have much to say as to the steps which will be necessary to give permanent and enduring form to this new educational architecture if the rules which govern our Debates permitted me to enter into the question of legislation. As I cannot do that, my sketch of the future must be incomplete.

I can, however, ask the Committee to consider one essential question which requires no change in the law, but does require a very substantial change in our present methods of educational organisation. If the technical colleges are the keystone of one of the two arches on which must be based not only our whole educational structure, but the whole future prosperity of our commerce and our industry, as well as of the professions and public services of the nation, what must be the character, position and status of institutions so important? They cannot continue merely as municipal institutions provided primarily for the assistance of the industries carried on, and the benefit of the young men and young women residing within the municipal boundaries. Already, of course, these institutions have a wider range than this, but access to them is too often hindered by imperfect co-operation between local authorities, systems of differential fees, and the like. Moreover, great technical colleges in one municipality have no recognised position or function in relation to smaller or less advanced technical schools in other parts of the same industrial area, which ought to act as their feeders. They are, therefore, unable to make their influence felt throughout the schools of such an area in the way that university influence makes itself felt throughout the secondary school system.

We need to advance in, this matter along three main lines of reform. We should have an accepted type of arrangement between all local authorities in a given industrial area ensuring easy access to the central institution for all students wherever they may reside; we must aim at co-operation between all the central institutions in a given industrial area both among themselves and with the industries of that area on such lines as have already been worked out in the County of Yorkshire; and, finally, and most important, we must recognise the central technical institution as something more than a municipal school, as, in fact, a college with a very real academic status, providing a wide range of studies and exercising a powerful influence on schools of a junior grade in the same industrial area. It is not often, in spite of a Scottish upbringing and a Scottish coadjutress, that I point to Scotland as an example in educational matters, but the example of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Art Colleges as real centres of talent from all parts of Scotland may well serve as a corrective to the provincialism of some parts of England, and even of Wales.

If it were possible I should like to find a new name. Here are institutions offering first-class teaching not only in industrial technology but also in various branches of science, in modern languages, in geography, in economics and in art, training men to supply the needs and elevate the tastes of their fellows, and very often, as in the case of a great institution like the Regent Street Polytechnic, providing instruction in a whole range of comparatively academic subjects. To call these great institutions with this range of teaching, "Technical Institutions," is clearly inadequate; and to call them, as the Board in despair has attempted to call them, "Institutions of Further Education" is distressingly vague. But more absurd still is to describe these institutions, as many people still do, as being merely vocational.

Last autumn in an address to the Institute of Adult Education, I ventured to urge that the work of adult classes should be much more closely associated with the local technical colleges and should, indeed, form an academic part of the colleges themselves. Some of my friends criticised this view very strongly on the ground that the specialisation of the technical college would contaminate the minds of those students engaged in disinterested studies. Frankly, that seems to me to be nonsense. The characteristic of a technical college is simply that it provides higher education above the secondary stage for those who are already at work in the world. Its function is to train the mind of such students just as fully as the University has to train the mind of the student who has not yet begun work; and there is just as much danger of specialisation in University work as in the work of a technical college. I must be careful in talking about universities, but the influence of specialisation in University degree work, carried down as it is to the secondary school through the medium of college scholarship examinations and credits given by Universities for successes in the higher certificate examinations, is threatening the liberal character of our secondary education in a far more dangerous way than any influence which proceeds, or is likely to proceed, from the technical college.

Let me go one step further along the same line of thought; and this goes near the root of our real educational problem. Any careful observer must be struck by the greater academic independence of the secondary school as compared with other parts of our educational system. The secondary school has inherited the same tradition of freedom as the universities. The elementary school, on the other hand, towards which local authorities have more precise duties, imposed by statute and defined by regulation, has always been subject to more detailed administrative control, and the tendency has perhaps been to apply the same kind of administrative technique to the Technical College and the College of Art. Fortunately, the practice of trusting the teacher and encouraging the individuality of the particular school has made great headway throughout our educational system; but let us realise clearly that we can never succeed in the policy to which we have set our hands, of providing higher education for all children, unless we give to the technical college and to the new types of senior school which are to give this higher education, a teaching freedom similar to that of the University and the secondary school and a real responsibility in all matters of curriculum and teaching method. It may be that it is from this standpoint that we can most hopefully approach a solution of the difficulties of what is known as the dual system.

Mr. RENNIE SMITH

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us a little more about what he calls "teaching freedom?"

Lord E. PERCY

I have indicated the conception in my mind. I am comparing the kind of responsibility and control over its own destinies that the headmaster and the governing body of a secondary school have compared with the comparatively closer control and dictation which generally governs elementary schools. The difference, if you compare these two examples, is obvious. I think an essential of the new higher education must be that that type of academic freedom is realised to a greater and greater extent in the new class of school. It is perhaps from this angle that we can most hopefully approach a solution of the difficulties arising out of what is known as the dual system. A dual system in the sense of an administrative dyarchy must always be inconvenient and in some respects inefficient, but that has never been the aim of any section of opinion in this country. On the other hand, a multiple system such as we have in effect in our secondary education, based on the teaching freedom of schools large enough and strong enough to develop a corporate individuality of their own and to bear a corresponding measure of responsibility, is our traditional conception of education in this country and is the only one in which teacher, parent and administrator can each make his proper contribution to the education of the child.

I have sketched, so far as the rules of debate allow, the policy to which I believe, not merely the present Government but the country is committed—the realisation for the first time in our history of a complete and balanced scheme of education in which every phase of education, primary, secondary, technical and university, will be given its proper place in one coherent structure. To complete that balanced scheme, we must give a more natural and normal place in the structure to two types of school which have hitherto stood rather outside even our elementary school system—the special school and the nursery school. As regards the special school, the recent Report of the Committee appointed by Sir George Newman has indicated certain defects in our methods of dealing with mentally deficient children. I have always felt these defects very strongly. I have been somewhat criticised for waiting for this Report before deciding my policy in regard to schools for mental defectives, but I believe the Committee's work will enable us to make a more comprehensive and more varied provision for the needs of such children within our general school system than has been possible on the basis of a procedure of medical certification, which has tended to divide retarded children into two fixed and somewhat artificial categories.

The nursery school presents a very different problem, but it is also a subject on which we all need to clarify our views by thorough investigation. I frankly admit that, among all the other preoccupations which I have outlined this afternoon, I have left this problem in the stage at which I found it, the stage of isolated experiments. Those experiments have not been unfruitful. They have, for instance, led the Board to modify its views on certain points such as the size of nursery schools, but we cannot be content either with our present rate of progress or with any of the proposals which have been recently put forward on this subject, which seem to me to amount to little more than a multiplication of isolated experiments. The time has come when this, our one remaining administrative problem, should be brought into the focus of a settled policy, and, as recently announced in another place, we propose to conduct a comprehensive inquiry with this object.

This is a great programme, and one of the conditions of its success is that all those concerned in the work of education should be able to devote their minds to it without any of those conflicts and uncertainties which disturbed our scholastic peace up to four years ago. It is clear that, as our new scheme of education is more fully worked out, we must endeavour to translate the existing agreements between local authorities and teachers into terms of a permanent settlement which will be in harmony with the new conditions. But it is no less clear that the problems involved in such a settlement must be thoroughly and patiently explored, without haste and free from an atmosphere of bargaining. For this reason while I cannot interfere with the discretion of the local authorities and the teaching profession, I trust, and I am entitled to express the hope, that this full exploration will be carried out before any notice is given by either side to terminate the existing Burnham Agreement. I have indicated in the early part of my speech that I realise the importance of these outstanding problems. I have views upon them. I hope to assist in the solution. But for the reasons I have just given both teachers and local authorities will obviously expect me to abstain from expressing my views at this moment.

Finally, it may be asked, "Here is a comprehensive programme; has it got the finance behind it necessary for its execution?" I answer, "Yes." As we know, it is not an extravagant programme. Therefore it is not intended to be satisfactory to the apostles and disciples of unlimited expenditure. It is really a work of consolidation, economical in the truest sense, and it has behind it, I believe, the convinced support of the industries and commerce of the country, with whom we have established closer relations in educational matters than ever before, including the representatives of the workers. I do not wish, therefore, to weary the Committee with details about finance, but I will give them one figure which, I think, is the true test of the magnitude of the effort and of the progress that we are making at this stage. The test of a re-organisation of this kind is the capital expenditure that you invest upon it, and everything else, staffing, scholarships and so on expand as a result of your capital expenditure.

The capital expenditure during the last four years has certainly not been stinted. The building plans approved in the four years since the issue of Circular 1350 involve an expenditure of £25,250,000, as against £12,250,000 in the preceding five years. Moreover every year, except the abnormal year of 1926–27, has constituted a new record. The growth of capital expenditure on building has steadily increased year by year until last year alone the plans approved rose to the unprecedented figure of nearly £7,000,000. I think that the only real doubt about finance which still troubles the mind of some of those interested in education relates to the effect of the various rating reforms carried out by the present Government. This doubt I think I can completely allay. It is true that this year our grants to local authorities are reduced by the effect of the increased assessments under the Rating and Valuation Act of 1925 under the Fisher formula. But my information is that this reduction has been long foreseen and discounted by local education authorities, and that little if any disturbance will result from it, in the performance of our work during this year.

Mr. COVE

May I put a question on that subject? Am I not right in saying that, as a result of the Rating and Valuation Act of 1925, the sum of £750,000 has been thrown exclusively on the rates, and that that sum would otherwise have been paid out of the national Exchequer? Is it not a fact, according to the Minister's own memorandum, that £750,000 this year has been thrown directly on the rates?

Lord E. PERCY

I cannot remember the precise figures at this moment. I will ask my hon. Friend to give the figures when she replies.

Mr. BROAD

Is it not the fact that that has been thrown particularly on the necessitous school areas?

Lord E. PERCY

No. Those are the facts and they automatically come from the operation of the Fisher formula which local authorities have always desired to keep unaltered.

Mr. COVE

Increased assessment.

Lord E. PERCY

The hon. Member can use any arguments he likes, whether accurate or not.

Mr. COVE

It is accurate enough, for it is in your own memorandum.

Lord E. PERCY

What I have said is as far as the Rating and Valuation Act of 1925 is concerned. As to the effect of de-rating, it is clear that the Local Government Act must greatly benefit the education of the great majority of children in the country. Of the 144 counties and county boroughs 115, according to the provisional estimates, will receive a substantial extra grant, over and above the loss resulting from de-rating, on their services as a whole, including their education service, and this extra grant will not be related in any way to their expenditure in the standard year. The remaining 29 counties and county boroughs will receive a grant related to their expenditure in the standard year, but even so it will exceed their loss on de-rating over all their services by one shilling per head of population. Consequently, all the great local education authorities will be able to spend extra money, and many of them large sums of extra money, on education without touching the rates at all. That extra expenditure will still attract the board's percentage grant. The accounting difficulty arising out of the allocation of the grant under the Local Government Act to the general county account instead of the education account, will be sufficiently met by a new form of rate demand note.

The only problem that remains is the effect of the Local Government Act on a certain number of Part III Authorities which may receive grants no more than sufficient to make up their loss in de-rating as measured by their expenditure in the standard year. That cannot produce any adverse effect on educational progress before the year 1931, and I have undertaken before that time, when the exact facts are available about particular local authorities, to examine the whole position and to make such provision in the Education Grant Regulations as may be necessary to enable those authorities to carry on their work in a proper manner.

In conclusion, may I say one word about the temper in which the country should approach the great task of educational architecture to which we have set our hands? To-day we have peace in the educational world as we never had it before, and our first aim must be to "seek peace and ensue it." It is in some respects more difficult to do that in a period of movement and reform than in a period of quiescence. But peace and reform are not incompatible on one condition, that the reformer should remember that in dealing with human beings, and especially and above all in dealing with children, salvation is not to be found along any one path or in any one system. It is usually true of any dispute about policy, and especially about educational policy, that the disputants are very often right in what they affirm and nearly always wrong in what they deny. The great danger in education is the assertion of our personal dislikes. One man dislikes the Cowper-Temple teaching, another dislikes Church Schools; a third is shocked by Boy Scouts and Cadet Corps, or even by physical exercises or Air Force examinations; a fourth thinks it unnecessary that children should be taught to draw; and a fifth distrusts technical education. It is these dislikes that have weakened our education system in the past. There is no form of educational effort, there is no type of school that we can afford to dispense with in working out our reforms. Our educational range should be as varied as the needs of the children and as wide as the wishes of the parents. It must be national, not as confining all education within one system of public control, but as embracing all the intellectual and religious life and all the teaching skill of our people.

Mr. HARRIS

We have listened to a very charming speech, which would have been very appropriate as a discourse at a P.S.A. In fact I think the Minister could safely repeat the greater part or his speech without giving offence to any political party or any educational theory. Perhaps he is conscious that this is his swan song. At any rate quite unlike most of his previous speeches on these occasions, nearly everything which he has said has been non-controversial. When I heard that the Minister would exercise his right to speak first, I assumed that he was going to put forward a great forward policy anticipated in the Drury Lane speech of his leader. One would need a great deal of imagination to describe the Noble Lord's speech as embodying a forward policy. I make no apology for my party having asked for a day to discuss the Education Estimates. On the contrary, I am rather surprised that my hon. Friends of the Labour party have not asked for a day, especially when I remember that for every day that we get they get more than three.

