EDUCATION

HC Deb 31 July 1947 vol 441 cc685-743

6.15 p.m.

Mr. Lindsay

We observe that even when we do get started we are apt to be interrupted. The point I was on was that the glory of English education was the development of the individual character of local authorities. I would ask my right hon. Friend to use all his influence to see that there is no further interruption than is absolutely necessary in the free administration of education by local authorities. He will remember that, not very long ago, it was necessary to get the permission of His Majesty's inspector in order to carry on out-of-school activities. That has been abolished. There were also circulars dealing with the keeping of school registers. Those have been abolished. Now, with the meals in schools, the canteens, and the H.O.R.S.A. campaign, and 12 priority officers established for the first time, there is a danger that we shall have even slower administration. Some of my friends in the administration are asking themselves questions. Their staffs have doubled or trebled. Thank heaven, we have now got back to nearly 500 inspectors. Presumably, they will now be able to get on with their proper job and not be semi-administrative. The Ministry is now senior partner. The first Section of the Act reads: local authorities under his direction and control. That is brand new. The danger is a very serious one that we may be converting local education authorities into agents of a centralised form of education.

The second point I want to make concerns teachers in primary and grammar schools. I agree that the most important educational even since the war is the establishment of the 50 emergency training colleges. In fact, I am compelled to ask what it is that the men there have got. Some of them are ex-policemen. Fifty of them are ex-prisoners of war. Apart from the fact that they' are older or maturer and in many cases married—the average age is about 30—what have they got? It is easy to decry the other teachers. I would do no such thing, but these men have brought a fresh inspiration into a very tired profession. I saw some of these men in Manchester the other day. Some of them have been silversmiths and others belong to all kinds of skilled trades. They were making equipment to take into the schools because the equipment was no longer available from the Ministry. They were literally inventing a new teaching method in some cases. Can we carry over into peace this principle? Should not we make entry into and exit from the teaching profession more flexible? Could we not make it possible for the teachers who want to get out at 50 to do so with a pension proportionate to their years?

Something important is being discovered in those emergency training colleges. It would be very valuable if careful records could be kept of the successful teachers. It is a very remarkable improvisation. In addition, I would pay tribute to the better administration of further education and training grants. I am glad that my right hon. Friend has had such letters as he read out. I am glad that the whole grant question has been settled. It means that an enormous amount of work must have been done to get this happy conclusion. I know how hard the officials have worked When we come to the 40,000 out of the 100,000 who have been accepted, it means that 60,000 have gone back to other walks of life. Am I right in saying that 10,000 or more are still waiting?

The Minister of Works (Mr. Key)

Fourteen thousand.

Mr. Lindsay

It is 14,000? Ought we to keep ex-Service people waiting all this time? We have not been very practical planners about this question. Every-body was surprised at the numbers who applied and I do not wish to be unfair.

I only utter this warning. The planning of teachers has got to be done a very great many years ahead. In the case of the infant and junior schools, there is something unsatisfactory when we have a completely wrong proportion of men to women. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Butler) that this very large supply of teachers can be used. I would like to press this point again. Will my right hon. Friend advance the overseas teaching service plan? This is a question of administration. I met a man on the British Council in Italy three or four months ago. He had a first-class knowledge of Italian and Swedish education. Why cannot he come back into the teaching profession? Men working with John Trevelyan, organiser of education for British children in Germany, are first-class men compared with the teaching service of the Control Commission, because the people in the former service know their future: they have been seconded and retain their pensions. It should be the same for the Services, the Colonial Service and an organised Overseas Teaching Service. I believe there is an enormous case for keeping these people within the ambit of the teaching profession, a 5 per cent. extra to those actually teaching in the primary and secondary schools of the country, to help man the Colonial Service, the overseas teaching service, and so on.

The Minister's job is two-fold—imaginative administration and inspiration. He is no longer in the legislative queue. He is in the building queue where he has, I hope, a fairly good place. When it comes to the other teachers of the grammar schools, I am not satisfied. I am satisfied with what he said about grammar schools, but I would point out that when the Act was going through some of us asked what would happen to the independent schools. I warned the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden about that. There were 230 direct grant schools. Thirty-five have gone independent and 170 are still direct grant. The part of the Act relating to the inspection of independent schools has not been brought into force. The effect at the moment is that more scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge are achieved by the direct grant and independent schools than by the grammar schools. This is a very serious question.

Of course the primary schools are the most important. That is where class division starts. Hon. Gentlemen who send their children to a preparatory school on the seashore where there are 12 children to one master have to remember that a large number of children are now 50 in a class. It is here that the real problem of class division starts and it will not be cured by tampering with secondary education. These schools have produced the scholars, scientists and administrators. One has only to look at the Dictionary of National Biography or "The Times" obituary columns to see the numbers of distinguished men who have passed through the grammar schools to the universities. They are the schools of the poor boys of this country. I will not cry "Wolf "or as my hon. Friend called it, "stinking fish." We must somehow restore confidence.

It is time that we brought back into the secondary teaching profession the men who are going out. Some of them are going into administration because administration is better paid than teaching. Some are going to the inspectorate. That will stop. Some are going out of the profession altogether. The figures are far too eloquent. It is no good saying, as I have seen in some parts of the Press: Are we going to pay according to the scarcity value? If so, why not pay women infant teachers much higher wages? That is not a logical argument. The point is that we have helped to create conditions where it is not possible for a man who has the responsibility of a family to live. Relatively and absolutely, his position has deteriorated. Hon. Members on the other side of the Committee have made much more eloquent arguments about this to me privately and have written to the Minister. The salary facts are well known, whether in comparison with local authority servants, scientific civil servants or the ordinary civil servants. I hope that the infamous merger Clause will be abolished. I will not talk about the Burnham scale today, although I hope it will be considerably amended.

It is all very well for the Minister to say that we must not say anything to bring pressure to bear. I suppose he disapproved of the letters in "The Times." It is just as well that people can still write letters to any newspaper even when discussions are going on. It is a very old method of publicity. I do not say that it should not be done. If the boot were on the other foot, a lot of people would be writing to the newspapers. It is perfectly all right. It makes for a very happy relationship. The facts are very clear. For a variety of reasons, numbers of men are leaving the grammar schools. On the other hand, I do not think that the figures of those who are going into the universities show signs of a falling off at the moment. It is a hopeful sign for the future.

When the Act was going through it secured very wide approval in this House. At any rate, a number of us felt that secondary education for all would be ushered in in a way which meant the retaining of standards. I have been an advocate of secondary education for all for 25 years. I wrote a book about it 21 years ago, and I have devoted a great deal of time to it. I do not want to be accused of any false values on this. There is a snobbery still existing in parts of the grammar school world but there is something else much more serious. The senior schools and the junior technical schools of this country were building up their character. There was nothing wrong. One can go to East Suffolk today and see the results of it—all due to the genius of one of His Majesty's Inspectors, thirty years ago.

I welcome the Ministry's latest circular, No. 144. It is a generous circular as well as being much more careful in defining terms. I think that circular will be accepted throughout the teaching profession. It not only defines the schools but it indicates that the Ministry ask for the widest possible experiment. I should like to see one or two good examples of the multilateral school in this country. None exists in spite of what my right hon. Friend says. There is no sanction for such a school from any experience I have of Europe. The majority of the boys in America do not go to multilateral schools or to schools of over 500, which is not generally known, and therefore there is no great experience to say that this is the only method. I rejoiced to see that the other night at the Regent Street Polytechnic, the teachers and apparently the parents of the Middlesex secondary schools, had a protest meeting against the new development plan for Middlesex. That shows that there is still the ferment in education which helped to produce the 1944 Act.

