CLAUSE 103.— (Interpretation.) (Hansard, 4 April 1944)

§ Mr. Ede
I beg to move, in page 71, line 29, at the end, to insert: and, unless the context otherwise requires, references in this Act to 'managers' or 'governors' shall, in relation to any func- 1937 tion thereby conferred or imposed exclusively on foundation managers or foundation governors be construed as references to such managers or governors. This will enable foundation managers or governors where they, in respect of their limited functions, have a dispute with the local education authority, to take that dispute to the Minister if they are dissatisfied with the answer they get from the local education authority. It is obviously clear that, as these people have some substantial responsibilities to shoulder, which may on occasion result in a dispute with the local education authority, they should be able to have the same tribunal to deal with their disputes as other bodies of managers and governors.

§ Mr. Ede
I beg to move, in page 72, line 10, at the end, to insert: and in relation to the area of any joint educational board constituted under Part I of the First Schedule to this Act a local government elector for the area of any council by whom members are appointed to the Board shad be deemed to he a local government elector for the area of the authority. Where a joint board is established, it is clear that there should be a right for every local government elector to exercise, in respect of that board, the same rights with regard to the inspection of minutes that he would have had had the joint education board not been set up and he had remained under the county council or the county borough council.

§ Mr. Ede
I beg to move, in page 73, line 35, after "means," to insert: an institution for providing primary or secondary education or both primary and secondary education being. This revised definition is due to some alterations we made on the earlier Clauses of the Bill.

§ Mr. Ede
I beg to move, in page 74, line 21,after "of," to insert "maintaining."
If hon. Members will allow me to read the paragraph as it will be when amended I think they will see the reason. (a) A school or young people's college shall be deemed to be maintained by a local education authority if the authority are responsible for all the expenses of maintaining the school or college.… 1938 Quite clearly, "maintaining" is the proper word to insert there.

§ Mr. Ede
I beg to move, in page 74, line 35, at the end, to insert: (3) For the purposes of this Act expenses in discharging any liability incurred by any person other than a local education authority in connection with the establishment of au auxiliary school in respect of rent mortgage interest or the repayment of any loan shall not be deemed to be expenses of maintaining the school. Quite clearly, one has to distinguish, where a school becomes liable for support by the local education authority, whether it was established out of a sum of money that was paid down when the establishment took place, or whether it was established out of a loan which is continuing, and it would clearly be wrong in the second case that the capital charges on the establishment of the school should be borne by the local education authority, and that no part of the capital charge should be borne in the first case. This Amendment makes it quite clear that those sums incurred in establishing the school shall not fall upon the local education authority.

§ Mr. Ede
I beg to move, in page 75, line 4, at the end, to insert: (5) Any person who before the commencement of Part II of this Act had attained an age at which his parent had ceased to be under any obligation imposed under section forty-six of the Education Act, 1921, shall be deemed to be over compulsory school age, and any person who after the said date ceases to be of compulsory school age shall not, in the event of any subsequent change in the upper limit of the compulsory school age, again become a person of compulsory school age. This is the usual Amendment to include in an Education Bill where the school-leaving age is raised. It is a purely transitory provision, and it means that a child who has left school before the age is raised and who might be brought back to school is exempt. It does not apply to more than one or two years, and in the case of young people's colleges it does not apply to more than three years.

§ Mr. Alexander Walkden (Bristol, South)
May I ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether this prohibits youngsters above the present maximum age from entering voluntarily into further education at a later date when the new arrangements are put into operation?

§ Mr. Ede
It does not prevent them doing it voluntarily, but it avoids compulsion, and there are certain disciplinary problems involved which make it highly undesirable that compulsion should be applied in this strictly limited way.

§ Sir. J. Lamb
I would like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary a question. Will it be necessary in all cases that a committee should be set up under the Seventh Schedule, or, where the Minister agrees with the syllabus already in existence and accepted by all parties, can that syllabus be continued without the setting up of a committee?

§ Mr. Ede
This raises a somewhat difficult and intricate point. Most of the agreed syllabuses now in use have, in the main, themselves provided for the old elementary school leaving age of 14. This Bill requires instruction to be given not merely in primary, but in secondary schools, and that includes pupils up to 18 or 19 years of age. Clearly, most of the existing agreed syllabuses will need substantial revision if they are to be made suitable for that wider age range. Therefore, it will be necessary for them to receive some consideration, but I would not have thought that it would be outside the terms of the Bill if a local education authority called its committee together, and they decided that, rather than go through the processes of constructing their own syllabus, they were prepared to accept one of the existing syllabuses which are known to have some standing, such as the Cambridge syllabus. I think myself that would be a sufficient discharge of their efforts, but I must call attention to the fact that none of the syllabuses, as far as I know—and I have examined all of them—has been designed for dealing with the school age of the secondary school.

§ Sir J. Lamb
I am much obliged to my hon. Friend for his explanation, and I should have assumed that a syllabus accepted by the Minister would conform to the requirements.

§ Colonel Sir John Shute (Liverpool Exchange)
May I ask the Parliamentary Secretary if he will be good enough to 1940 elucidate the meaning of the term "nature" in the Clause, where it says "shall give particulars of the nature of the education"? Some of my friends have written to me to say that the meaning of those words is not clear, and the object of an Amendment which I and my hon. Friends had on the Paper was to try to make it clear that the term "nature" should be construed as meaning "all or any of the following types of education, namely, grammar, modern and technical."

§ Mr. Ede
I do not dissent from the view which the hon. and gallant Member expressed as to the meaning of the term "nature," but I would point out that it does not by any means follow that schools will be exclusively of one of the types he has mentioned. In fact, I hope that, with the steady development of the education service, more and more various types of education will be given inside one establishment.