There are no fewer than 6,000,000 children under the care, more or less, of the Board of Education, and the bulk of those children are conscripts and are compelled to go to elementary schools. If you add to that total the large army of teachers, and the fact that the Board finds something like £40,500,000 a year, there is every reason to ask the Committee at least once a year to review the position. The right hon. Gentleman passed over very lightly some of the shifting of the burden that has happened owing to the action of the Government under the Rating and Valuation Act. It may have been accidental and may have come as a surprise to the right hon. Gentleman, but as a Member of the Cabinet he ought to have known the inevitable result of that policy. Considering the time spent by the Government in prancing about the country as the friends and protection of the ratepayers, in devising machinery to carry on local government without any extra expenditure, it is a curious comment on the Memorandum which has been presented with these Estimates. That Memorandum shows decrease in grants for elementary education of nearly £500,000, as a result of the anticipated increase of £256,000 due to the increased expenditure of local authorities, and a net decrease of £750,000 due to the increased produce of a 7d. rate, which operates as a grant-producing factor for elementary education, and which is the result of the increased assessment on 1st April, 1929, expected under the Bating and Valuation Act of 1925.

That is a very strange message to send to the local authorities with their heavy burdens, and it is certainly not a stimulus to a forward policy, because, as the Noble Lord knows, the local authorities are in direct contact with the people who find the money and one of the embarassments of education has been the large amount of money which has to be found out of the local rates. If the Noble Lord is sanguine as to the good effect on education of the de-rating Measure, I am not. I cannot overlook the fact that it narrows the area from which rates are gathered, and when it is necessary to make educational advance and increase expenditure, the ratepayers will find that the produce of a penny rate has been decreased by the de-rating Measure. When we remember as well the results of the Valuation Act, it will be seen that the future of the local authorities as regards finance is not a happy one. I am sorry that the Noble Lord dismissed the matter so lightly, but perhaps he was wise to keep it to the end of his speech.

On the subject of nursery schools, I was interested to hear the Noble Lord's reference to a statement made in another place. I always thought that the words "another place" meant the upper House, but we have now a new definition of the phrase and apparently it refers also to broadcasting. The Prime Minister in his speech envisaged a great advance in the provision for children under school age. We know now what that great advance is to be. It is to be a "comprehensive inquiry." That is the great message of the Prime Minister to the mothers of of England on this matter, and the immediate generation of children under school age are not likely to gain any great advantage from it. We have had five years of the Noble Lord's rule at the Board of Education, and we have only 26 recognised nursery schools with 1,300 children, 11 of these schools being provided by local education authorities while 15 have been voluntarily provided—although there are something like 1,750,000 children coming within the age category suitable for nursery schools. That is not work of which to be proud. It is not a great achievement. During the past year only one new school has been opened and two have been started. Now we are to have an inquiry. With great respect to the Noble Lord—whose leader claims that his policy is one of performance and not of promise—there is already plenty of information available on this matter, owing largely to the very interesting experiment made by Miss Margaret McMillan. The Noble Lord can see for himself as a result of those experiments the most interesting work in connection with nursing schools to be seen anywhere in the world brought far beyond the experimental stage. We have the reports of his own chief medical officer, who, I suppose can be described as the President's technical adviser. In his report for 1926, the medical officer said: After admission to a nursery school it is found that children show improvement in quicker and lighter movements, they become more observant and less lethargic, for the result of overcrowded homes leads to the activities natural to childhood becoming cramped and depressed with results injurious to bodily and mental growth. The medical officer of the Board is perfectly satisfied about the necessity for nursery schools, and is quite dogmatic about the matter. He says: In the case of the slum child the nursery school secures a new order of child life which is almost magical in its rapid growth, showing a triumph over the handicap of home environment and circumstances.

Lord E. PERCY

Surely the hon. Member realises that Sir George Newman in the same report refers to the advantages of a new and different type of institution.

Mr. HARRIS

Yes, but he refers particularly to the Margaret McMillan school, and in the next report there is a similarly strong recommendation. I say that this is an urgent matter. I agree that when the bulk of the population have been re-housed when the slums have been cleared away the need for nursery schools will not be so urgent, but it is vital at the present time. While the Noble Lord has been sleeping comfortably at the Board of Education, nursery schools have been made almost universal in Germany. In almost every town in Germany you find a pleasant house with a garden provided for the purposes of a nursery school. I have never advocated elaborate buildings for this purpose. Generally speaking, a nice house with a garden will serve the purpose, and I think it unfortunate that the great call to the nation from Drury Lane is to end up, as far as this matter is concerned, with having another inquiry.

While I am referring to the medical officer, I may also mention the subject of dental treatment. We have some remarkable statements on this point in the Annual Report for 1928. Incidentally, I would like to congratulate the Noble Lord on bringing out the Report at such an early stage. That is one thing in which he has shown himself in advance of his predecessors and in bringing out the Report so much earlier he has greatly convenienced the members of the Committee. In that Report the remarkable statement is made by the medical officer that more than half the children are not inspected; that of those inspected 67 per cent. are found to need treatment, and of the 67 per cent. found to need treatment, 42 per cent. did not get it. In 18 areas no provision at all had been made for either inspection or treatment. I do not know if the Noble Lord desires to seek popularity among the children. No doubt the children themselves are not anxious to go into the dentist's chair, and a Minister who wishes to deal with this matter efficiently and well, would, no doubt, make himself extremely unpopular, but I think we have a cause for quarrel with the Noble Lord in this matter, because, if he is going to complete his medical system, one of the most urgent necessities is to deal with the question of dental treatment.

The Noble Lord was very self-satisfied about the work done in reducing the size of classes. Some progress has been made in the last few years—progress has been made during the last 20 years—but it is very slow and tedious and no one could describe it as "setting the Thames on fire." There are still over 16,000 classes with more than 50 children. In the Report, the Noble Lord or his officials put forward some sound and reasonable excuses such as the development of the new housing areas and the shifting of population. I agree that these factors have upset the calculations of some local authorities especially in Essex, but while that excuse is put forward the Noble Lord's inspectors are showing unseemly haste in closing down old schools in areas where the population has gone down. Where the population has gone down and where it can be argued at all that the actual requirements of the Board are being exceeded, an inspector rushes in and requires the closing of a school. Most of these reductions occur in over-crowded areas because the migration is from the centres of the cities to the outskirts. It is in the over-crowded areas that schools are being closed. In Brussels they have a similar problem but there, where the population has gone down, they are taking the opportunity to reduce the size of the classes to 25. That will possibly startle the Noble Lady the Parliamentary Secretary. In Belgium they argue, and, I think, argue rightly, that in the over-crowded areas the need for small classes is greater than it is in the nice garden suburbs. Accordingly they are giving these poor children the advantages of better personal attention and more space in the schools.

5.0 p.m.

There is also the question of the size of class-rooms. The Noble Lord spoke of building up a great national system of education. A great national system of education, one assumes, means equal opportunities for all children. It means that every child should enjoy the advantages of proper surroundings, proper buildings, and proper personal attention. All that is now required by the Board in regard to class room accommodation is 12 square feet per child, while in secondary schools the minimum laid down is 16 square feet per child. I may be peculiar in my view, but I think that the child in the council school requires more space than the child in the secondary school, because the bulk of the children in secondary schools come from good homes, while a large percentage of the children in the elementary schools come from over-crowded rooms where they have insufficient space to sleep and where the conditions are bad. Twelve feet have been recognised universally as not enough space for a child in an ordinary public school. Actually, it is less than the space required by France, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, even Russia and Italy—two countries at opposite poles—Norway, Sweden, and, needless to say, the United States. If the Noble Lord wants to stand out as the founder of a great national school of education, he will have to raise the standard of his requirements for space.

The Noble Lord took great credit—and as I rather gathered from the speech at Drury Lane the Prime Minister did too—for the Burnham Report. He seems to have forgotten that the Minister who inspired and appointed the Burnham Committee was Mr. Fisher, and, though he himself was not able to carry out the Report, the credit of being the author and inspirer of it, and all that it meant, must necessarily go to Mr. Fisher. The Noble Lord also dismissed rather summarily the question of down-grading. The word may be Greek to those who have not followed educational administration very closely, but the Noble Lord knows that it is a very burning and urgent question, because it is upsetting thousands of people throughout the country and causing an immense amount of unrest. It is, not a new problem. It dates back to 1918. It was referred to by the Departmental Committee on Teachers' Salaries, and the first Burnham Report recommended that if, owing to causes beyond the control of the head teacher, the average attendance fell, the teacher should not be prejudiced as regards grade, salary, increments, or maximum, but the Board have now decided that, if there is a fall due to removal or shrinkage of population, fluctuations in the birth rate or scholars going to secondary schools, the headmaster loses his grade and his salary and superannuation rights as well. I know how serious that it, because I have had cases given me. I have one particularly in mind of a very vigorous headmaster full of enthusiasm and ambitious to get his boys to central schools by means of scholarships. He has been so successful that he has lost his grade and has had his salary reduced. That sort of thing cannot be defended. It is no use saying that in a year or two there will be an inquiry. Meanwhile the teachers are out of pocket, and it is causing a great feeling of unrest and discontent.

That leads me to the whole problem of reorganisation. "Reorganisation" is a great word. If it is going to be a real reconstruction of education to meet the needs of the twentieth century, we are all in favour of it. Everyone accepts the Report of the Consultative Committee under the Chairmanship of Sir Henry Hadow, a great epoch-making report. But reorganisation may be only reshuffling, and we have to be very careful not to be content with a mere readjustment of the machinery of education. I have seen the new development of children at work, and undoubtedly the classification as the result of the separation of the younger from the older ones, and especially of the older children who are backward from having to associate with those very much younger, is an entirely good thing, and it is a policy which has been accepted generally. But, if the spirit of the Hadow Report is really to operate, we much not be content with a mere transfer of children from one building to another. Something more substantial is needed. We want to breathe into the new modern school the spirit of the secondary school, not necessarily the syllabus but the atmosphere, both as regards the building, the staffing and the whole spirit of the place, For instance, a secondary school always has a library. Every child has his or her book to take home. In the new modern school the spirit of the old Board school still remains. The children are not allowed to take books home, and there is no school library. I noticed in a special report which appeared in the Board's Report for 1928 it says "the expenditure on books is seriously insufficient." In the same way with the provision of plant and equipment. A change from one building to another is not going to bring about the very fine ideals put forward by the Noble Lord, which we all accept. Something more is needed—a new atmosphere entirely, proper lecture rooms for science and the necessary scientific equipment for experiment and instruction. I went the other day to a very nice school with a proper science room, but with no equipment and the room, therefore, was not used for its purpose.

What the Noble Lord has to aim at when he talks about a national system is to bring about the "common school" which exists in America, where children of every class can go, and where the parent is satisfied to send his child. There is still class consciousness in education here. This country is the last refuge of mediaevalism in education. In France, in the ordinary school, you find the son of a chauffeur sitting alongside the son of his employer. If that is possible you have to level up the standard of the buildings and reduce overcrowding in the classes. When I was in Hanover a year or two ago I saw a lot of work being done. I said: "Have you not a party in municipal administration which opposes all this expenditure as extravagant?" The answer was, "No, on the contrary the well-to-do classes, the business people are keener than anyone in improving their buildings." I said, "That is entirely contrary to the spirit in our towns, where the west-end is always suspicious as to an increase in the Education rate." My informant told me that in their schools the banker's son sits alongside the son of the labourer. I do not say for a moment that we should force every school into one groove. I am all for variety, but the State schools should be of as high a standard as those of the privileged few.

The noble Lord also dismissed the secondary schools in a very few words. He seemed to be perfectly satisfied with the progress that is being made. Of course, there has been progress, but it is very slow. At the rate we are going it will be many years before we reach the Government's own comparatively low standard. The standard laid down as desirable by the Board is 20 secondary school places per thousand of population. I find that the number on the average is only 9.3 for England and, for Wales, 12.5. There is a very interesting figure in the Board's own Report which shows that 5 per cent. of the children are under the proper age—between 10 and 11—who ought not to be in secondary schools at all. Meanwhile there are thousands of children whose parents would like them to get scholarships but, owing to the high standard, they cannot get them into the secondary schools. It is unfortunate that the age should be stereotyped at 11. There are many intelligent children who develop late in life. I remember being at a great public school where the ex-President of the Board of Education, the right hon. Member for Central Newcastle (Sir C. Trevelyan), was a student, and where also was the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. I can picture him now, very much like he is to-day—all virility, very talkative, ready to make speeches to small boys in tuck-shops whenever the opportunity arose. But when it came to scholastic attainments he himself said—I think he was wrong—that he was longer the bottom boy in a bottom class than any boy at any time in the history of the school. His was a case of latent development. If he had been a poor man's child born, say, at Bethnal Green, or in a mining village, his education would have stopped, because at 11 he would never have won a scholarship. Whatever we may think of his political activities, we all recognise his fine literary style. We accept him as one of the best writers of his age. This has been possible because he has completed his education. He was able, with the aid of a crammer, to go to Sandhurst, where he jumped ahead and won the top prize, the sword of honour, because of his intellectual attainments. I hope the Noble Lord will not too closely adhere to the age of 11.