If we can keep that spirit alive we need not worry too much about the particular nostrums and dogmas which some people have at this moment. I believe we are all striving for the same thing, to see the widest variety possible of secondary education in this country with complete equality of opportunity, especially in the teaching world, which is where the quality ought to be. The teaching profession will achieve this unity not by having it forced on them, but by growth. I believe that the over-organisation of our education is a very real danger at present. The schools of this country are local, community growths in many cases and, because they have that spirit in them, you cannot organise them from Whitehall or even from the large municipalities and local education authorities. Finally, I would congratulate my right hon. Friend. I am glad to see him steering education at present, and some of us in the House will give him every possible encouragement.

6.31 p.m.

Mr. George Thomas (Cardiff, Central)

I join with the hon. Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. Lindsay) in congratulating the Minister both on his performance this afternoon and on his work at the Ministry. It is a grand thing when a Minister of Education is one who has the warm support of those engaged in the service of education, and the present Minister has certainly succeeded in gaining that support. I thought this afternoon, when he offered congratulations to the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler), that he was being unduly modest about himself. The right hon. Gentleman has rendered signal service in the field of education but there was almost a stampede in this House about the emergency training scheme, and that was a year after the right hon. Gentleman had left the Ministry. I said a year ago, and I suggest again tonight, that there was little left but a skeleton or a promise, and the hard work of making the Education Act real has been done by the team who are now at the Ministry of Education.

It would be as well for the Committee to remember tonight that education is a service in which the human factor counts almost more than it does anywhere else. Therefore, I think it is a little strange that both the Minister and the right hon. Gentleman, while paying tribute in their speeches to everybody in the Department, paid no tribute to the teaching profession. I was waiting for it, because we are accustomed to getting it, and we pass our own comments afterwards.

I would remind the Committee that conditions in the schools have not been easy for the last ten years. I suppose they have never been easy in the schools of the poor, or of the great majority in this country—the schools to which the hon. Member for the Combined English Universities referred, the former elementary schools. However, in the last few years it has been exceptionally difficult. The "blitz" led to overcrowding, to teachers and classes having to try to carry on the education service in conditions which are well nigh intolerable in some places. We have at the same time as the large classes, which are inevitable, a lack of equipment, particularly in the primary schools, and a shortage of books. All these things have added to the strain on the teaching profession, and above all, the introduction of school meals on a large scale has added a burden to the profession which has been faced in a remarkable way.

I believe that those of us in this Committee, and the country ought to be extremely grateful to the teaching profession for the way it has rendered service in connection with school meals, and I believe the Ministry needs to keep a sense of urgency about the conditions in which those meals are given in the schools. There must be implementation of the promise that conditions would be improved, that helpers would be provided and that, as soon as possible, meals would not have to be taken in the same classroom where, later in the day, lessons have to be given. There are few things more annoying for a schoolmaster, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) will say, for a schoolmistress, than to have the smell of the meal pervading the classroom all the afternoon. It tends to upset the whole business and creates a bad atmosphere.

In the short time I propose to occupy, I shall deal with two issues of great importance. The first is of general importance—the supply and training of teachers. My right hon. Friend this afternoon re- minded us that he was not afraid that he would not have enough teachers to implement the Education Act, 1944, but there is at present in the infant and junior schools of this country a real crisis in staffing by women teachers. The infants' schools are suffering particularly, and it is rather curious that on 23rd June this year there were 2,500 women applicants for training in our two-year colleges who could not be accepted, not because of any lack of qualification, but simply because the colleges are already over-crowded. It would be serious if these women were lost to the profession.

Last year 1,000 young women failed to obtain entrance into our training colleges, and the Committee ought to be made aware, furthermore, that in spite of the ban which the Ministry so wisely lifted on the employment of married women teachers, there is still reluctance on the part of some authorities to employ married women teachers. Those authorities have prided themselves in the past that they are progressive. Some, I regret to say, are in the industrial parts and the valleys of South Wales. On this matter they are particularly reactionary if they are not prepared to help the Ministry and the cause of education at this time. The provision of accommodation for the training of women teachers must be increased considerably, but I am very much alarmed about the tendency to say, "Less men." The right hon. Gentleman opposite did not quite say that, but he almost said it. He drew attention to the fact that we have been training four men to one woman under the emergency training scheme, but the scheme is very-young and we have been training teachers for many years, and the balance has been very much the other way for a long time. The right hon. Gentleman should have been the first to see to it.

Mr. R. A. Butler

I took the trouble to say that we should need all the men, and a great many more.

Mr. Thomas

I know that the right hon. Gentleman slipped in that statement in the middle of an argument which seemed to suggest that we should cut down the number of men.

Mr. Butler

In my original speech, as prepared by myself, that was a cardinal point which I wished to make.

Mr. Thomas

I have been told that stonewallers always get the best in the end. The right hon. Gentleman may have prepared notes, but I know the impression left on me was not the statement which the right hon. Gentleman has now made. Recently the secretary to the association of education authorities of England and Wales declared that in 1952 there would be a surplus of roughly 11,000 men teachers. I rejoiced this afternoon when the Minister made it clear that there is going to be employment for all those who are in training now, and who have been accepted for training in the emergency training scheme. I take it that the Parliamentary Secretary, who is to reply, will confirm that that promise is binding for all those who are accepted for training, but who have not yet entered college. The Minister promised this afternoon that he would see that the needs of infants' schools were brought before students in the grammar schools of the country. I think he made that promise.

Mrs. Leah Manning (Epping)

He should have done.

Mr. Thomas

If he did not, he should have done so, and I trust the Parliamentary Secretary will be prepared to say in his reply that this will be done.

In conclusion, I wish to speak about a very important issue. It is about what the Ministry of Education is doing for the Principality of Wales. The Ministry has set up a working party to consider whether it is possible to have a joint education committee for the whole of the Principality of Wales. Wales is fortunate in that the Parliamentary Secretary has graced that working party by his chairmanship. There is an opportunity given to the people of Wales by the present Ministry which is unequalled by anything offered to Wales by this House in the past. For the first time in the history of the Principality, Whitehall recognises that the culture of Wales is something which ought to be acknowledged on a national scale. We appreciated the circulars which were issued when the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden was the President of the Board of Education, and he must not be too sensitive about what I say. But this is not advice, it is something practical which is being done.

For the first time we have a definite step forward by the Ministry giving to the Principality the opportunity to organise itself on a national basis. Too often in the past we have spoiled ourselves in Wales by the North watching the South, just as I understand the North watches the South in England. We have had our local rivalries and jealousies. On occasion they have led to an impetus in education, but very often they have worked against it. I am hopeful that the work of the Minister, and in this direction in particular, the work of the Parliamentary Secretary, will be crowned with success. I feel that that tribute is due to the Ministry of Education for being so progressively minded in connection with the Principality. I assure the Parliamentary Secretary that as long as he realises the need for giving to Welsh people an opportunity to develop their culture, and contribute to the life of the United Kingdom, so long will he be helping to break down a stupid nationalism which the mass of our people resent.

6.45 p.m.

Professor Gruffydd (University of Wales)

It is not often that two Welshmen agree, but I am very glad on this occasion to follow the hon. Member for Central Cardiff (Mr. G. Thomas) in his tribute to the work of the Ministry. I would like to add, however, that there is the Welsh Department of the Board of Education and that for the last 20 or 25 years it has been doing signal work for the Principality. Indeed, I go so far as to say that there is a general impression in Wales that we shall get a very much squarer deal on the national plane from Whitehall through the Ministry of Education than from our own local authorities, or from a national board of education of our own. I come to another matter which I must now get out of the way. I criticised the appointment of the present Minister of Education. Today I am as eager to say that I was wrong in that criticism as I then was in thinking I was right. I have been completely won over by the very charming and modest speech which he made today, although I had already persuaded myself, having listened to men who knew better than I, that I had been wrong, and I am very glad to make this apology.

Mr. Chetwynd (Stockton-on-Tees)

Will the hon. Member write another letter to "The Times" saying that?