Lord E. PERCY

Does not the London County Council give scholarships at 13?

Mr. HARRIS

Yes, but they are rare and they are difficult to get, because the general policy of the Board and of local authorities is as I have said.

When we come to technical education, we had a remarkable speech. I do not quarrel with any of the Noble Lord's words. He is full of good thoughts, but there, again, it is not performance but promise of abstract principles. While the Noble Lord has been holding inquiries other countries have been acting. I understand his policy is not relief works but a revival of trade. I paid a visit to Germany two years ago. I took the trouble to visit their technical schools and their continuation schools. While we are holding elaborate inquiries, the whole machinery of technical education in Germany has been reorganised. There is not a trade, industry or craft that has not got its complete machinery for dealing with the technical training of the child. I visited Hanover, Leipzig and Nuremberg. They have altered the system since the War, but before the War they had compulsory continuation schools outside the employers' time. Now, following the precedent of Mr. Fisher's Act, they have made continuation compulsory in the employers' time, and the classes must be held in the daytime. They are not classes, however, of the kind that we have here, ill-equipped and in bad buildings. I found that there were new buildings going up; I found the most up-to-date machines, the most up-to-date appliances, being installed. I went into one building where they were scrapping all the old machinery—it was a school for teaching foundry workers—and putting in brand new machines, which were so up-to-date that they had not even been introduced into the neighbouring factories. When I challenged that activity and asked how they could find the money, I was told, "There is the Dawes plan. We are a debtor nation, and in the position of having to make contributions to all the other countries in the world, and the only way in which we can do this is by training our craftsmen and making them into the most skilled workers in the world."

We think that technical education, not on a piecemeal scale, but on a large scale, is absolutely essential. The right hon. Gentleman—I congratulate him—has appointed two Committees of Inquiry. I remember a Committee of Inquiry, presided over by the late Lord Emmott, that had two or three interviews with the right hon. Gentleman, and I remember his contemptuous reference to that Committee, which he described once as some friends of mine. I am proud to say they were friends of mine, not all Liberals, but, of course, there was the late Lord Emmott who was a distinguished Minister in a Liberal Government, and there was Sir Robert Blair, who, I am proud to say, is Chairman of the Education Advisory Committee which advises the Liberal party on educational subjects. They did not get much encouragement, but most Liberals are very persistent, and at last, at the eleventh hour, or in the fifth year of the Minister's presidency of the Board, he has now awakened to the necessity of the case, and we are to have an inquiry. There is really no necessity for inquiry, because the right hon. Gentleman has his inspectors going about the country all the time collecting information, and here are some of the Reports that they have sent in: The school buildings, originally designed for a grammar school, have since 1911 been used for the technical school. The development of the latter necessitated the erection on adjoining land of temporary structures and the acquisition of a neighbouring factory. The buildings…have proved exceedingly inconvenient: the Principal has to carry on his administrative work in a room measuring about 10 feet square; there is no common room for the teaching staff, no room for the use of students, no rest room for the women staff and students; and the sanitary arrangements are very much below standard. That is one Report. Here is another: While the college possesses a considerable amount of valuable equipment, much of it is rendered almost entirely useless by the entirely inadequate room in which it is housed. The larger pieces of apparatus and machinery are crowded round the walls of a room which is used mainly as a classroom. The equipment for the practical study of electrical engineering is meagre, and the room in which the electrical machines are housed is a very small and dingy store in the basement. Here is another: The premises consist of portions of a large house which has on two occasions undergone some alterations; the only convenient part is a semi-permanent extension in which engineering instruction is given. Dressmaking is carried out on woodwork benches, and plumbing is taught in a cellar. There is no staff room, no students' common room, no library, though there are many books. There are dozens of other Reports from the right hon. Gentleman's own inspectors. He knows the facts and the necessities of the case, and we suggest that the country cannot wait, and that industry has the right to claim from the Board of Education the same advantages as are enjoyed by its German competitors.

I was very glad indeed to notice the Noble Lord's reference to art education. I have spoken about that on more than one occasion. We are lamentably behind in this country. We have just given Safeguarding to the lace industry, and anybody who knows anything at all about that industry knows that it is terribly handicapped by lack of art instruction. In Nottingham they have a lot of old-fashioned styles which they keep on repeating year after year for want of seeing anything better. Our art schools have become a by-word throughout Europe. That is common knowledge to the Government. I am very glad the Noble Lord referred to the cotton industry, for, after all, England still leads the cotton industry of the world, but nearly all our patterns come from Paris. The Balfour Committee on Industry and Trade pointed out the insufficiency of our art instruction, the fact that it is divorced from industry, and its unsuitability for its purpose. It is only the courage, imagination, and industry of our cotton printers that have enabled them to carry on at all. In the final Report of the Balfour Committee one very practical difficulty is pointed out. The Noble Lord was very indignant in referring to finance, and said that hon. Members on this side only got eager when the question of £ s. d. came in. Here is a case of £ s. d. The Balfour Report point out: So far as we can see, the most effective, perhaps the only certain way to ensure that the members of the teaching staff shall keep abreast of modern developments in industrial science, art, and technique is that they should be encouraged, and if necessary required, as a condition of their employment, to devote sufficient time to scientific research or to the practice of the industry or craft.… In one reply, 'the construction of the Burnham scales' of salary is stated to militate against the recruitment of staff possessing industrial experience. Finally, the London County Council definitely stated in its reply 'that the arrangements in force regarding superannuation and salary scales made official recognition of research impossible'. … It is outside our scope to enter into the highly technical and complicated questions of scales of pay and conditions of pension for teachers. But whether the statements and opinions quoted above are well founded, or based on a misunderstanding, it appears to us highly desirable that the situation should be cleared up without delay, either by a modification, or by an authoritative interpretation, of the conditions of service and pension. What has the right hon. Gentleman done? I suppose he has read that Report. It is true that it does not come within the definite scope of his Department. It comes perhaps under the Board of Trade, and I always find that the various Departments are very much divorced from each other, but here is an important matter which can be righted—

Lord E. PERCY

If the hon. Member will look at the Balfour Report, he will see that those statements are quoted mainly from the Report of the Emmott Committee, to which the hon. Member referred. When the Emmott Committee presented that Report, I told them I thought those remarks were mainly due to a misapprehension, and that I should be very glad, if the representatives of the teaching profession who were on that Committee thought there was really any serious foundation for those statements, if they would come to me and formulate proposals for a modification of the Regulations. Broadly speaking, the fact of the matter is that most of those statements by the Emmott Committee, while they do not entirely lack foundation, are very wide of the mark.

Mr. HARRIS

I doubt the right hon. Gentleman a little bit. I have great faith in the body of business men who signed this Report. They are all of them very capable men, including Sir William Beveridge, the economist, and unless they were satisfied, they would not take for gospel everything that Lord Emmott said, although he was a distinguished Liberal; and I have no doubt there is some substance in it. But my general attack on the right hon. Gentleman is not for his professions, or his principles, or his theories, or his ideas, but for his activities. He is a passive Minister. He is too much of a passenger. He merely stands as an onlooker to see that the local authorities, in educational matters, do not go too fast and are not too extravagant. We want a Board of Education that is really a Board of Education, to give a real lead, to stimulate and prod on the local authorities, the slack local authorities, up to the high standard necessary for this country, if we are to have what the Noble Lord has professed to be in favour of, namely, a real national system of education, a system of education in the spirit of the Fisher Act, to bring us into line with other countries, and help this nation to get through the difficult problems of the post-War period.

Mr. MORGAN JONES

I associate myself with the observations of the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Mr. Harris), who has just sat down, when he says that we have listened this afternoon to a statement from the Noble Lord not so much of what the Government have done as to what the Government might, by accident, do if returned to office after the next election. I rather think the Noble Lord has enjoyed himself immensely this afternoon in his review of the activities which stand to his credit since he accepted office at the end of 1924. The Noble Lord feels that he has traversed a tremendous amount of territory, but he knows, in surveying that territory, which end of the telescope to put up to his eye. In order to estimate what the nature of the achievement of the Government has been since it assumed office, I might perhaps be permitted to quote, for the refreshment of the right hon. Gentleman's memory, a passage from the speech of the Prime Minister in the book entitled "Looking Ahead." That passage reads as follows: The Unionist party is in favour of securing for every child effective and practical education which will develop individual character and will give to everyone a chance of making the best out of his or her talent, and of improving his or her position in life. With this view, the party would desire to see all schools conducted in healthy and well-equipped buildings by qualified and adequately remunerated teachers, and would maintain a close co-ordination between elementary, secondary, technical, and higher education. At the end of the 54 months that have been occupied by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, we have had another speech from the Prime Minister, in which we had, as it were, in succinct and summarised form, the speech of the Noble Lord which we have heard this afternoon. Indeed, if the Noble Lord will allow me to say so, I rather suspect that the summarised paragraph in the Prime Minister's speech must have been written by the Noble Lord himself, so singularly alike were some of the phrases in the two addresses. I beg leave at the outset to associate myself wholly and cordially with the well-merited tribute which the Noble Lord paid to the distinguished civil servant who has left the Board in the course of the last 12 months. I remember extremely well the happy time that I spent at the Board in association with Sir Hugh Orange, as well as others, and I am happy to pay tribute to the fact that he co-operated with us cordially, and placed at our disposal the very fullest measure of his unrivalled abilities.

I, too, would like to traverse something of the same ground that the Noble Lord has traversed, only in the opposite direction. He made reference to the provision of nursery schools. Repentance is always welcome, even though it come at the 59th minute of the 11th hour, and I am glad to see the Noble Lord this afternoon as a sort of penitent sinner confessing that he has delayed the operation of this proposal quite wrongly in previous years. I gather from the Noble Lord's speech that the Conservative party is now wholly and completely convinced that nursery schools ought to take their proper and appropriate place in the education system of this country. I gather also that in order to carry conviction in that matter, it was necessary for the Prime Minister and his wife to see the wonderful work done by Miss McMillan in the Deptford area. If one can carry conviction to the eye rather than to the ear, it is good to have conviction anyhow. We who belong to the Labour party have long since expressed full-hearted approval in the proposal for the provision of nursery schools, especially in areas that suffer severely from overcrowding and like social evils. I, therefore, welcome the Noble Lord as a recruit to the ranks of those who believe in this proposal.

I turn to a discussion of the present position with regard to elementary schools, and I recall to the Committee's attention and memory the phrase in the Prime Minister's pledge in 1924 concerning the staffing of schools, and, indeed, concerning the general proposition of the provision of schools. Before we left office in 1924 there was drafted a certain black list of schools that were in, immediate need of attention, and of other schools that were in less immediate need, but still were in need, of attention.

Lord E. PERCY

In urban areas.

Mr. JONES

Quite right. I gather from to-day's report that some 1,050 schools have already been attended to by the Board. These constitute some 35 per cent. of the schools which require attention. So far so good, and I cordially congratulate the Noble Lord upon that, but it means that something like 1,800 schools still require attention. To confess in these days that nearly 2,000 schools are in such a deplorable condition that they require to be placed upon a black list, is a matter of which most of us ought to be thoroughly ashamed. I hope that whatever Government may be in Office after the next election, this business of taking the unfit schools in hand will be speedily undertaken, so that we may bring our school buildings up to something like a decent standard of efficiency. Now I turn to the question of staffing, for after all, when we are dealing with the 4,900,000 children who are in our schools, it is obvious that we cannot get the very best out of the elementary system unless we are able to place at the disposal of these children a degree of staffing which will prevent overcrowding of the classes in the charge of these teachers. I am rather disturbed when I reflect that the number of what might fairly be called professionally unqualified teachers, in the sense of not having had any training college experience, the number of moderately qualified teachers, supplementary teachers and uncertificated teachers still engaged in the schools remains rather persistently round about the same figure.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Duchess of Atholl) indicated dissent.

Mr. JONES

I notice that the Noble Lady shakes her head. I have looked up the figures rather carefully, and if I am wrong I shall be glad to be corrected. I am taking the post-War figures, but I will give a pre-War figure as a basis of comparison. The contrast between pre-War years and post-War years is a real contrast, and signifies a real advance. In 1913–14, the uncertificated teachers and supplementary teachers numbered 54,774. In 1922–23, there were 32,000 uncertificated and 11,000 supplementary. I am giving round figures. In 1923–24 there were 32,000 uncertificated and 10,000 supplementary; in 1924–25, 32,000 uncertificated and 8,000 supplementary. I have not the figure for 1925–26, because, curiously enough, the table is not given in exactly the same form in the two succeeding copies of the Board's Report. Then we come to 1926–27, and mark the figure. There were 33,310 uncertificated teachers and 8,000-odd supplementary. In 1927–28, the numbers were 32,775 uncertificated and 8,303 supplementary. Whatever efforts the Noble Lord may have made to cope with this somewhat unfortunate state of affairs, he will agree with me that the figures remain somewhat persistently round about the same standard. He may have a quite adequate answer to that point, but I am stating the facts after a fairly minute and careful inquiry into the reports of the Board of Education. I make that point because the pledge was given in the Prime Minister's address in 1924, in a book called, "Looking Ahead," that these children should be placed in charge of qualified and adequately remunerated teachers.