Professor Gruffydd

I understand, Mr. Beaumont, that you will allow this Debate to range over the whole field of educational theory and practice as far as the Ministry of Education is responsible for them, and I wish, therefore, to take this unique opportunity of making a few unfashionable remarks, and to invite if necessary the usual accusation of pedantry. After all, I have been a teacher for more than 40 years, and I have for many years acted as an additional inspector of schools of all grades, primary, secondary, and technical. If speaking as a practical teacher is the same thing as talking like a pedant, I cannot help it. It may be a temptation for hon. Members on this side of the Committee to use the present difficulties in educational administration as another stick for the backs of the Government, but I assure the Committee that I am fully aware of the burdens which the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary have to shoulder.

In passing I say that within the limitations imposed on them, they are to be warmly congratulated on their excellent work. They are not answerable for the present shortcomings, except that the Government must be held responsible for the consequences of what I still regard as the ill-timed and premature extension of the school leaving age. That is my opinion, and probably the opinion of many other hon. Members. However, that has now been done, and we must do our best to achieve the impossible—that of putting a quart of teaching into a pint of facilities. Neither can we criticise the Government merely because they carry out the provisions contained in the 1944 Act, which was passed by a Coalition Government, a specious, and, in many respects, reactionary Act.

I wish to say something about the present fashion in educational ideas, as it is reflected in these Estimates. I deliberately use the term "fashionable" because of all human activities, it is the popular notion of education that from time to time undergoes the most frequent and the most violent changes. I think that the Committee will agree that it would be fair to describe the prevailing fashion as a revolt against what was regarded as the academic view of education. It has now become the correct and acceptable thing to decry the cultural training which we associate with the grammar schools and the arts and science faculties of the university, as being out of touch with life, something out-dated and out-moded, a useless survival of that remote past which preceded this blessed era of gigantic engineering and the atomic bomb.

On the other hand, one is regarded as educationally sound if one demands a great extension of vocational education. One is definitely saying the right thing if one says that. We have heard some of it today, and a vast excrescence of portly gentlemen in striped trousers reiterate this slogan at innumerable prize-giving functions. A few days ago the Labour mayor of a North country town visited a secondary school and came to a class of the sixth form, which was, with great enjoyment, reading through a book of Virgil. He asked permission to speak and told the class that he could not understand why they were allowed to waste their time and the ratepayers' money on such absolute rubbish instead of, as he said, devoting themselves to something more practical and more profitable, such as technology. That reflects a common opinion in' this country but the validity of an opinion does not depend upon the vociferation with which it is proclaimed. Indeed, its validity is often in inverse ratio to the number of those who shout it. I am convinced that it is now time that someone's shouts should try to stop the rout. It is unfortunate that it should be left to an obscure back bencher to try to do so, but I am afraid that it cannot be helped.

This heresy is not confined to secondary and university education. Even in the primary schools there were already many signs of it before the passing of the present Act, the workings of which are again reflected in these Estimates. Now it has been given a definite form and sanction. Already, anything that savoured of academic teaching, that is anything that trained the child to use his intelligence in judging facts rather than in accepting them was being gradually eliminated from the schools. For instance, the old fashioned parsing and analysis, which was an invaluable help to the use of language as the instrument of reason, had for a long time been banished by the theorists of the Board of Education, but calculating profit and loss, measuring the outflow of cisterns, and such so-called practical teaching was retained and enlarged. Woodwork, handicraft and gardening and other such subjects were introduced into the already overcrowded time-table—which was, of course, all to the good, except that each new introduction, however desirable in itself, simply usurped the place of cultural teaching, and the primary schools were, before 1944, and, I assert, are now becoming less and less literate and more and more like a joinery or a hotel kitchen or a dentist's waiting room. I had my attention drawn recently to a little girl who would in my time have been in standard four. That little girl could just write. I was shocked to find that ever since she had been in school she had never been taught one note of music.

The position seems to me to have got much worse. In the past the teacher was concerned with teaching, just as a plumber is concerned with plumbing or a bricklayer with the laying of bricks. Now, teaching is only a minor part of his innumerable duties. The trade unions see to it that the plumber does nothing but plumbing, and that nobody else does that work; the same is true of the bricklayer. The teachers' union is either powerless or unwilling to see to it that the teacher is allowed to teach.

Mrs. Manning

What do teachers do in the primary classes?

Professor Gruffydd

If the hon. Lady listens she will hear in my very next sentence. Today the primary teacher is forced, by the policy of the Government, and I think by public opinion—I will say that—and especially by the administration of the local education authorities, to concern himself with all manner of extraneous chores—the doling out of milk, the supervision of meals—and let me assure the hon. Lady that I have had these facts from imnumerable teachers—the collection and recording of savings, and, of course, with the filling of innumerable forms, and all this when they have to cope with classes the size of which makes teaching a travesty of itself. With the imposition of these duties teaching becomes an impossible task. In fact, the prevailing wish of the authorities seems to be "Anything rather than teaching" and "Heaven save us from book learning."

In the restricted time thus left for training the intelligence, the 1944 Act has made further provision for the inculcation of religion and morals, and now the teachers with very inadequate pay compared with other professional workers, have to be waiters, milkmen, clerks, gardeners, and, finally, lay preachers, not to mention the fact that in many cases they are constantly harried by their new bosses, the school caretakers, who often have a political pull on the governing body of the school. If that is doubted I can name a school where the caretaker had been the chairman of the governors.

Mrs. Manning

Why not?

Professor Gruffydd

I say that he had a pull with the governors, that is all. Add to this all the fantastically large classes, the disastrous lack of books, and is it surprising that in spite of the better-trained and harder working teachers, the percentage of illiteracy amongst those who have passed through the primary school is higher now than it was 50 years ago.

I am afraid that a good deal of my time has been taken by a consideration of the position in primary schools. I can only deal very briefly with secondary education where, of course, this curious hatred of academic learning is most marked. It has become quite clear that the grammar schools—those schools to which my hon. Friend the Member for Combined English Universities (Mr. K. Lindsay) referred so adequately—which have been distinguished in the past for pure learning whether in the humanities or in science, are, so far as the general population is concerned, becoming ineffective in any real culture and education. As has already been said, most parents, and especially parents who belong to the honourable party opposite, if they can afford it, will send their children not to the grammar schools but to the direct grant schools and the independent schools and, if they can possibly afford it, to the public schools. I note that there is a great silence amongst hon. Members opposite. Most of the things which I have said tonight have been vociferously denied. I see that there is no denial of that. I have said before in this House that the person who sells ready-made clothes does not himself wear reach-me-downs.

It is becoming impossible to staff the grammar schools on account of the low value which the late Government, in particular, set on distinction and accomplishment in the field of scholarship, and especially because of the uncertainty in the plans of the local education authorities for carrying out the provisions of the Act. Further, it is evident that some directors of education have such a sadistic hatred of academic learning and such contempt for culture that they have embarked upon what can only be described as a persecution of the grammar school. In particular, they have insisted on the power which apparently they have under the Act, of curtailing the holidays and making them conform to the shorter holidays of the primary schools.

Meanwhile, all the gramophones and megaphones are blaring out the importance of technical education. Apparently the future world is going to be mechanised and, it is argued, that unless we as a country are to fall behind the rest, we must mechanise our education—we must be technicalised. Technical secondary education will not produce technicians, it will only produce mechanics. If mechanics only are wanted, all well and good, the Government should go on with their scheme of technical education. But the real technicians are not the people who manipulate machinery devised by somebody else. They are original thinkers who can apply to practical use the discoveries of the scientists.

Mr. Messer (Tottenham, South)

Cannot a mechanic be an original thinker?

Professor Gruffydd

Of course he can, but he has not been trained as an original thinker. That is the point. [Interruption.] It will help me to make my speech if the hon. Lady the Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) would follow the rules which she enforced at school.

Mrs. Manning

May I interrupt the hon. Gentleman again to say that I taught in a school where the children were allowed to say what they thought at the time when they thought it, and that is why they emerged from the school as intelligent human beings?

Professor Gruffydd

I understand a lot now. Real scientists cannot be trained in technical or in modern schools, but in schools where the whole insistence of the teaching is academic so that the mind of the pupil is adequately prepared for profiting by the knowledge imparted to him later in the university. All this, of course, is a commonplace to any educationist. I would remind hon. Members that the ordinary parents, the common men and women of this country, are perfectly sound on this point. Whatever the authorities say about their child, it is to the grammar school that they want to send him, and as a result, the present system of entrance examination and of screening the candidates is causing great resentment in the country. It is regarded by the people as an arbitrary closing of the gates of culture against their children.

Finally, I wish to appeal to this Socialist Government not to fall into the common error which I have described, because their very existence, the very fact that Socialism has become possible, is due to the work of past pioneers and thinkers who were not technicians, who were not people trained in business methods, but who had a craving for what their penury had denied them—a cultural education in the strictest and most academic sense of the word. What made Keir Hardie and others the great men they were was that they had a thirst for righteousness, a craving which arose from a devoted study of the work of poets and prophets and philosophers. Even today, when the common man may be said to have come into his own—or, at least, to have got what he wanted—anyone visiting the classes of the W.E.A., or the extension classes of the universities, will be astounded by the respect shown by these students for the kind of academic learning which is now sneered at. And they are right: for ultimately it is the basic enlightenment which will give power to all those who pursue truth whether in the humanities, the arts, science or, shall I say, in politics.

The Temporary-Chairman (Mr. Bowles)

I would remind hon. Members that this Debate closes at half past nine, and that we have also had an interruption by Black Rod of sixteen minutes. This cuts down the Debate to a much shorter length than hon. Gentlemen might have expected. Therefore, perhaps I might appeal for shorter speeches.

7.8 p.m.

Mr. Sidney Marshall (Sutton and Cheam)

I will not attempt to follow the hon. Member for the University of Wales (Professor Gruffydd) who seemed rather to fill the role of an educational Jeremiah. Although we may not be making under the present Act all the progress which we so earnestly desire, certainly I think we are beginning to do something. As an administrator of education, I want to say to the Minister that there is a feeling amongst education authorities that with him at the head of the Ministry we have someone who really is doing the best he possibly can to improve the administration of education. One cannot attempt in the short time available to touch upon more than one facet of this subject. It is a very deplorable thing to recall that we have had only two Debates on education in almost the whole of this Session and that both of those Debates has been interfered with, one being cut almost by half. I feel that I must spend a few seconds in recording that, because it appears that education is not getting its fair share of attention in this Chamber from the Government.

As an administrator in education, I know that, amongst all the difficulties that we are up against, there is the very powerful one of buildings, and here the Minister, I know, has had a very great deal of difficulty indeed, because he has to fight, not merely the Minister of Health, but also his own shadow in the present Minister of Works. As an administrator, one has also experienced a great deal of frustration because of the ways of the Ministry in handling the different priorities for buildings. We are held up particularly by the action of the Department in spending so much time and attention on small things which they might well leave to the local education authorities to decide. This is particularly the case in the priorities for the smaller requirements. I think that, if the local authorities had not been interfered with but had been told by the Ministry what their allocation of labour and materials would be, and had been allowed to decide these priorities themselves, they would have done very much better than the Ministry has done. I have come across this difficulty time after time, and my own local authority, I am sure, would have achieved a great deal more if it had been allowed to carry on with less interference from the Ministry.

The Minister himself gave us an impression of the demands of local authorities for huts under the altered programme. I cannot think that this is so, because the demand for huts for temporary buildings is far greater than the Minister him- self would have us believe, and until we get a substantial allocation of these huts and buildings, we shall not be able to implement that part of he Bill which was thrust upon us by the raising of the school leaving age this year in regard to the teaching of the secondary subjects.

Mr. Tomlinson

May I point out that all except 14 contracts nave actually been let, and that those 14 are waiting, as a matter of fact, upon the local authorities, because of difficulties which they have to meet, and not difficulties at our end?

Mr. Marshall

Possibly there are 14 approved projects to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, but there must be before the Ministry, I imagine, scores of projects which are not yet approved by the Ministry, and which would not come into the picture as being contracts which had been actually let.

Mr. Tomlinson

I think we had better get this right. That applies only to those huts required after September, 1947. There is a definite programme, and of that programme, in all but 14 the local authorities' requirements have actually been met.

Mr. Marshall

I accept the Minister's word for that, although it is different from my information and my experience in my own local authority. The demand for buildings cannot be gainsaid, and I think that a great many local authorities are disappointed in many ways because we have been so stinted of buildings One knows the difficulty in regard to the requirements for housing, and one realises that housing must have all priority, but, as an administrator, I would suggest that if housing is priority No 1, schools are a very close priority No. 2. We cannot have houses without schools. I have experienced that kind of thing in the estates which grew up in the outer districts of London, and in which house building went on without any provision for schools. That was a bitter experience, and while we all know that we must get the building materials for housing, I hope the Minister will be able to assert himself very strongly among his colleagues to get much more priority in building materials and labour than he has had up to now.

The position now is that we are being asked to send into the Ministry our plans for 1948, though goodness knows how much delay we shall meet with later on when we try to implement the provisions of the Act. Although the Minister touched upon a great many points, I was disappointed that he did not mention anything about the provision of boarding schools. This is a very important matter, but the right hon. Gentleman said nothing about it. The local authorities are very anxious to comply with the provisions of that part of the Act, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will make some reference to it. I hope that, first and foremost, the Minister will be able to impress upon his colleagues the great need of more priority for building materials for schools. I have great hopes that he will do his best in that direction.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. Ralph Morley (Southampton)

I do not know whether it is in order for a back bencher to compliment a Cabinet Minister, but, if it is, I should like to compliment my right hon. Friend on the lucidity and cogency with which he introduced the Estimates. Might I also say that teachers and educationists welcomed the appointment of the Minister on account of his human and moving eloquence, his administrative skill and ability, and because he is the first Minister of Education who was educated in the schools which he now administers.

During the past 18 months, it has been my lot to address a large number of public meetings upon the question of education and I think that the people of this country are more interested in education today than I have ever known them to be in the past 40 years. They are extremely anxious that their children should have the real secondary education that was promised to them when the 1946 Act was passed. It must be admitted that, so far, we have not made any great progress towards providing them with that secondary education, though it is true we have raised the school-leaving age to 15. The majority of our secondary modern schools, in equipment and general amenities, cannot really be classed as secondary schools. Under 10 per cent of them satisfy the building regulations recently issued. There are hundreds of schools in the country areas in which there are from 15 to 100 children in buildings which were erected in the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries, without lavatories, libraries, gymnasia, woodwork or metal-work rooms, and, strange as it may seem, since many of them are in the country, without playing fields. It is rather unfair to keep children up to the age of 15 in schools of that type, and it will be impossible to keep them there until 16.

A tremendous amount of building for schools must be done in the near future if the Act is to be properly implemented. We shall have to collect the children from a number of villages in the country and take them to the new junior schools and the new modern secondary schools, and we shall have to provide the transport from their homes to these schools. At the same time, one is fully aware that we are engaged in the important task of rehousing our population, and that housing must have first priority. In these circumstances, it does seem to me that the Ministry might experiment with the possibility of constructing prefabricated classrooms, which could be rapidly constructed and easily assembled, in order to make progress with new school building.

In America, during the war. Mr. Henry Kaiser was able to build in 13 weeks, ships which formerly had taken 18 months to construct. What could be done with ships in America, I think, might be done with classrooms and the production of schools in this country. It is not the outside of a school building which is important; it is the interior, the equipment, the staffing, the heating and the lighting. We do not want to build schools which last for 100 years and are kept in use long after they are out of fashion. I hope that when the Parliamentary Secretary replies he will be able to tell us that efforts are being made in the direction of constructing prefabricated classrooms which can be assembled to make new schools. I am quite certain that, unless building is expedited, we shall not be able to give effect to the provisions of the Education Act. 1944, for a good many years to come.