Let me turn to another side of the same problem, namely that of the facilities offorded to children to enable them to make the best of the education afforded them. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bethnal Green dealt with it, and he rightly said that there are in the elementary schools of this country 16,500 classes of over 50 children. Everyone acquainted with the treatment and the instruction of children, and the chances that any teacher has for really educating, apart from lecturing or talking at 50 children, knows that it is literally impossible to educate under these conditions especially as in many schools there is no sort of partition between one class and another, and teachers very frequently have to talk against one another in the hope that their children may by some chance hear what they are saying. If we examine the matter more closely, we find some appalling conditions. Take the figure of 40 children per class. That was the figure which the Minister of Education in 1924 laid down as his immediate ideal—

Duchess of ATHOLL

In what type of school?

Mr. JONES

In elementary schools.

Duchess of ATHOLL

In all classes of the elementary schools?

Mr. JONES

Does the Noble Lady ask me whether I implied 40 per class for all schools?

Duchess of ATHOLL

I want to ask the hon. Gentleman what regulation was issued by the Minister of Education in 1924 limiting the number of children per class to 40?

Mr. JONES

The Noble Lady has gone too far. I did not use the word "regulation." What I said was that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education in 1924 indicated that the number 40 was his ideal. I did not suggest that there was a regulation issued at all, and if I gave that impression I am sorry. It was the ideal towards which he wished to direct the attention of the authorities at that time. Most of us will agree that 40 is a figure beyond which no teacher could really do any efficient work in real education. There are 62,288 classes in the schools of more than 40 children. Clearly that is a hopeless position and an impossible proposition from the strictly educational point of view. Of these 62,000 classes, over 10,000 are in charge of unqualified teachers; that is to say, one-sixth of the heaviest classes are in charge of unqualified teachers. Really, that is an impossible position, and it ought not to be tolerated one minute beyond what we must allow by force of circumstances I suggest, therefore, that the pledge that the Prime Minister laid down in his pronouncement in the pre-1924 election period has not in fact been fulfilled. I therefore accuse the Noble Lord of having failed during his administration to carry out the pledge which the Government gave to the country in regard to educational development.

I turn now from elementary to secondary education. We were told that secondary and university courses were to be brought within the reach of every child in an elementary school who might be desirous and capable of taking advantage of them. If the Committee care to look at the report for this year they will find that where fees are charged in secondary schools those fees are, very frequently, of an exorbitant character, from the point of view of poor homes. On page 138 it is shown that the number of schools charging more than 3 but not over 6 guineas is 69 in England and 98 in Wales; over 6 but not over 9 guineas, 246 in England, 22 in Wales; over 9 but not over 12 guineas, 527 in England and 3 in Wales. Doubtless these are very good schools, well equipped in every way, but the very high fees charged are an impassable barrier against a certain type of pupil, and while these financial barriers remain it really is impossible for anyone to argue that there is a broad highway along which all children, rich and poor, can travel without let or hindrance.

Sir MARTIN CONWAY

Are there not free places in those schools?

Mr. JONES

Of course, there are free places; but every school has only a certain amount of accommodation, and if a school depends more upon fees than upon Board of Education grants—and there are schools of that sort—naturally it will reserve more places for fee-paying pupils than for non-fee-paying pupils, and in many of these schools the number of non-fee-paying pupils is very limited. I am not making an attack upon the efficiency of these schools; all I am asking is that the number of free places shall be infinitely larger than it is. When that is the case we shall have carried out more completely the promise adumbrated by the Prime Minister in his 1924 pledge. Looking at page 155 of the report to which I have referred it will be found that the number of children who, having passed from the elementary schools to the secondary schools, have since gone on from there to the universities is still very limited. I am not accusing the Noble Lord on account of his failure to do all this in the course of his administration, but I am saying that it is foolish for him to argue that he has fully discharged the pledge which was given by his political leader the Prime Minister in 1924, and still more foolish for the Prime Minister to argue, as he did in his speech at Drury Lane Theatre last week, that the Government have carried out their pledge, in view of the fact that so many children are still excluded from the secondary schools and so many more excluded from the universities. [Interruption.] The Noble Lady seems to inquire to what I am referring. I will enlighten her if she does not mind paying attention to me for a moment. I will quote this: There is another record which, I think, will bear the most intense scrutiny"— That scrutiny I am trying to apply to it now— and that is our educational record, which bears comparison with that of any previous party in the history of the country. We have more than fulfilled every pledge that we have made. More than fulfilled!

Duchess of ATHOLL

Will the hon. Member kindly read a little further? The Prime Minister repeats the pledges made four years ago, which makes it quite clear, I think, that he means it to be understood that while we have been working steadily towards the fulfilment of the pledges, we do not claim to have come to the end of every one of them.

Mr. JONES

I will do that if the Noble Lady wants me to do it. We have more than fulfilled every pledge we have made. We are only halfway through the work of reform to which our Minister of Education and the Government have set their hands, but by what we have done we have proved our will to go further.

Lord E. PERCY

Hear, hear!

Mr. JONES

Will the Noble Lord follow my argument for a moment? How many extra places has he been able to provide per year in the secondary schools? Has he provided 5,000 in the 54 months? I think the Noble Lord will find that he has allowed some 10 new secondary schools to be built.

Lord E. PERCY indicated dissent.

Mr. JONES

This report gives it somewhere.

Duchess of ATHOLL

May I correct the hon. Member? The number of new secondary school places—not secondary schools—provided during 4½ years is not 5,000 but 32,000, an increase of 10 per cent., and there has been an increase in free places in those schools of not less than 22 per cent. Therefore, it is obvious that not only has there been a much larger increase in the number of places than the hon. Member realised, but also that the number and the proportion of free places has been steadily increasing.

Mr. JONES

I have now got the figures to which I was referring. They are given in table 32, page 136. I find that I was wrong in saying the number was 5,000. The total number of secondary school pupils in England in 1926–27 was 337,421, and in 1927–28, 342,957, an increase of 5,536. That is the figure I had in my mind—the increase in that one year. In that year 10 new schools were opened.

Lord E. PERCY

That is in one year.

Mr. JONES

Suppose there is an average of 300 pupils per school; that makes 3,000 pupils for those 10 schools. Take the 3,000 from the 5,536 and you have got some 2,500 left to be distributed over—how many educational authorities areas? There are 317 or 318. Divide the 2,500 by the 318 areas and how many extra places on the average have you provided all over the country? I am not arguing against it, nor am I deploring it, all I am saying to the Noble Lord is that it is an extravagance for him and his friends to argue that in the course of their administration they have fulfilled, even to a decent degree, the pledge which the Prime Minister gave in 1924.

Sir WILLIAM PERRING

Does the hon. Member accept the Noble Lady's figures? He is arguing against them.

Mr. JONES

If the hon. Member had paid attention to me, he would know that I withdrew the remark I made with reference to the 5,000.

Sir W. PERRING

But the hon. Member is continuing the argument.

Mr. JONES

Having said this about secondary schools, let me add a word in regard to technical schools. I am extremely sorry to hear what the Noble Lord said concerning the development of technical education. As I said last year, I am absolutely convinced that if our country is to hold her own in the great fight for commercial priority among the nations of the world she must develop her technical education to an infinitely greater degree. Some two years ago I had the pleasure and privilege of Visiting America. Indeed, I have been there twice recently, and on each occasion this idea has been impressed upon me: Whatever merits or demerits may attach to the American system of education—and there are many demerits as well as merits—it is quite certain that Americans appreciate to a considerable degree, and much more than we do, the necessity for the development of technical education.

6.0 p.m.

I was very glad to hear the Noble Lord say that the Board are taking an enlightened and a sustained interest in the question of industrial art, because it may very well be that in the coming years races which we have regarded as being more laggard than ourselves may come to compete with us in coarser types of manufacture, but so long as we are able to equip our students with an artistic education and to apply that artistic training to industrial work, our nation will be able to retain that leadership which we desire her to retain. I am prepared to grant credit to anyone for anything that has been attempted on behalf of education, and I am glad to observe that the Board have recently made a substantial advance in their provision for the development of technical education. So far, I am at one with those in charge of the administration of education, but looking back over the four years in which our friends "the enemy" have been in charge, I am bound to say that I cannot share with the Noble Lord the self-satisfaction which he seems to enjoy so thoroughly. I am appalled by the measure of what is yet to be accomplished, and I am abundantly convinced that in their 54 months of office the Government have not discharged their obligations to help forward the development of education in our land. More council schools are required. More efficient schools and smaller classes are badly wanted in many of our schools. In order to secure that desirable end I, for my part, earnestly hope that whatever Government may return to office after the next election they may have the abundant support of all so as to be able to discharge their educational responsibility to the nation.

Sir M. CONWAY

It is in the nature of things that these education Debates should lack the actuality of ordinary human life. If any child of nature were to come into this Chamber this afternoon, fresh from contact with the men in the streets, to listen to an education Debate he would find an atmosphere of "lamentation and mourning and woe." That would not be the fault of the speakers in this House. We have been immensely interested by the statement of the Noble Lord, and I have admired the way in which he has been able to keep so closely in his mind all those details connected with institutions, schools, classes, organisations, and all the rest of it. At the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th Century, when there was a great reaction against mediaeval benightedness, an educational revolution took place. At that time the foundation was laid for the literary and humanistic teaching which has lasted up to the present day as the only foundation of teaching. Recently, I read with interest the life of that great Italian educational pioneer, Vittorino da Feltse, and, as I read it, I could see in his impulse a germ of the education system which has existed down to the present day. There is a tradition which I find is held quite strongly on the benches opposite, which is that you must have a sort of humanistic teaching to every child up to as late an age as possible before vocational training is taken up. They consider that literary teaching is the necessary foundation of all good education. Such is not necessarily the case. Moreover, I have little sympathy with the abstract manner in which elementary subjects are taught in the schools.

HON. MEMBERS

No!

Mr. SHEPHERD

Has the hon. Member been in any of our schools within the last few years?

Sir M. CONWAY

Yes, I have, and I found there a totally different atmosphere from that which I find in this House. In the schools, you have the children and the teachers with problems to tackle, and most of the teachers are a very worthy set of people. The atmosphere of a school is a totally different question from that which we find in this House when Education is under discussion. Organisation and super-organisation of education leaves me cold. I envisage not an educational system, but an actual teacher and an actual pupil. The other day we had a Debate on emigration, and I intervened for a few moments in order to suggest that one of the reasons why our people do not emigrate so readily as they did was the fault of our educational system. I suggested that an education in the country schools of a character suited to the localities was one which would be far more useful than the kind of stereotyped education which we are giving all over the country, suitable mainly for providing efficient clerks in city offices.

The hon. Member for Halifax (Mr. Longbottom) said he never heard a more reactionary speech. I suppose he thinks that any education which is not literary is reactionary. The hon. Member for Halifax regarded my suggestion as reactionary simply, because I suggested that we should teach a kind of thing that would vitalise country life.

I will give a rough sketch of the kind of teaching that might be given. Of course, reading and writing are necessary as the first practical method of learning, because you must be able to read and write in order to learn from books. The children might then be taught arithmetic in the form of keeping the accounts relating to a small holding or any other small industry. Then I would teach the rudiments of geography by beginning with the geography of the parish and the immediate neighbourhood, but I would make my first unit the geography of the parish. I would treat history in the same way and I would make local history the foundation of such historical teaching as I was able to give. I would teach the children the rudiments of botany in connection with the growth of plants, wild weeds, the cultivation of crops, the nature of different seeds, and their different suitability for local agriculture. I would give the children rudimentary instruction in the chemistry of soils, manures, and so forth.

Mr. SHEPHERD

Is the hon. Member not aware that in 90 per cent. of the rural schools that is exactly what the children are being taught?

Sir M. CONWAY

I think not. I am aware that this matter is receiving the attention of the Board of Education, and my hope is that it will be pushed forward. I do not think that the type of education in any country school is what I have just put forward.

Mr. SHEPHERD

It is being done at the present time in 90 per cent. of our rural schools.

Sir M. CONWAY

I do not think, for instance, that the teaching of geography begins in the immediate neighbourhood of the school.

Mr. SHEPHERD

Yes, that is done.

Sir M. CONWAY

I am familiar with many country schools where certainly it is not done. The interest taken in country life is much greater if the children know something about the things around them. As a matter of fact, I think a young boy who has been thoroughly instructed in country affairs would be far less likely to want to go and settle in a town. If my suggestion were adopted, I do not think the children would want to go into the towns to the extent that they do at the present time. The reason for the present tendency is that the town offers the only kind of pleasure and interest which country children have been educated to delight in. The development of a varied system of country education is one of our greatest needs. I am not referring to a reform of secondary schools in this sense, but to the improvement and altered tendency of education in our primary village schools.

I agree that secondary agricultural schools are very valuable, but it is at the very start of the education of the children that a knowledge of the natural history of a locality is so important. I have heard it asserted that there is a difficulty in getting teachers capable of giving this kind of teaching, I think not.

The President of the Board of Education said that the test of efficiency and advance in the Board's work was a cash test; the more money spent on education the better the system. I do not deny that money has its influence, but the test of efficiency in education is not the money spent upon it but the enthusiasm of the teachers. If you have an enthusiastic body of teachers taking a keen interest in the life of the children, you can accomplish great things. Such men will watch the children grow up and develop under their hands. They possess a real passion for their work. That is one result to bring about. Of course teachers of that order must be well paid and independent. Efficient teachers must be given much personal initiative and be allowed to adapt their teaching to the class of children they have to instruct. Therefore, I am always glad to hear of anything that tends to the greater development of the teaching staff.