The other difficulty which was foreseen when that Act was first put on the Statute Book was that of finding teachers to staff the schools. That difficulty has been largely overcome by the success of the emergency training scheme. In that matter, I think we ought to congratulate, not only the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler), who was the author of the scheme, but also the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry, who has shown very great energy during the past 18 months in giving effect to it. We are now training a large number of students under the emergency training scheme, and we are getting very good reports about them. For the most part, they are men and women who are not entering the teaching profession merely to earn a living; they are also entering it in order to perform a social service. We do not expect them, at first, to be technically and completely competent in the difficult task of teaching. They will have to gain experience before they will be able to pull their full weight, but we have no doubt that they will make very useful and welcome additions to the teaching profession.

A large number of these students are still awaiting places in the emergency training colleges; I believe that 14,000 of them are still awaiting places, and a considerable number of them are working as temporary teachers in our schools. In fact, many of them were advised by the selection boards to take posts as temporary teachers in order to gain experience. One might almost say that they were morally directed into the schools as temporary teachers. When they took those posts, they thought that their waiting period would be in the region of from six to nine months, but they now find, from the latest circular which the Minister has issued, that the waiting period is likely to be two years.

The highest salary which they can earn as temporary teachers under the last Burnham Award is £228 per annum. Many of them are married men, with children to keep, and they find that they cannot buy new clothes for their wives, toys for their children, or furniture for the houses which they have taken. Indeed, there is a very grave danger that, owing to this financial stringency, a number of them will drift out of the profession and go into other occupations, where they can earn a living wage, at least for the time being. To make it worse, nearly all of them have long since spent the gratuity they received from the Services. I would ask my right hon. Friend to consider whether it would be possible to make grants to the students awaiting training, or acting as temporary teachers, in order to bring their salaries up to at least the level of the grants which they will receive when they are actually in the colleges. I should think that it would be possible to make some arrangement with the Treasury to this end.

Successful as the emergency training scheme has been, it has, in the main, provided only for men teachers. There is a grave scarcity of women teachers. Up to June of this year, 2,500 intending women teachers had been refused admission to training colleges and university departments, and last year over 1,000 of them were unable to secure training. The scarcity is particularly marked in the infants' schools. Generally speaking, when a local education authority advertises for infant school teachers, it does not get a single reply. We have to remember that, owing to the rising birthrate, in a few years time there will be half a million additional children in our infants schools, necessitating the employment of some 15,000 additional teachers. There is a very grave danger that our educational system will break down during its first stages through lack of such teachers, unless something is done to encourage young women to take up the profession.

One reason why infants' school teachers are scarce is, apparently, that they are usually sexually attractive. Their marriage rate is rather higher than that of most other women teachers. The highest marriage rate in the profession is that among domestic science teachers. Of course, we can understand that; they know how to feed the brute. But, next to them, the marriage rate is highest among infants' school teachers. Although the marriage bar has now been abolished, and girls in these schools can go on teaching after marriage, as my hon. Friend the Member for Central Cardiff (Mr. G. Thomas) has said, quite a number of local authorities still look rather coolly on married women teachers, and tend to discourage them. They still cling to the old prejudice, so common among local education authorities some years ago, that a woman who is a teacher ought not to have both a man and a job. I trust that my right hon. Friend will exercise his usual moral suasion on those authorities who look coldly on married teachers, and will get them to alter their outlook.

Then, again, there are the very large classes in the infants' schools. There are, today, over 40,000 classes in our schools with over 40 children in each. We have not improved much since 1938 when there were 42,000 classes with over 40 children in each. A large number of these big classes are in the infants' schools, which makes the work of the teacher extremely onerous, because the little ones want a lot of individual attention, and cannot do much for themselves. I appeal to my right hon. Friend to devise some scheme of helpers for the teachers in these schools in order to lessen the burden which they are bearing at the present moment. There is also a lesser chance of promotion for teachers in infants' schools than for teachers in other types of schools. It would be a good thing if more posts of special responsibility were available to those teachers. But it is important that, by one means or another, we should increase the number of these teachers, and indeed, increase the number of women entrants into the profession generally.

We have been told that speeches must be short on account of the lack of time, and I will conclude by saying that members of the teaching profession generally have welcomed the appointment of my right hon. Friend to his office. During the war we had a very great Minister of Education in the person of the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden, who conducted his great Measure through the House of Commons with skill, judgment and tremendous industry. He put the Measure on the Statute Book. It is the duty of my right hon. Friend to put the Measure into operation, and perhaps the latter task will be more difficult than putting it on the Statute Book. We feel that he desires with all his heart and soul to put this Act into operation, and we hope that when it is necessary to obtain priorities in materials and equipment, he will not hesitate to bring pressure on the other Ministries, and we wish him the best of luck.

7.31 p.m.

Mr. York (Ripon)

Unlike other speakers, I am one of those base creatures who are complete amateurs, and I have not even had the opportunity to serve on a local education committee. But I am going to speak for—and I believe I represent—that great mass of unorganised parents—and for the rest I do not care two hoots. I wish to put before the Committee the complaints of the parents at the treatment which we are receiving from the experts. The first, and I think probably the most important, complaint is that which deals with the closure of schools in rural areas. My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) made a statement which might be open to misinterpretation. I understood him to mean—although he told me later that it was certainly not in his thoughts—that he believes in the complete closure of all schools possessing single teachers and bad buildings. I doubt if that was the impression he wished to create. What I think he meant was that such cases must be very carefully considered, but that some of those schools can be retained on the merits of the case. I think he and the Minister would agree that that is correct.

In my area in the West Riding, the development plan put forward by the local education committee means the wholesale slaughter of the rural village schools. In that area 29 village schools are scheduled for closure. I hope they will not get any further than being scheduled. The intention is to transfer these schools to large central schools where, I believe, the numbers will run up as high as 150 young children from 5 to 11 years of age. I think most of us approve of the central secondary school. What we are opposed to is the centralisation of the junior school. I want to make that point quite clear. The reasons for this proposed centralisation are: poor buildings, too small numbers of pupils, and the ill effects on the teachers. I will speak briefly on each of those reasons. I wish to place before the Minister the objections of the parents, and these are not necessarily my own ideas, although I support them. I have had many meetings in villages with parents who have protested against the proposals of the local education authority, and who maintain that the 5 to 11 year olds are far better fed and looked after by their parents than by school teachers; that small children are far better brought up in small numbers than in large groups, and that they will get worse education because they will be in classes of 30 to 40 children, whereas at present they are in classes of 10 to 20.

Mrs. Manning

In classes of a single age group?

Mr. York

Not necessarily. The hon. Lady is an expert, and I would ask her to listen to the parents' point of view for a while. I do not think she will deny that in central schools, with 150 young children whose ages range from 5 to 11, it is far more difficult to look after them properly as children of those ages need to be looked after. In addition, in the remote areas which represent a large part of my constituency, not only do the children have to walk long distances before they get to a negotiable road, but if schemes of this sort are put into effect, they will have to take a long bus ride as well. Those are some of the objections which the parents have put to me and which I know to be true, and I hope the Minister will consider them when he deals with particular cases which will be brought to his attention.

With regard to poor buildings, buildings are not the main part of education; I think we are all agreed about that. A large number of these village schools could be improved by a reasonable expenditure of money. We do not want palaces; we want reasonably good buildings, and the present ones could be improved. In those places where the villagers themselves are keen on having a village school, they will be quite prepared to give financial assistance either to the Church authority or to the local authority.

Then there is the factor of too few pupils. I submit that people who live in country areas, and particularly in remote country areas, get little or nothing for their rates and taxes, except education. Surely, they have the right to demand that they should be given rather more in educational expenditure in return for their payments than the urban people who get so much for their rates and taxes. As for the effect of segregation upon teachers, I appreciate the problem; but surely the education of the children is the first consideration, and the effect on the teachers, although it is important, is only a secondary consideration. The right way to look at this problem is to move the teachers to the children, instead of moving the children to the teachers. If a single teacher is living in a remote village, surely the answer is not to put the central school where the teachers can be together, but to leave the schools where they are, to build a central house where the teachers can live, and move the teachers out to the schools by motor car or, in certain circumstances, by bicycle or, perhaps, the local bus service. We should not move the children against the wishes of the parents in order to meet the convenience of the teachers.

I will give an example concerning one area where it is proposed to put seven village schools into one central school at a cost of about £10,000. Surely, it would be far better to spend £3,000 on building a house for the teachers to live in, and spend the other £7,000 on re-equipping those village schools and retaining them. Incidentally, the sum of £1,000 is only the Ministry's portion of the cost; the total might be as much as £1,000 or £2,000. I would like to know whether the Ministry of Education believe that the parents' views should be considered. If they do, I assure the right hon. Gentleman that in all the villages with which he and I am concerned, and which may be added to in the future, the parents are 95 per cent., and in some cases 100 per cent., against the proposed scheme. If the parents are to be given any choice in the matter, I say confidently that the scheme for closing the schools will not be accepted. If, on the other hand, the parents' feelings are to be swept aside without any consideration at all, this Government can no longer be said to be implementing the Education Act of my right hon. Friend.

The second complaint—I really have not time to develop it fully, if I am to keep to my 10 minutes—is the method by which the local education authority has dealt with the area executive in the Harrogate Area No. 2. Here, under the Education Act, a scheme was put up by the local education authority, for consideration of three alternatives by that area executive committee, and their terms of reference were, to decide which alternative was most suitable to local conditions. Having met, this area executive came to a certain conclusion. That conclusion was completely ignored, and the local education authority said, "We know best and this is our solution." After a certain amount of argument the matter is now before the Minister. But I want to put this point to him. Are we to have cooperation between area executives and the local education authorities, or are we to have dictation by the local education authorities and mere compliance by executives reduced to being only useless tools? We were promised by my right hon. Friend—although many of us had very grave misgivings on this point—that area executives would be given real executive power, that their advice would be taken, and that they would be given a real part to play in education. In the West Riding of Yorkshire that promise has been and is being broken.

What I am asking the Minister of Education to do is to say if he approves—and I think it is right that he should tell us whether or not he approves—of this promise being implemented; that if local advice is considered to be part of the scheme, that advice should be taken and not swept aside, as one right hon. Gentleman said, for a sort of mad lust after multilateral schools, or some other notion which is purely a notion and a theory, and has by no means been tested in practice. So I ask the right hon. Gentleman, who, like me, knows conditions in the North, to see that not only the promises but the whole idea behind local autonomy and local freedom of choice in education matters of the country shall be carried out, as was promised us when we passed the Education Act, 1944.

Mr. Tomlinson

There is one thing I should like the hon. Gentleman to get clear, and that is that consultation for the receiving of advice does not of necessity mean that the Minister, who is seeking the advice, must concur in the advice he gets; and it is not to be assumed, if the advice is not followed, that consultation was not held.

Mr. York

That was not the point I was making. I was not accusing the Minister of deviating from the Act. What I am questioning is the action of the local education authorities in going over the heads of the local executives.

7.43 p.m.

Mrs. Leah Manning (Epping)

Before making the few remarks I had in mind to make I should like to refer to two speeches made by hon. Members opposite. The first speech was that of the hon. Member for the University of Wales (Professor Gruffydd). We are used to the hyperbole of his speeches here, but I think he exceeded himself today. I remember his attack on the occasion of the appointment of the Minister. That, I am glad to say, he withdrew today. I remember his attack on the men trained in the emergency training colleges. That he has not had the decency to withdraw. But the attack made during the course of his speech today was on the work done by the teachers. The hon. Gentleman says it is not teaching at all, merely the preparing of meals, the measuring and weighing of children, the keeping of records. It is true we do these things in schools. But a great many teachers regard that as part of the whole life of the child and, therefore, as part of the child's education, which is not nowadays a mere matter of chalk and talk, but is a matter of the whole social, spiritual and educational life of the child. Therefore, the vast majority of the teachers are very willing to do these things, although naturally there are some of them who do not entirely agree; but the National Union of Teachers has accepted this view of the new responsibilities and our members carry these duties out loyally.

I must also refer to the hon. Member's suggestion that everybody in the country is sneering at academic education. Nothing could be more untrue. We are asking that more and more children suitable for this type of education should have it. Only about 10 per cent. of children had that advantage in the past. We want far more. If 12 per cent. or 15 per cent. of the children are suitable to profit by it we hope the local authorities will give the opportunity to those children; and we hope that they will have the opportunity of going right on to the university and not have to pay for that university education at all. A full, free education to the very limit by which a child can profit is our aim. But the hon. Gentleman has not understood the very first idea of this Act. He has not the vaguest conception of what it is all about. He does not know what the Act means. This Act means that every child shall have that kind of education for which it is suited. If the child is benefiting by its education making something of it, then that child is receiving a cultural education. It is not only Latin, Greek, mathematics, science and modern languages that are cultural. Culture is anything that a child can learn and make its own and benefit by. There are many hundreds of thousands of children in this country who could not possibly benefit by the kind of education given in an ordinary, academic grammar school, and so we must give them something else; the very best we can offer; but it must be the kind of education by which the child can benefit, and that is the whole basis of the Butler Act, and that is why we on this side of the Committee, and the vast majority of hon. Members, I am sure, on the other side, have welcomed it and thought it a fine Education Act.

I had great hopes when the hon. Member for Ripon (Mr. York) rose in his place. I thought he was going to make the speech that I wanted to make—a speech in support of the rural areas. But he was wide of the mark, and showed that he did not really understand what this Act is about.

Mr. Kirkwood (Dumbarton Burghs)

He is a Tory.

Mrs. Manning

Even if he is a Tory, he should be leading the parents of his area, and not following blindly behind them; and he should be showing the parents what is the best thing for the children in the rural areas. Let me say a word about rural education. I am not happy about it. For many years rural education has lagged very far behind education in the rest of the country and I fear that it is still going to do so. No one welcomes the raising of the school-leaving age more than I, and I shall welcome it when it is raised to 16, but I cannot help feeling that the extra year will not endear itself to boys and girls who have to sit for yet another year in the same insanitary, badly built, badly Ventilated schools without water, lighting or lavatories in which they have sat since they were five years old: without playgrounds, without woodwork rooms, without domestic science centres, gardens or any of the amenities enjoyed by urban children.

Mr. York

They have all got playgrounds.

Mrs. Manning

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman, instead of contradicting me, would take a turn round the rural areas, and read the statistics of the Ministry of Education, and then he will find that many rural schools have not got playgrounds at all. He will also find that many of the playgrounds they have got, have highly dangerous surfaces, the vast majority of them are quagmires in the winter and deserts like the Sahara in summer, and not suitable for children to play in at all. He does not understand the first thing about rural education.

If we are really to make our boys and girls welcome an advanced education and a longer period in the schools—as we hope they will—we have to do something about reorganisation in the rural areas, and do it very quickly. The Minister gave us some interesting facts, but it was an overall picture and gave us no real idea of progress in the rural areas; he did not tell us how far—I always want to call them Hengist and Horsa—H.O.R.S.A. and S.F.O.R.S.A. have pranced into the rural areas of this country. We do not know how many hutments have been offered in the rural areas, or how many have been accepted. He told us something about work for defective children, but not how much has been done in the rural areas; something about school meals, but not how many children in rural schools are receiving them. I would venture to suggest that in some county areas it is as low as 12 per cent. So I think I had better give the Committee some figures.