I should like every primary and secondary school teacher to be, if possible, a university graduate, though I do not think that any examination, or any system of proof or diploma, can give or even test that quality which I regard as essential; indeed, it is quite likely that among the number of un-certificated teachers, of whom we have heard a good deal to-day, many may be found to possess the essential vital spark, which is not to be acquired at any training college or university or by any examination or diploma or degree. I remember my old friend Mark Twain once telling me that the difference between one doctor and another was, not that either had attained this or the other degree, but that some had the faculty of healing and others had not. It is exactly the same with teaching; some have the faculty of teaching and some have not. Of those who have that faculty we want to multiply the number and those who have not that faculty we want to weed out.

I have been much interested by the statement made by the President of the Board of Education, and also by the criticism of the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Morgan Jones). He, quite rightly, attempted to lay his hand on all the weak spots he could find, but I am delighted to think that he was able to find so few. On the whole, it is pleasant to feel that in this House, although we are divided on broad general principles of political theory, yet in practice, when it comes to a question like education, we are really all of one mind. Some want to go faster in one direction, and some want to go faster in another, but all alike want to go ahead. It is very stimulating to hear from my right hon. Friend, who knows the whole field throughout, that this enormous engine of his for education, with all its committees, all its reports, and so on, is, on the whole, working for the benefit of the country and tending to introduce from year to year better systems of education for the masses of our people.

Mr. ERNEST EVANS

Last week I saw in more than one newspaper the comment that, in view of the approach of a General Election, Parliament in an increasing and special way was being used as a platform; and, when I saw the President of the Board of Education rise to initiate the discussion to-day, I had at the same time the hope and the fear that he was going to follow the precedent which, as I gathered from the newspapers, was set last week by Members of the House. Having heard his speech, I am prepared to acquit him of any such intention, and I listened with very great interest to his account of the work which he has accomplished during the last four years. My fear that he might be going to make an election speech arose from an intense desire on my part that these developments which we all desire to see accomplished in educational activity within the next few years should not be made the subject of party controversy. My hope arose from the desire to see this subject become increasingly a subject of interest in this House and among the public generally.

As I look upon the educational system of this country at the present time, my feelings, I must confess, alternate between great hope and great disappointment. The disappointment arises from the lack of interest displayed by a great number of people in this great problem. It was said, I am afraid with some truth, by the hon. Member for the English Universities (Sir M. Conway), that our discussions on education in this House partake of what he called abstract treatment of the problem. If that be so, it is partly due to the Rules of Procedure, under which the subjects that we can discuss in Committee of Supply are very limited; but I am afraid it is also due in some part to a lack of real appreciation of what is meant when we talk about education, on the part of persons of the type that we sometimes describe as the average politician. That is a very misleading phrase, because there is no such person as the average politician. Every politician considers himself to be above the average, and every average person considers himself to be above the politician—and that is why he remains an average person. But, while there is this lack of real interest, I wish that the House might have, as suggested by the hon. Member for the English Universities, an opportunity of considering education, not merely from the point of view of the administrative details of the work, but from the point of view of presenting to the House and the country something in the nature of a real survey of the whole national activities at present involved in our educational system, and the expansion of those activities which is necessary in order to make them more appropriate to the needs of the time.

I am a little surprised that some of those who entertain considerable doubts as to the real value of our educational system in this country are at the same time the very people who are most vocal and vociferous in their complaints of the tendency, which manifests itself among a large number of people in this country, to entertain what they are pleased to call revolutionary doctrines. It seems to me that that is a very short-sighted view. It is forgotten that it is the uneducated person to-day who is the prey of the revolutionary, just as in days gone by the uneducated person was the puppet of the reactionary. After all, it is only in poor soil that weeds flourish, and there is very little difference between the success of the growth of the weed of complacency and of the thistle, shall I say, of sedition and revolution.

If we really want to create a healthy citizenship in this country, the first essential is that we should do everything in our power to see that those who are now growing up, and who in a few years will be bearing upon their shoulders the responsibilities of citizenship, shall be boys and girls who have had a fairer chance under our educational system of acquiring for themselves the facility and the ability for thinking out things for themselves. We find, however, that about 500,000 children leave our elementary schools every year at the age of 14, and I think it is a fair estimate that, of that number, 80 per cent., when they leave at the age of 14, are experiencing a break in their association with educational endeavour and activity which is final and complete. When one remembers basic facts and figures; of this character, it is pure hypocrisy to talk, as some do, about the failure of education in this country. What we are suffering from is not education, but the lack or insufficiency of educational facilities at the present time.

While that consideration does give rise to some despondency, yet, on the other hand, I entertain feelings of great hope when I see the increasing interest that is being taken by all classes in this country in the cause of education. I think it is a very significant fact—if I may use the illustration, not from any national pride, but because it is a fact within my own knowledge—that, despite even the acute industrial depression which prevails in the greater part of Wales at the present time, and despite the great hardships which the population of parts of Wales are suffering, the numbers of boys and girls in our secondary schools in Wales, and the numbers of our students at the university colleges, are being maintained at practically the same strength as in the period before these acutely depressing conditions set in. That is a symptom and a symbol of the real interest taken in the cause of education in that part of the country, and of the real desire which enables and inspires parents to make great sacrifices in order to secure for their children better opportunities in life than would otherwise be available for them. I am quite prepared to believe that what is true in Wales is true also of other parts of the United Kingdom.

While, as I have said, there is room for disappointment, I believe that the giving of the finest educational facilities to our boys and girls, and to those who have passed the age of boyhood and girlhood, is to be regarded, not as a privilege to be grudgingly bestowed upon them, but as a right to which they are undeniably entitled in view of the responsibilities of citizenship which they will have to undertake when they grow up. I gathered from the Prime Minister's speeches—both that which he delivered at Drury Lane and that which he broadcast last night—that he fully agrees with these views, and they are views which I venture to hope will command the assent of the great majority in this House. Quite frankly, I do not believe that they command the assent of all of us, but I do hope that they command the assent of the majority. When we are discussing this matter in Committee of Supply, we want to know from the representative of the Board of Education, not what are the ideas which may be entertained as regards the future, but what is being done now in order to prepare the way for the fulfilment of these ideals in the near future. The Prime Minister, in his speech at Drury Lane, said it might be that a new Education Act would be necessary. I have not examined that statement, but I accept it. I would, however, remind the Government that, under the existing law there is already room for considerable development, without any new legislative enactment.

Let me take as an illustration a question which affects the raising of the school age and the reorganisation of the schools, of which we have heard so much this afternoon. I venture to remind the Committee of it because I am afraid it is a matter which is apt to be forgotten. The great Act which was passed in 1918, under the inspiration of Mr. Fisher, incorporated the principle that no child or young person should be debarred from receiving the benefits of any form of education by which they are capable of profiting, through inability to pay fees. The putting of that principle into practice does not require any new legislation; it can be put into operation under the existing law by any Board of Education or any Government that is prepared to do so. With a view to putting it into effect after 1918, local authorities were asked to prepare schemes for the gradual organisation of education within their areas, and for compulsory day continuation schools of a part-time character on a basis to be agreed upon between each local education authority and the Board of Education. I believe that financial considerations were mainly responsible for holding up that part of the Act, and I want to say in passing that I think it is a very bad principle, when you have a scheme of that sort incorporated in an Act of Parliament, that that scheme should be held up by administrative action. It is not right, when Parliament in its wisdom has given expression to a definite policy, that the Executive in the form of the Government of the day should assume to itself the power to delay putting that policy into operation. That is a matter which I only mention in passing.

Financial considerations were mainly responsible for holding up the putting into operation of this policy, but the President of the Board of Education to-day seemed to suggest that in his view the main reason for its postponement was the existence of difficulties and misunderstandings in regard to what is called technical education. I regret that these difficulties have existed, and apparently they still exist, although I hope that my hon. Friend who spoke last was not right when he said that the bulk of the people still believed that a literary education was the foundation of all education. I believe that those interested in education are making a profound mistake to-day when they are inclined to indulge, as some people are, in constant talk about the difference between what they call education for vocational purposes, and education for what they call cultural purposes. There is no necessity for emphasising the difficulty between the two things, and there is a great deal of danger in doing so.

After all, technical education to-day is a different thing from what it was when we used the phrase many years ago. The technical education which is given to-day in itself and of necessity involves mental processes which are of a high cultural value. On the other hand, it is no good trying to think that you are going to help the association of education with industry if you give boys and girls an education of a purely technical character, because in any industry you will be told by the leaders that that is not sufficient. With a technical knowledge you require other things, particularly clear thinking and clear expression to your thoughts. Therefore, we are doing great harm to this subject when we constantly exaggerate the alleged difference between cultural and technical education. The two things can go hand in hand, and in that way can be of immense value to our country.

I said that these things cannot be done in a day. I agree that the Noble Lord can quite fairly claim—and I am not going to grudge him the claim for a single moment—that progress has been made in several directions in the course of the last four or five years. But when you talk of progress you have to make up your mind what are the two types or the two circumstances which you are comparing. There has been great progress compared with pre-War days. The Noble Lord spoke of what he called the post-War mentality, and he seemed to think that the post-War mentality was against progress in education. I differ from him entirely. At the end of the War there was existing in this country a mentality which was sufficiently interested in education, and inspired by high ideals in regard to it, that we could have gone forward to the full operation of everything in the Fisher Act if it had not been for the call of economy preventing it. When the Noble Lord and the Prime Minister talk about the ideals which they have in mind, I want to remind them that those things cannot be put into operation in the course of one year, or two years, or even three years. The Noble Lord said to-day that next autumn, the local education committees of this country would be producing their second series of three-year programmes. What treatment is he going to mete out to that second series of three-year programmes? Is he going to mete out to that second series the same treatment as was given to the first series?

Duchess of ATHOLL

Will the hon. Gentleman tell the Committee what is the treatment that my right hon. Friend meted out to the three-year programme?

Mr. EVANS

I was just coming to that. On the last occasion, the Noble Lord went about the country making excellent speeches inviting local education authorities to prepare programmes for three years with regard to several matters—the size of classes, the conditions of the schools—and to frame schemes for real progressive development in the course of three years. When they produced their programmes, they did not get them accepted by the Board.

Duchess of ATHOLL

Will the hon. Member be kind enough to inform the Committee of any areas which have not had their programmes accepted by the Noble Lord?

Mr. EVANS

Although they put in their schemes they were not able to get on with them.

Duchess of ATHOLL

The hon. Member does not seem to be aware that we are in the middle of programmes just now, the programmes for which my right hon. Friend called after he went to the Board. They were put into operation in April, 1927, and local authorities are working on them at the present moment.

Mr. EVANS

The programmes, if the Noble Lady will forgive me for saying so, put up by local authorities, were cut down in several respects in many parts of the country, and certainly they did not receive the consideration which the local education authorities were entitled to expect, and which they did expect in view of the speeches the Noble Lord had made in different parts of the country. All I am asking is that when local education authorities are asked to prepare schemes for a three-year programme they will not have face a similar exception to them. The Report of the Board of Education mentions the matter of reorganisation, and it says in page 11 that it is not possible to make any statistical estimate of the progress achieved. I am not going to complain about that. If the Board say that they have not the figures, it is no use pressing the matter, but they ought to be able to give us a little more information on that point.

I want, in conclusion, to ask the Noble Lady, representing the Board of Education, two questions: First, whether the Board have formed any estimate as to how long it is contemplated that at the present rate of progress the reorganisation which the Board have in mind will take; and, secondly, whether the Board have entertained any expectations of being able to expedite the rate of progress in the organisation as compared with what it is at the present time? Can the Board form any definite opinion of the effect of the reaction of that reorganisation upon the profession of teachers generally, and especially upon specialist teachers? Have the Board a definitely clear idea with regard to reorganisation on these two things? As I have said, the points that we can raise in a discussion of this sort are limited to questions of administration, and therefore I cannot go beyond them, but a declaration of that sort would be welcomed by all interested in education, and by all who have been inspired to take a more hopeful view of things by the speech made by the Prime Minister in the course of last week.

If I may ask a third question, it is whether the Government have any hopes of being able, in the event of their being returned to power, to make a declaration in the next Parliament as to the date on which they hope to be able to provide for raising the school age? These are matters of information, and matters of real practical importance to all who are interested in education. They are matters of machinery, and machinery in itself cannot accomplish its purposes unless it has motive power behind it. I hope that the references that the Prime Minister has made to the subject of education, and that a Debate of this character will really be the means of helping and inspiring the House to supply that motive power by enabling us to take an even greater interest in the advance of education, and to give all the assistance in our power to those responsible for its administration.