Much of the trouble in the rural areas is due to neglect in the past. It is now 20 years since the Hadow Committee reported to the Ministry of Education that schools should be reorganised and, in the rural areas, concentrated. But what has been the result? As far as the rural areas for which the report was intended are concerned, that report has been implemented to but a very small extent. Indeed, 62.5 per cent. of schools in the rural areas are still not reorganised; nearly 1,100 rural areas schools have less than 20 children on their rolls; about 550 of those schools have children from the ages of five to 14, and the rest have children from the ages of 5 to 11.

The hon. Member for Ripon asked me, did I not think that children have been better catered for in small groups than in large groups of 150. That struck me as being really funny. A school of 150 children is quite a small school. It can be well organised, but a small school of 20 children cannot be organised at all, and for any Member of the House of Commons—whether he is an amateur educationist or whether he has tried to understand the problem—to say that one teacher must look after 20 to 50 children from the ages of five to 14; teach them everything, do all the administration in a poor building lacking every amenity, merely demonstrates that he has not studied the problem at all. In fact, the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden did mean that we should close the very small village schools; he is an educationist and knows the proper thing to do. The senior children must be taken further afield, from seven, eight or even nine villages, in order to give them a proper secondary education in rural surroundings.

Mr. York

Agreed, secondary education.

Mrs. Manning

If the children are taken from seven or eight villages and given a secondary education—whether in a modern, technical, grammar or multilateral school—they would get a very good education, because they could be taught in classes with children of their own age, with separate teachers for each age group. What is the position of our young children today? From what the hon. Gentleman says, one would think that no country child ever has to walk anywhere. In my constituency scores of children have to walk at least two miles to school, along bleak and desolate country roads, carrying little packets of dried sandwiches in their hands for their midday meal. Would it not be a very good thing to take an area covering perhaps four or five villages and have 150 children in a first-class school, with five or six teachers? Incidentally, teachers do not want to live in nunneries. Why should the teachers be told that they must live in one house? I never heard of such a thing. Anybody suggesting that, would soon have the National Union of Teachers on their track. Apparently the hon. Member for Ripon wants to put all the women teachers together in one house. At least, I presume he meant all the women teachers, because there are also men teachers. But perhaps he wants the men colleagues to five with the women teachers.

When taking these junior children from three or four villages and putting them in one school, it might be advisable to move only children from 7–11 leaving the infants and nursery children in the village. A very good use for these old village schools would be to turn them into first-class nurseries. At the present time large numbers of women in the rural areas are working in the fields, and they have to take their children with them in prams, leaving them under the shade of the hedges or trees while they perform agri- cultural work so necessary at the moment. The 7's to 11's could be taken to school daily by transport; given a first-class meal at midday, in wet weather arrangements could be made for them to dry their boots and shoes, and they could be given all the advantages of children in urban areas.

I am sure if they will carefully think over their ideas, hon. Members opposite with whom I have sat on Committees dealing with rural affairs, will agree I am right. Nobody can visualise what is needed in these areas without a real understanding of the overall plan for the countryside. I ask the Committee to carry its mind back to the Gracious Speech at the beginning of this Session. Foreshadowing the Agriculture Bill, it was stated that the extended use of technical and scientific measures in agriculture demanded a higher type of education for both workers and fanners. If we are to do that—and I am quite sure it is essential, if agriculture in this country is to flourish—we must have schools in which children can be well taught by a sufficient number of properly trained teachers. They must have all the facilities and advantages which can be obtained in the towns; they must have a midday meal; and children who are below par and handicapped must be looked after. Remember, London spends about £3 10s. per head on handicapped children; the big county towns spend £1 10s. on handicapped children; but the county areas spend only 17s. 11d. on handicapped children. The rural areas have been denied all these things in the past, and it is time that somebody in this Committee stood up for education in the rural areas.

I hope very much that the Minister will pay regard to what the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden said, about the dual system. The right hon. Member did a grand job of work in the Act, in bringing about agreement, between the two types of school in this country. I know some of the difficulty involved there, because I was a signatory to the concordat which was drawn up just before the Trevelyan Act. At the time of the Butler Act the Archbishop told us that we might expect 90 per cent. of our Church of England schools to be handed over. The position is very difficult today, because they do not know what the schools will cost; they do not know if they can collect 50 per cent. of the cost and we do not want to lose any non-provided schools which might be controlled. Therefore, I think it would be a good thing if they could be given a little extra time in order to see whether they should hand their schools over or whether they could collect 50 per cent. of the cost of bringing them up to modern standards.

I am very sorry that my time has run out. I am always in the unfortunate position of being called late in the Debate and told that I must speak for only a short time, and I am a very loyal Member from that point of view. I do ask hon. Members on both sides of the Committee to pay very serious attention to the problems of the rural areas schools. Remember how they have been neglected in the past; do try to find out the truth about them, and lead the parents; to understand what are the best means of getting the best education this country has to offer for their own children.

7.58 p.m.

Commander Maitland (Horncastle)

I am very glad to be able to follow the hon. Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ripon (Mr. York), because I also wish to refer to rural education. I had intended to pay the Minister a tribute for a fine speech, but I must content myself with saying that I will pay him a special tribute next year if he will then tell us a little more about rural education. I know he had a very large subject to cover, but he did not mention rural education once during his speech. The only reference his predecessor made a year ago was to the effect that, "I am afraid the rural areas will have to wait again." That is why I am happy to be following the hon. Member for Epping on this question. I believe that the Minister of Education means to give the country children a fair deal. Even though it costs far more to give a country child the same chances and education as a town child, I believe the Ministry will give the country child a fair deal. I hope they will blazon that abroad, because it is most important that the country people should realise it.

I want to confine my remarks to one or two problems which have come my way in the country. Firstly, in regard to H.O.R.S.A. huts, we are not to have one hut completed in my own area by 1st September, and I felt that the Minister was over-optimistic in his account. I think we can get on for the first three or four months, but we must have the huts by January in the Lindsey district. These huts are having priority, which is natural, but the Minister has mentioned the bulge in the birth rate and this is already causing even greater pressure on accommodation for younger children in some districts than the raising of the school leaving age. Huts for the older children must obviously have a high priority, but I hope the Minister will not shut his eyes entirely to the younger children. I wonder whether the opportunities in regard to temporary accommodation are really being taken advantage of as they should. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) said, we are thinking of the bright chances of the future in the very difficult times of the present.

We may have to cut down our cloth very considerably, and try to make the best use of the things we already have. For instance, there is at Tattershall Thorp part of an aerodrome which my own local authority have been trying to take over as a temporary modern school for more than a year. They are continually having arguments with the Minister of Works in regard to the business of taking over on such questions as the sewage farm which goes with it. These things do not cut any ice with the fathers waiting to get their children educated. Fathers are not only paying for these things when they belong to the Ministry of Works, but they are also paying for the people who are arguing about whether or not they should be used for schools. I ask, therefore, that these departmental operations should be transacted a little more quickly, with less attention paid to good book-keeping, which, incidentally, cannot be good book keeping if it is so complicated.

My right hon. Friend mentioned the inspectorate. During the last year, the education authority in my district have received only two reports dealing with education, other than those which raise such questions as lavatory accommodation and so forth. I fully understand the difficulties which inspectors are finding, but it is essential that we should try to get more manpower into this department. When there are only a few inspectors, they tend to visit the bad schools, which means that the headmasters of these schools come to fear these visits. A headmaster knows very well that only the bad schools are being inspected, and that is a bad thing. It is also extremely bad that the good schools should not be inspected and get a pat on the back. I am using my own education authority as an example, but I know that this sort of thing is happening in other parts of the country. My education authority has taken on two inspectors to carry out this work. I am not at all sure that this is a good thing. I will not develop the theme, because it is obvious that the inspectors should belong to the Minister—they provide him with the opportunity to keep in touch with what is going on. These inspectors should be liaison officers. Therefore, I am not happy about this tendency of education authorities to appoint their own inspectors. If these people are being paid for by the local authorities, and are on the spot, they might equally be on the staff of the Minister.