Mr. COVE

I hope the Committee will forgive me saying that the Debate so far has had an air of unreality, and that the unreality that has characterised the Debate so far as it has gone has been due to the fact that we in this Committee this afternoon have been indulging in the expression of philosophic and theoretical idealism. We have not made this Debate what it should be in my judgment, namely, an Estimates Debate. We have not until now sufficiently examined, as they are revealed in the Estimates of the Board of Education, in the Report of the Board and in the Memorandum, the doings and the failures of the present administrator, and there are failures. I believe that I shall be able to show before I sit down from the figures which have been supplied by the Board's own Department that there has been reaction at the Board of Education, that the progress in equipment which the President of the Board said was the measure of progress, has not maintained the pre-War rate or even the rate that obtained during the War period. I hope to be able to show also that the claims of the Conservative party that they have reduced the size of classes has not resulted in a reduction in general, but a reduction in one sphere of administration at the expense of another sphere of administration. The size of classes, for instance, for those children over 11 years of age has been reduced, but it is equally true, as I hope to show by figures from the Board's Estimate, that the reductions in the size of classes which have taken place in regard to children over 11 have been effected at the expense of children in the elementary schools under the age of 11.

I charge the President of the Board of Education with, I will not say deliberately, but effectively leading the Committee astray into the field of philosophic disquisition. I am not going to follow him except to say that I am very suspicious of the principles which he enunciated this afternoon. They need a great deal of clarifying. They need, it is true, a great deal of showing how they would work in practice. At the same time, it is a legitimate observation to make upon the speech which the President delivered when I say that there is a great danger that the education system of this country may become dominated by and tied to the industries of this country. There was a great danger, from the speech which I heard from the Noble Lord this afternoon, that the main purpose, if not the whole purpose of our education, would be to subserve industry in this country. I disagree with that contention, and I enter my protest against it. Neither the schools nor the Minister of Education ought to be dominated by the needs of industry. There is a great danger that the domination of the schools by the needs of industry will not, in the long run, even serve the needs of industry itself. Therefore, I would say quite hopefully that when the next President of the Board of Education makes his statement on the Estimates—I hope he will be a Labour Minister—he will not hold such views.

The right hon. Gentleman to-day pictured the secondary school as a building or institution which would be devoted entirely to literary and cultural subjects, carrying out, as I understood him, the old grammar school idea in modern times. It is a correct historical observation to say that the grammar schools, the purely literary schools, all through the ages have been associated with the dominant class, with the distinct ruling class, and that vocational education all down the ages has been associated with the subservient class. That is not the philosophy and outlook of the Labour party. We might indulge in a discussion of what is vocational and what is literary, but my point is that in a class-ridden society, such as we have under the capitalist system, we are bound to have literary education always associated with class distinction and class privilege.

I come to an examination of the Estimates. I will deal first with expenditure. The President of the Board of Education said that that was the acid test. Are you building schools? Are you renovating old schools? That is the acid test I accept that statement as true. We can test whether the Department is progressive or reactionary by the acid test of the money available for new buildings. You cannot put the secondary system fully into being, or carry out the reorganisation of the education system, or teach the children properly, or have the equipment which is necessary, or bring about reduction in the size of classes, or have the essentials that are necessary for good education unless there are plenty of good, well-equipped buildings. Is the President of the Board of Education providing those buildings at the present time? I have in my possession a joyous pamphlet issued by the Conservative party, entitled, "What the Conservative Government has done for education." One would imagine that the Tory Government has done something for education, on reading this pamphlet; that the Tory Government had caused an acceleration of progress. One would imagine from the optimistic, armchair, smoke-my-pipe chat of the Prime Minister that the Tories had caused a large number of school buildings to be erected. That proud feeling is expressed in this wonderful pamphlet. One section of the pamphlet deals with school buildings and capital expenditure, which provides the test which the right hon. Gentleman has enunciated to-day. It says: During the three years ended 31st March, 1928, proposals for no fewer than 221 new elementary schools have been approved, mainly in order to meet the needs of new housing estates. When I read that statement, I was rather startled. I felt that there must have been some progress. Two hundred and twenty-one new elementary schools approved in the last three years! I thought that that was not bad for a Tory Government, and I began to feel that we had converted the President of the Board of Education during the fight we had with him in 1925 over the reactionary Circular No. 1371. In passing, might I say that what has prevented the Tory Government from making drastic economies in education has been a vigilant public opinion, and the credit does not rest with the President of the Board of Education that there has not been drastic economies in the education service. In the words of the official organ of the education authority, in a leading article on the 4th December, 1925, characterising the policy of the President of the Board of Education in connection with Circular 1371: Lord Eustace Percy swoops from heights to depths of unwisdom. Lord Eustace's plan is crude, inequitable and unintelligible. There is a fine row of adjectives characterising the progressive spirit, the progressive administration of the President of the Board of Education! In 1925, through Circular 1371 and the Memorandum, the right hon. Gentleman tried to put into operation the block grant. He tried to limit the expenditure of local authorities for three years. In short, the effort in 1925 was to create even more stagnation than has ensued since 1925 owing to the defeat of the Government by public opinion. Let me get back to the acid test. I thought that the approval of 221 new schools was an immensely progressive number for a Tory Government, and I began to make investigation. What is the normal rate of progress? Has the right hon. Gentleman been keeping step with what has been the ordinary normal development? I go back to the record for the year 1911. In that year I find, from the official record of the Board of Education, that up to the 31st July in England, 192 council schools and 29 voluntary schools were sanctioned, while in Wales 46 council schools were sanctioned, making a total for England and Wales of 238 council schools, or 267 council and voluntary schools. The proud boast of the Conservative party is that 221 schools have been sanctioned in three years.

Duchess of ATHOLL

May I correct the hon. Member?

Mr. COVE

I must finish my figures.

Duchess of ATHOLL

It is well that I should correct the hon. Member. If he is going to make any further reference to the figures given in the Conservative pamphlet it would be fair to remind him that the figure of 221 which he has quoted was only up to the 31st March last year. The figures up to the 31st December last year are 547.

Mr. COVE

That does not make any difference to my argument. My argument is that the Conservative party have not built schools in step with the normal development, and I am proving that. Perhaps the Noble Lady will see that the revised figures are put into the pamphlet before the General Election, so that we shall be able to analyse them. In the year 1912, 210 schools were sanctioned in England and 50 in Wales, making a total of 260. In addition, 18 voluntary schools were sanctioned, the aggregate for 1912 for council and voluntary schools amounting to 278. For the year ending 31st July, 1913, 139 council schools were sanctioned in England and 25 in Wales, with 18 voluntary schools, making a total of 182. To 31st July, 1914, 136 council schools were sanctioned in England and 34 in Wales which together with 14 voluntary schools made a total of 184 for 1914. That is the normal rate of expansion. These figures, taken from the official records of the Board of Education, prove conclusively that the rate of building sanctioned by the President of the Board of Education is not the normal rate of expansion that has always obtained.

Let us look at this year's Report. Again, we may have a correction from the Noble Lady, but I would remind her that we are discussing what has been published. I have been discussing what I have found in the official documents of the Board of Education, and figures ought not to be sprung upon us from the Government Front Bench without our having any chance of analysing them and seeing what they really mean. In this Year's Report, there are some very interesting comparisons in the Welsh section. I would congratulate the Welsh Department on the simplicity, straightforwardness, and truthfulness of its Report. There is no difficulty in following the section which deals with Welsh education, but there is very considerable difficulty in following the section which deals with English education. I should imagine that a great deal of astuteness has gone to the making up of the English Report, and that straightforward honesty has given us the portion which deals with Welsh education.

Lieut.-Commander ASTBURY rose—

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Sir Dennis Herbert)

I cannot allow two hon. Members on their feet at the same time.

Lieut.-Commander ASTBURY

Is the hon. Member suggesting that the English Report is not true?

7.0 p.m.

Mr. COVE

I am suggesting a bit of honesty on the part of Wales. From the Report it would appear that in the year 1927–28 there was a slight increase in the number of proposals sanctioned under Section 18 of the Education Act, 1921, for the provision of new schools, six new schools being sanctioned as compared with four in 1926–27. I would draw the attention of the Committee to those figures for Wales, and I would remind them that the normal figures were 46, 50, 25 and 34, which proves conclusively that, in Wales in particular, as in the case generally of the whole of Great Britain, the normal pre-War rate of building has not by any means been attained during recent years. When we consider that in the post-War period there has also been the need for meeting the expansion in the newly-developed areas, such as the new mining areas and the new housing estates, we can see that, if we eliminate that post-War problem, normal needs have been even worse met than appears from the figures. Before the War there was not this need for meeting demands for schools on new building estates.

Again taking the case of Wales, I find that there was a black list which included 268 schools, on which were placed the names of the schools from which recognition should be withdrawn as soon as other accommodation could be provided. On this point of the black list, I would put some questions to the Noble Lady, who, I understand, is going to reply. I find on page 14 a table giving the schools which were blacklisted. In List A, there were 219 schools, in List B 345, and in List C, 150, making a total of 714 council schools, while, as regards the voluntary schools, there were 460 in List A, 1,421 in List B, and 232 in List C. I understood that the schools in List A were bad beyond repair and that the only fate that ought to await these rotten, insanitary, death-breeding institutions was extinction and demolition, as they had got into such a state that repair was out of the question. How comes it about then that out of these schools they have managed to remedy the defects of 11 of the council schools and of 39 of the voluntary schools? What spiritual outlook—if I may use the phrase—has been employed in these denominational schools to make 39 of them again fit for habitation? What has been done to make 11 council schools fit to be used as schools? That fact in itself shows that the Board of Education is lowering the standard of requirements of school building; it is accepting a standard which it ought not to accept. Has it not agreed to accept repairs for schools which, according to the official pronouncement of the inspectors themselves, ought long ago to have been razed to the ground? How does it come about that these schools have now been accepted as buildings which can be inhabited? As to the repairs to these various schools, my suspicion, which is based upon some investigation is that the Board of Education is taking credit to itself for remedying a high percentage of schools by including in its figures such repairs as repairs to the latch of a door, so as to include in the figures schools in which a minimum of repairs is required in order to swell the percentage of repairs. I have also shown from the figures of the schools sanctioned that the President of the Board of Education is not meeting the normal rate of school building that obtained prior to the War.

Let us examine the finance of these Estimates. The Noble Lord boasted that there had been an expansion in capital expenditure. I shall prove that the Board of Education is being burdened with hardly a penny for the finance of new buildings, and that the loan charges are no additional burden on the finances of the Board. The loan charges for 1924–25 were £3,898,000, for 1925–26 £3,896,000, for 1926–27 £3,885,000 and for 1927–28 £3,848,000. Roughly speaking, there is stabilisation and no expansion in the loan charges. That is borne out on page 10 of the Memorandum, where it appears that pre-War loan charges—indicating that capital expenditure which the President of the Board of Education said was the acid test—cost 11s. 4d. per child. In 1925–26 the figures were 11s. 6d., in 1926–27 11s. 2d., in 1927–28 11s. 7d., while the Estimates for 1928–29 were 12s. 11d. and for 1929–30 13s. 1d. per child. Those figures show that the financial burden on the Board is exactly the same for all practical purposes at the present time and throughout the regimé of the Noble Lord as it was during 1913–14. There is the same cost per child now as in 1913–14, in spite of the fact that the cost of building materials is higher and the value of money is lower, in spite of the fact that that we had a great leeway to make up owing to building being stopped during the War and during the Geddes regime, and in spite of the black-listed schools. Notwithstanding the crying need for a great expansion in educational building, the loan charges per child for building purposes stand at exactly the same figure as in the pre-War period. I am, therefore, fully justified in saying that, judged by the test of expansion for building purposes, which is a very necessary test, the present administration is one of stagnation and reaction, and that the great need for new buildings, either to replace old schools or for new developed areas, has not been met because the President of the Board of Education will not find the money by which they can be financed.

Let us now look at the classes. One of the greatest benefits that can accrue to our educational system is the continual reduction in the size of classes. Prom the figures before us it appears that, in the case of children under 11, the number of classes over 40 has increased by over 5,000, while, in the case of children over 11, the number of classes over 40 has been reduced by about 5,000. This means that the younger children now in our schools under the age of 11 are being taught in large classes, and that the children of the men who won the War have got to pay for the War again in their education. They are to be the sufferers, and for the Noble Lord to claim that there has been progress in this respect is not exactly true. I grant that there is a lop-sided progress, there has been a reduction in the size of classes for children over 11, but there has been an increase for children under 11. Hence the younger children in the elementary schools are going to pay for the smaller classes in the schools for children over 11.

What about general finance? Everyone who has examined the figures must have realised that the continued policy of the Board of Education for some years now has been to throw the main burden of progress upon the rates, to lighten the burden of taxes and to lower the ratio of grants to expenditure from the rates. It was an amazing thing to me to find that the Noble Lord did not know this afternoon what was in his own Memorandum, and actually confessed that he was ignorant of what was stated on page 6 of that Memorandum: The decrease in grants for elementary education amounted to £494,000, the result of an anticipated increase of £256,000 due to the increased expenditure of the local authorities and a net decrease of £750,000 due to the estimated increased produce of a 7d. rate, which acts as a grant reducing factor. This year the President of the Board of Education is throwing £750,000, which ought to be met by grants, on to rates. The ratepayers are to be burdened with this £750,000, and if we analyse the Estimates still further we find that he has made no financial accommodation for this year. Where is the compensation. Some of the compensation I know comes under the operation of the 50 per cent. grant, but when that is analysed you find that it operates to the advantage of rich authorities and the disadvantage of poor authorities. I have a statement here drawn up by a financial authority who has analysed the figures in great detail, and he shows that the poor authorities, the distressed industrial areas, will suffer greatly owing to the fact that no allowance is made for increased assessment under the Rating and Valuation Act.

This policy of quietly throwing these increasing burdens on to the rates is crippling education, and whoever goes into the Department when the Noble Lord has gone will have to settle down and deal with the finance of the matter before any real progress in education can be made. He will have to see that in the case of highly rated areas like Gateshead, Mountain Ash, and Barrow, and the necessitous areas, some special arrangement is made by which they will not be called upon to bear such a large portion of the financial burden as they do at the present moment. These areas will be plunging straight into the de rating scheme, and will be robbed of some of their rateable value. In addition they are to have this increased burden thrown upon them this year. The position will have to be met. No wonder the Noble Lord skated quickly over the question of finance and entered into the realm of theory. The real policy of the Noble Lord is to unload on to rates burdens which ought to be borne by taxes.

Coming now to the question of reorganisation, what do we find? In the "New Prospect" three principles of policy are enunciated, and I presume they are taken from a summary in the Board's own language of the Hadow Report: (1) That primary education should be regarded as ending at about the age of 11, and should then go forward to some form of post-primary education; (2) That this second stage should as far as possible be envisaged as a single whole, within which there should be variety of types of education; (3) That legislation should be passed fixing, as from 1932, the age of 15 years as that to which attendance should be obligatory. Only one of these principles has been accepted by the Noble Lord. He has not accepted the basic principle of the Hadow Report. He has accepted the principle that there should be a reorganisation of the children below the age of 11. In the words of the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Mr. Harris) he has accepted a policy of reshuffling. He has not accepted the policy of raising the school age. As a matter of fact, before the Report was published the Noble Lord went out of his way to announce that the Government would not accept the policy of raising the school age. You cannot reorganise your educational system unless you are prepared to raise the school age. That is the foundation stone of any re-organisation which is worth anything. Neither has the Noble Lord accepted the policy that all education above the age of 11 years should be secondary education—I use that word for convenience sake. What does he mean by higher education? Is it merely a statutory declaration, or is the President of the Board of Education going to provide money which will give equal conditions in all schools for children above the age of 11 years? Are the children of the workers above the age of 11 to have the same physical amenities, the same atmosphere, the same educational facilities, the same size of classes, the same equipment, books, playing fields, the same provisions for the teaching of science, the teaching of art, and the teaching of handicrafts, are they going to have equal facilities with those in the secondary schools? Does the Noble Lord mean that? It seems to me that the policy of the Board of Education is still to make a differentiation between the children above the age of 11 years in these schools and those in the secondary schools. The policy of the Labour party is to raise the school age, and I hope the Liberal party will be able to say that equally it is their policy. I have looked in the Yellow Book—

Mr. HARRIS

It is in our White Book.

Mr. COVE

I understand that the Yellow Book is the one to look at, except for questions dealing with agriculture which I believe is a Green Book. There is certainly no recommendation in the Yellow Book for the raising of the school age; there is nothing there to guarantee that the Liberal party agrees with the policy of raising the school age. As a matter of fact, the Liberal party is very unsettled on this point, and when the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green was speaking I was hoping that we were going to have a pronouncement of Liberal policy on this point, and that they would have been definitely committed to a raising of the school age. The Conservative party refuses to raise the school age. The Labour party stands for the raising of the school age, with maintenance grants. That is clearly and definitely the policy of the Labour party. Their aim is to get the same conditions in all schools for children above the age of 11 years. Equality; that is the aim of the Labour party. The Tory party is still committed to a policy of class distinction within our educational system.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

I must remind the hon. Member that he must not discuss matters which require legislation.

Mr. COVE

I am not quite sure that this does require legislation. I think it can be done administratively.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

That may be true in regard to what the hon. Member is going to say; but it is not true in regard to what he has said.

Mr. CRAWFURD

May I remind the hon. Member that it was the last Liberal President of the Board of Education who made it possible to raise the school age now.

Mr. COVE

I do not want to go back on that subject, but if the hon. Member for West Walthamstow (Mr. Crawfurd) will look into the figures he will find that the President of the Board of Education in the Coalition Government has a worse record than the present President of the Board of Education; he will find that the capital expenditure was lower during Mr. Fisher's administration than it is now.

Mr. SHEPHERD

Since education authorities have now authority to raise the school age to 15 years and that 400 have done so, will it be permissible to use that argument in the Debate to-night?

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

Hon. Members are perfectly entitled to discuss anything which can be done administratively, but not anything which requires legislation. They cannot discuss proposed legislation or suggest legislation.

Mr. COVE

My main purpose was to get an official announcement from the Liberal party as to whether they were prepared to raise the school age.

Mr. KINGSLEY GRIFFITH

It is here: Other steps to reduce or mitigate unemployment (1) raising the school age.

Mr. COVE

If the hon. Member will read further he will see that there is a reference to other documents. That is a general statement. I have looked through the Yellow Book and I cannot find that they are committed to the raising of the school age. If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) will make an official announcement to-night as leader of the party this Debate will have done a great deal of good. I think there is need for a re-statement of the policy of the Liberal party in order to make it perfectly definitely clear.

I want to raise the case of Warminster. I raised it last year. It is the case of the closing of a secondary school serving about 13,000 inhabitants. I should like to know whether the President of the Board is committed to the closing of this school? Is it too late to ask that the whole question should be reopened? I doubt whether there has ever been such a case within his administrative experience as that obtaining in Warminster He has adopted a most curious way of dealing with the situation. This is a school which is going to close, but instead of closing it at once the right hon. Gentleman is allowing it to die gradually. Children are allowed to remain in a dying school. The headmaster has retired, but the assistant headmaster is told to carry on with about £10 per year extra. Into this dying school 35 children have been brought who are to form the nucleus of a new school which is not to be a secondary school. Is it too late to ask that this policy should be revised. Has the President approved of it? Has he agreed with the authority that this school, which undoubtedly meets the need of about 35,000 inhabitants in a district where there is no other secondary school, should be closed? I want an assurance from him that this school will not be closed, but will still remain a secondary school, staffed for secondary purposes and carried on under secondary regulations.

The Conservative party dare not face the electors with the full facts of the administration of the Board before them. We are ready to meet them on the electoral platforms. We are ready to say that the normal rate of development in school buildings and the normal rate of reduction of classes has not been met by the administration. We are ready to say that the Board's policy of finance is a crippling policy, has thrown an ever-increasing burden on the rates, and has been a throwing off of financial responsibility from the Exchequer on to the ratepayers. It is a policy which will eventually cripple the educational service of the country, and will be resented and resisted by the electors in the next six weeks.

Duchess of ATHOLL

The rhetoric to which we are accustomed in these Debates from the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Cove) has been poured more lavishly than usual upon us in the last hour. The hon. Member is not accustomed to stint his words or his time.

Mr. COVE

May I ask the Noble Lady to refer to the time occupied by other speakers?

Duchess of ATHOLL

I was just going to try to bring the Committee back to the speech, not very much shorter But perhaps less rhetorical, with which the Debate was opened from the Liberal side. The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Mr. Harris) asked a question about the increased amount of the 7d. rate resulting from the increased assessment due to the Bating and Valuation Act of 1925, and he appeared to think that in this larger deduction from the grant calculation there was some danger to the finance of local education authorities. I would like to assure him that we have had no protests from local education authorities on the subject. After all, the local education authorities of this country know that there is a very open road to travel to the Board of Education, and they are accustomed to tread that road as freely and as often as they like, and I think not without hope of a friendly reception at the end of it. Therefore, if this had been causing widespread or serious anxiety, I am certain that the Board would have heard of it. I think it possible that local authorities may have taken a rather longer view of the question than has the hon. Member; they may have remembered that, when the de-rating proposals of the Government come into operation six months hence, that formula under which the product of a 7d. rate is deducted from the grant, will operate very much in their favour, and they may have hesitated therefore to draw the attention of the Board of Education to any inconvenience that the present year may bring them.

Then the hon. Gentleman went on to express anxiety as to the effect of our de-rating scheme generally on education. I would remind him of two things. The first is that it has been found pretty generally in rural areas, or found frequently, that farmers have not always been too ready to support increased expenditure on education. That is not surprising, because the burden of rates was felt severely by them. Is it not reasonable to suppose that if a very heavy burden has been removed from their shoulders, and if three-quarters of a heavy burden has also been removed from the shoulders of industrialists, we shall be left without any class of the community that feels as severely any rise in rates, as is at present the case? Secondly, I would remind the hon. Member of the very largely increased grants which are coming to county boroughs and county councils, and how those grants will come in greatest measure to the most distressed areas at present labouring under high rates. Therefore, I do not think there is any great cause for anxiety in regard to the pressure of rates in the near future.

The hon. Gentleman made light of the references in the Prime Minister's recent speeches to what we hope to do for the children under five years of age in a certain probable eventuality. He said, "Why have an inquiry? Will not that postpone for two or three years any action on this important matter?" The hon. Member quite forgot how very big the problem is. It is not merely a problem of trying to improve the environment and training of the child under five in the slum areas; it is also a problem, to which the Board's Chief Medical Officer has drawn attention, of doing what is possible to improve the health generally of the entrants to the elementary schools of the country. That is a very big question. Those two matters are being dealt with at present in some measure in four different ways. We have had for some time not only nursery schools but day nurseries. We have also had nursery classes for these small children in elementary schools. Some of the leading education authorities prefer these. Last, but not least, as affecting the general health of all the children under five, we have a child welfare service.

Those are four agencies for dealing with what is not only an important problem, but a two-fold problem. Is it not reasonable that we should have a little fuller time for investigation into the best methods of dealing with this two-fold problem, rather than commit ourselves at once to dealing with it in one particular way? We have further to remember that the Board's Chief Medical Officer has put on paper proposals for some new type of organisation which would combine some of the best features of the nursery schools and the day nurseries. Therefore, it seems to me that the Government's proposal for an inquiry before definite commitment as to the particular line of procedure is thoroughly justified, and the Prime Minister promised that the inquiry would be immediate.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the question of dental treatment. The results of dental inspection are so far disappointing. At the same time, there has been more inspection and treatment than I think the hon. Member mentioned. We had 635,000 more inspections between 1924 and 1927 and 280,000 more treatments during that period. But of course the treatments lag sadly behind the inspections; personally, I shall be very glad if the fact that attention has been drawn to this matter brings to the notice of local authorities and parents the importance of seeing that children with defective teeth are attended to by a dentist. The next question that the hon. Gentleman referred to was that of down grading due to reorganisation schemes. No decision on this question has been taken by the Board in the last four and a half years. The decision to which he referred was given, I understand, by a previous administration. Under the last Burnham Agreement, the Board has provided for an increased margin to meet cases of that kind. But we have to remember that this is largely what we call at the Board "a Burnham question," for discussion between the two sides on the Burnham Committee, and it is not easy for me to say much on the matter.

Mr. HARRIS

It would give great satisfaction to hundreds of teachers who are affected if the Noble Lady could give an assurance that there would be an early meeting of the Burnham Committee to consider this pressing question.

Duchess of ATHOLL

It does not rest with the Board to summon the Burnham Committee. That can be done at any time by either side. If either side has a question to bring up, the procedure is open to it. The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of reorganisation, with which I shall deal later. As to technical buildings, he told us how much better the German buildings are than many of ours. There is no question that a great many of our technical buildings require improvement, but we have in the last four years approved an expenditure on the improving or rebuilding of technical buildings just about double what was approved in the preceding five years. Therefore, I do not think it can be said that the Board has shown itself unmindful of the importance of better housing for much of our technical instruction. It is not too much to say that in this matter of building almost more than anything else we have been, in the hon. Member's own words, "getting on with the work."

The hon. Member expressed a desire to see all pupils in the country attending one school. That may be an aim with which many of us sympathise, but it is a very much bigger question than hon. Members of the Liberal and Labour party sometimes remember. It is not merely a question of parents who may wish to send their children to well-known residential schools with a long and old tradition and rather high fees. There are many parents who cannot possibly afford to send their children to a school of that kind, but who will pay the fee necessary to send a child to some quite unknown private day school rather than to some free or lower feed, grant-aided or provided secondary school. They have the idea that it is a rather superior thing to do. That is one of the difficulties with which many of our grant-aided secondary schools have to contend. During the last four years, when visiting secondary schools, I cannot say how often it has been my fate to have it said to me, "We are so glad that you should come here and say a word for the work which we are doing in this school, because we have to meet the competition of so many inefficient private schools." It is not by any means as simple a question as hon. Members opposite indicate, and it is by no means a question which is confined to one particular section of the community.

I pass to the speech of my predecessor the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Morgan Jones). He devoted some time to the statement upon policy made by the Prime Minister in the summer of 1924. I can only say that it was of very great interest and a very great pleasure to me, as I heard the hon. Member quoting that statement, to notice how in every respect we have been working for the fulfilment of the pledges then given and how much we have accomplished towards that end. I was particularly interested, because the statement closed with a promise to endeavour to co-ordinate primary, secondary, and technical instruction, and, I think university instruction, which was quite obviously leading up to the policy developed at greater length by the President of the Board of Education this afternoon.

Then the hon. Member turned to the question of the "black list." He was kind enough to congratulate us on having dealt with about 35 per cent. of that notorious list, but he expressed great shame that there were nearly 2,000 buildings still on that list. I can only say to him that if he saw the tables to which I have access, showing year by year the amount of capital expenditure on new buildings, he would have no doubt as to the amount of attention which is being devoted to this subject, or as to the extent of the liabilities which the Board has assumed in sanctioning expenditure on this account. Over the whole range of capital expenditure we have approved, in the last four years about three and a-half times the amount that was approved in the four years 1920–24. In think those figures speak for themselves, and, of course, in that great total of £25,000,000 to which my right hon. Friend referred earlier, though there is a substantial amount for secondary and technical schools, yet the vast majority is for the improvement or replacement—or for the building in new areas—of elementary schools. On the question of staffing, I understood the hon. Member to say that he wanted to see more teachers in order to prevent overcrowding, but I can assure him that the question of overcrowding does not depend in these days on the number of teachers, but on the number of rooms in school premises.

Mr. MORGAN JONES

Perhaps my language was rather loose, but I was thinking of overcrowding in the classes in the sense of having too many pupils in a class.

Duchess of ATHOLL

In every crowded school there comes a moment at which you cannot reduce more classes, because you have not another room in which to accommodate your pupils, and that is the position which, in fact, these crowded schools have reached during the last few years, and therefore, as was rightly said by an hon. Member—I think it was by the hon. Member for Welling-borough, and, if so, I congratulate him—progress in the last four years has depended first and foremost on the provision of more accommodation. If the hon. Member had been here at the beginning of the Debate, he would have heard my right hon. Friend tell the Committee that £25,000,000 of capital expenditure had been sanctioned, which is about three and a-half times the amount sanctioned in the four years 1920–24. I understand my right hon. Friend gave the figures for five years, and therefore I am contrasting like with like—a four-year period with a four-year period—but, whichever way you take it, I submit that we have nothing to fear when judged by the acid test which the hon. Member himself would apply.

Mr. COVE

What about the loan charges and the cost per head?

Duchess of ATHOLL

There is, fortunately, in regard to loan charges, as in regard to other things, a happy day when finally they come to an end. That was the case with a good many of these Loan charges two or three years ago.

Mr. COVE

And so you give no more money.

Duchess of ATHOLL

The figure in regard to loan charges is 13s. 1d.—

Mr. COVE

That is an estimate.

Duchess of ATHOLL

And are we not discussing the Estimates of the Board of Education?

Mr. COVE

But you are not comparing like with like now.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I am afraid we are not always able to do that when discussing the Estimates of Government Departments, but the figures show that the position of two or three years ago in this respect was due to the number of loan charges which expired about that time. If I may turn again to the question of staffing, I think the hon. Member for Caerphilly is really giving himself unnecessary anxiety on the point. Uncertificated teachers now include teachers of practical instruction which they formerly did not, and therefore it is not possible to compare exactly the figures of to-day with those of former periods, but, even so, there is a reduction of 500.

Mr. JONES

And that is over 318 authorities—that is two per authority.

Duchess of ATHOLL

Yes, but over the whole range of authorities there has been a very marked increase of certificated teachers, and, therefore, not only the actual number, but the proportion of uncertificated teachers is substantially less. The same thing applies, but in an even greater degree, to the supplementary teachers. There is an actual decline in the number of these teachers of 1,600 during the last two years, and when, on the other hand, I tell the Committee that in these four years there has been an increase of over 6,500 in the number of certificated teachers employed in this country, it will be recognised what a very real improvement has been made in the condition of staffing. I was also asked a question about big classes, and great concern was expressed by the hon. Member for Caerphilly at the fact that we have some 16,000 classes of over 50 children. I agree that it is a matter of concern that we should still have 16,000 classes of that size, but, when the hon. Member for Caerphilly went out of office, the number of these classes was 25,000, and therefore in 4½ years we have effected a reduction of about one-third in the number of these classes.

Mr. JONES

The Noble Lady will perhaps appreciate the fact that, in the course of my remarks, I made it abundantly clear that I had used every effort to obtain the figures for 1925–1926 but could not do so, because of the change in the nature of the reports. If the Noble Lady says that that is the figure I must accept her statement.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I find that it was the figure in 1924, when the Labour Government came into office, and not when they were leaving office. I am sorry if I misstated the period, but, broadly speaking, these four years have seen a substantial decrease in the number of classes over 50. Then I would like to reassure the hon. Member for Welling-borough on the point which he raised in regard to the classes for children under 11. I think he told the Committee that while there had been a reduction in the number of large classes in the case of children over 11, there had been no such reduction in regard to the children under 11. Indeed, I am not sure that he did not say that there had been an increase.

Mr. COVE

There are 5,000 classes of 40 or more, above the number existing three or four years ago.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I am speaking for the moment of classes over 50, and in those classes in the last year there has been a reduction of over 4,000 altogether, of which more than 2,000 are classes for children under 11. These classes are to-day receiving the large number of children who were born in the year 1920. They are making a bulge in the size of the classes.

Mr. COVE

You must not take credit for the classes of over 11.

8.0 p.m.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I think what I have said in a sufficient answer to the Hon. Member. There has been a decrease of over 2,000 in classes of over 50 for these children of under 11. I admit that the figures showed a slight set-back last year, due to the fact that the 1920 children were passing up the junior schools, but that set-back has now been overcome. The hon. Member for Caerphilly, in his reference to the Prime Minister's speech, said in effect, that the pledges given at the last General Election had not been fulfilled. I do not see how it is possible to take up that attitude if it is realised that we have made a reduction of one-third in the number of these large classes, that we have sanctioned the tremendous programme of building expenditure which has been described, and if hon. Members also remember the figure given by me earlier in the Debate as to the increase of secondary school places. I gave figures to the Committee, to the effect that there had been an increase of about 32,000 in the places in grant-aided secondary schools—that is to say, an increase of 10 per cent.—and there has been an increase of 22 per cent. in the number of free places in those schools. Not only, therefore, have we substantially added to secondary school accommodation, but we have also much more than proportionately increased the number of free places. We have been working steadily on the programme which the hon. Member for Caerphilly quoted, and have been providing more opportunities for the older children in those schools to get to secondary schools, central schools, or improved senior schools. It seemed to me, therefore, quite irrelevant for the hon. Member for Caerphilly to quote the figures for 1926 only as he did in regard to secondary school pupils. He devoted some time to the fact that the figures did not show so much advance in 1926 as they do to-day. Really, the Government must be judged on the record of the four and a half years in which my right hon. Friend has been responsible for his administration. It is irrelevant to go back and pick out a particular year and say that there was no progress in that year, and ignore the fact that, over a series of years, on the whole, there has been this very substantial improvement that I have mentioned.

Mr. JONES

The Noble Lady overlooks the fact that in the first year of her administration she got the benefit of the work of the previous administration. The boom that we tried to create in regard to the position of greater secondary school accommodation made itself manifest first in the year 1925.

Duchess of ATHOLL

That is quite possible, but it is not what is in question to-day. Hon. Members have been trying to make out that we have been doing nothing in these four and a half years, and I say it is impossible to maintain that position in view of the figures that I have just given. The hon. Member read an extract from the speech of the Prime Minister at Drury Lane. The Prime Minister shows that he recognises that we are not at the end of our pledges, because he repeats them all, with further pledges as to the improved opportunities for higher education which we hope to give by a progressive policy of reorganisation and by legislative changes which may be necessary to make that reorganisation more effective and to expedite it.

I turn to the question put to me by the hon. Member for the University of Wales (Mr. E. Evans). He first complained that the full provisions of the Education Act of 1918 had not been carried out. He must, however, realise that it was the Government, of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was the head, that said it was not possible at present to put those new Clauses into operation. Then the hon. Member accused us of having cut down the programmes of local education authorities.

Mr. EVANS

I admit that I made a mistake in what I said in regard to the three-year programmes being cut down by the Noble Lady. I had in mind the policy of a particular Circular. I think the Noble Lady was right in her interruption, and I ought to acknowledge that frankly.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I am much obliged to the hon. Member for his frank admission. He further asked me whether the Board had formed any estimate as to how long the reorganisation scheme would take. That is a question that no Government Department could be expected to answer, because, obviously, the speed with which a scheme of that kind is carried out does not depend only on the desires and activities of the Board. It is impossible to give a definite reply to the question further than to say that the Board have been consistently pressing the scheme of reorganisation on local authorities since the spring of 1925. They have further impressed on them the necessity for reorganisation in circulars sent out last year, and they are hoping to make proposals designed to facilitate and carry through further large measures of re organisation.

The hon. Member asked what effect reorganisation was having, or was likely to have, on the question of specialist teachers. I am very glad to be able to answer that at once. If he will visit any of the reorganised schools he will find that there has been an immediate effect. In these newly organised senior schools, or central schools, the tendency is for the teachers to teach a few subjects with which they are specially cognisant rather than to take all subjects, as teachers in the elementary schools so often have to do. Only yesterday I visited some reorganised schools and found that the teachers were limited to two or three subjects, and it was impressed on me what a tremendous gain that was proving both to the teacher and to the pupil.

Finally, the hon. Member asked me at what time we hoped to raise the school age. I can only say that the policy of the Government is to provide the facilities, through reorganisation and improved buildings, which will gradually lead to more children staying at school, without naming a date at which there shall be universal compulsion. When I visited these reorganised schools yesterday, one of the first things I was told was what I have just said about the greater number of teachers who specialised in certain subjects. The next was the effect of reorganisation in keeping children longer at school. In their third year, they are given a certain option, and being allowed to exercise that option, naturally led to greater interest in their work. They were getting more advanced instruction in various subjects, and that led to their staying at school longer. I have already referred to what the hon. Member for Wellingborough said about capital expenditure. I will only add that when he compared what he believed to be our record on capital expenditure with pre-War expenditure—I do not really think he had the figures in his mind—

Mr. COVE

I quoted from your memorandum.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I think that describes the burden of his complaint. He said it was clear the Board had not been building at the normal rate of expansion. Will he remind himself that in those years before the War the population, and consequently the school population, was increasing at a rate at which it has not been increasing in the past few years. We have been carrying out this immense programme of approval of capital expenditure, in spite of the fact that we are living in days when the school population is either stationary or only very slightly increasing. The conditions therefore are quite different. School building was necessary in the years before the War, if only to provide for the steady increase in the school population. When new school buildings are erected to-day, it is a definite gain, because it means that it is not merely done to meet an increase in the school population.

Mr. BROAD

Has the Noble Lady given consideration to the fact that we had for 10 years practically no building operation, between 1914 and 1924? Those arrears have to be overtaken.

Duchess of ATHOLL

Of course, that is one of the chief reasons why we have embarked on this great programme of capital expenditure. That is what amazed me when I heard the hon. Member for Wellingborough actually declare that our record of building expenditure was less than the programme of the War years. I think he excelled himself in that statement. As the hon. Member made a detailed comparison with the years before the War, I will say that if the Liberal Government in those three or four years had tackled the question of defective school premises in as courageous a manner as my Noble Friend has tackled it, we should not have had such heavy arrears to-day.

Mr. COVE

What about higher education?

Duchess of ATHOLL

The hon. Member knows as well as I do that no change of that kind could be brought about without legislation, and we cannot discuss that now. Then he spoke of the raising of the school age as the foundation stone of the Hadow policy. He seems to me to be quite incapable of realising the full implications of that policy. It consists in the first place of the break at 11, a policy upon which we were already acting. It further consists in grouping of the children over 11, in order to ensure better grading, which should mean the provision of a greater variety of types of course to suit varying types of ability, and the provision of the buildings in which these senior or central schools can be suitably and well housed.

When we have got the children of the country grouped together in suitable schools, with proper equipment, and the children have the opportunity to exercise the options I have already mentioned, then will be the time to talk about any compulsory raising of the school age. It may well be that there will be such a general recognition of the benefits of the schools that no compulsion will be necessary. That would be, by general consent, the best solution of all. It is childish, in my view, to talk about raising the school age when we know that in so many areas the only result would be to cram more children into crowded classes and old buildings, buildings deficient in equipment, and where the grading that is so desirable at the adolescent stage cannot be carried out. Let the raising of the school age, voluntarily or compulsorily, be the coping stone, but not the foundation stone.

The Government, in their educational record, do not ask to be judged by words, or promises, or theories, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. We ask to be judged by our deeds, not only by the extent to which we have been able to fulfil the pledges given by the Prime Minister prior to the last General Election, but also by the measure in which we have been able to set on foot and bring to the notice of the local education authorities and of the country the need for a re-organisation of our elementary schools, a re-organisation which offers us a new hope of a higher and a better education for all the children of this country than has yet been within the reach of many of them. Rome was not built in a day. It is ludicrous to suggest that 25,000 large classes could be swept away in four and a half years, when we know how many other calls there have been on the attention of the local authorities, but we do submit that we have made very substantial headway in the fulfilment of the pledges given, and the Prime Minister has pledged himself anew to continue the working out of those pledges. We shall, therefore, submit our record to the electors within a few weeks with the clearest of consciences, and in the hope and the confidence that that record will be approved by the electors of this country.

Lord E. PERCY

In view of an arrangement which, I think, has been come to, I beg to ask the leave of the Committee to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.