So far, I have dealt purely with administration, but before I finish I should like to refer to one of the main educational questions which is of very general importance. There are three essentials of education. We want good teachers, classes small enough to get the best out of the teachers, and the right sort of knowledge imparted. We cannot do much at the moment about the first two essentials, which leaves us with the third. It is difficult for a layman to find out much about the curriculum and the syllabus, in which a parent has considerable interest. I have had some knowledge of education myself, having had to make my own syllabus, produce my own textbooks and so on, but, as a father, I find it extraordinarily difficult to know what my children are being taught. We all ought to take an interest in this matter, because it is the aim of education to give pupils a background to enable them to face the difficulties of our times.

What I do not agree with is the belief that it is the divine privilege of teachers to dictate what shall or what shall not be taught. I agree that the teacher has a tactical right to say how a subject shall be taught, and, to some degree, what shall be taught, but the strategic right must rest with the people of the country, and the only way that can be done is through the Minister. The only way he can get that knowledge is through the advice of his Advisory Council. The Advisory Council have just produced a booklet, entitled "The School and Life," which I have read with great care and interest. They have completely flinched from this problem. On page 113, we find this passage: The impact of scientific thought on the older classical and Christian traditions has been the chief cause of the moral complexities of our day. It might be said that everyone knows that. It is true, but we must do something about it. They take particular care in the last chapter to make it clear that they cannot come to agreement about what should be done, and I do not give them any credit for that. I would not have got credit in my service if I said, "I do not know what to do"; I should have been told to go back and find out. After all, it may be old fashioned, but there is one way, to concentrate a little more on the older classical and Christian tradition in teaching. That brings up the problem which has existed since education was first written about, the difficulty of teaching philosophy to a child who has had no experience of life, but this can be overcome at a later period and I ask the Minister to consider this problem in connection with county colleges and adult education. I also ask him to see whether this Advisory Committee cannot produce something better than they have produced so far, something more than telling us what we already know. The Minister might take a leaf from the book of some of the most successful wartime commanders by refusing to admit failure, by telling them they must go back and get down to the job of producing some sort of answer.

Unless we can find the answer to the problem we shall betray the belief which was held by so many people during the war. I noticed in my Service, astonishingly so, that I. was always coming into contact with people who wanted to know and talk about education, who felt a lack of the background which would enable them to cope with the difficulties they were up against. It was not technical education they wanted; it was something else they were grasping after, a spiritual under- standing, which they had not been given. If the Minister will see that the people of this country have the opportunity of getting that background he will, indeed, go down to fame as one of our finest Ministers of Education.

8.12 p.m.

Mr. Edward Evans (Lowestoft)

I do not want to wander into the wider fields of education, as I should probably get lost if I did, and I shall try to confine myself to a path with which I am more familiar. I wish to intervene for only a short time to put to the Minister certain considerations based on a very long practical experience of what we now call the handicapped child but which, in my time, used to be known as the special school child. I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend refer to this matter in his opening remarks, as I am well aware not only of his interest but of the interest of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary in this field of education.

The responsibilities imposed on local education authorities in regard to special provision are so wide and involved that, except in the case of the larger authorities, I am sure that they are unlikely, in their development plans to make effective provision unless they get from my right hon. Friend a strong lead and guidance of a detailed and technical character. There are in the Statutory Rules and Orders, 11 different types of children classified as requiring special educational treatment. Some of these involve educational methods, very highly specialised, using technical apparatus, and a very different approach from that employed for the ordinary child. It is in no critical spirit that I want to put some of these difficulties before my right hon. Friend for his consideration. Probably the most obvious of handicapped children are the blind and the deaf. In both these categories there are two serious deficiencies. It is required that these children shall be taught in special schools, and yet there is a great shortage of buildings and of teachers who have had the necessary training and have the required diplomas. What steps are being taken to ensure that every blind and deaf child is received into school with the minimum delay?

In my experience, I know of children who have been on the waiting list of these schools for more than two years. Every school has its waiting list, and to enable these children to acquire a knowledge of Braille it is essential that they should enter the schools as early as possible. For the last 20 years, it has been a crying need to get earlier entry into these schools. I remember that at one time, although the statutory age of admission to schools for the blind was five years, the average age of admission over one year was 11.9 in a particular school, which means that the children were deprived of those early years of training which make such a tremendous difference to their development.

With regard to teachers, I do not suppose that there is a special school in the country at the moment which is fully staffed. I ask the Minister what encouragement is given to teachers to enter into the profession of the special school, particularly in regard to the deaf, where the wastage is only just made up by recruitment from the deaf department of Manchester University. These teachers are required to take special diplomas. We have heard a great deal about the word "incentive," and I am wondering whether the Minister would consider some form of incentive that would bring a greater improvement into this very highly-specialised form of education. The work is arduous and exceedingly technical, and it requires great gifts of patience and understanding. My experience of this type of work has confirmed my view that there are in the ordinary schools of this country a large number of children classified as dull or backward who are so labelled because it has not yet been discovered that they are suffering from some visual or aural disability, or possibly both. I ask the Minister what steps are being taken, for example, to find by group testing through the gramophone audiometer in the ordinary classes how many of the children are suffering from aural defects. Are our local education authorities encouraged to employ this means of detection, and how many do so?

In the schools in rural areas great as are the difficulties as regards the normal child, so much greater are they in regard to the handicapped child, and it is impossible in the rural schools for the teachers to manage the different types of children who come within the category of slight defects and who are supposed to be taken in the ordinary stride of the school. I would like to know, in regard to the "hard of hearing" who may be taken in the ordinary schools, how far the Minister is co-operating with the Minister of Health in regard to the provision of individual aural aids under the new National Health Service Act. Are the parents to provide them or is the education authority to provide them? In any case, it is essential that they should be provided if the children are to remain in the normal schools and not taken into a residential special school.

I would also like to know what is the position with regard to the supply of teachers of lip-reading both for young people and adults. There is growing up in the country, almost in every county, as the facilities are becoming better known, a demand not only for general education but for specialised training in lip-reading. I am informed that the dearth of teachers in lip-reading is about 500, and very few local authorities are in any way able to meet this demand for this very effective form of alleviation of deafness. One in six of the population is suffering from some form of hearing defect. More and more these people are becoming conscious of the need for adequate teaching in this regard, and the local education authority ought to be able to supply that need. I am afraid that unless something drastic is done very soon that need will not be met.

I suggest that there is a great deal to be done in the field of research. There are as yet no sound methods of ascertaining intelligence from either the blind or the deaf. Is the Minister prepared to foster and subsidise research into these important subjects? There is the danger that nothing will be done in regard to the deaf, and there is the difficulty of lack of a responsive test for dull and backward children and difficulty also in regard to the certification of mental defects. It is essential that we devise adequate testing apparatus to find out as soon as possible what is the relative standard of intelligence grade.

I should like to see some research in the realm of suitable employment for those pupils who have gone through the secondary school for the deaf. I happen to be a governor of that school, and I look upon the future of those pupils with a great deal of anxiety. We are giving them three or four years of extra education, but what is to become of them when they leave? Are they to revert to the manual occupations which they could have entered when they left the ordinary deaf school? What is before them? There is a great deal to be done in the field of discovery to find out suitable opportunities for those children. That is a problem which has been in the mind of special school teachers for many years.

There is one matter which concerns me very considerably and that is the question of the county college for the deaf. I must congratulate the Minister on his success in achieving the very desirable object which we had in mind when we got this college for the deaf. However, it will mean that deaf adolescents will have to attend as resident pupils. As there is only one of these colleges in the country, they will not be able to take, say, one day off a week from industry. They will have to go to the college for two or three months. Who is to be responsible for that time? They will be taken out of industry and they will lose their wages. It will be difficult to get their consent to go to this college in those conditions. I should like the Minister to give that aspect of the matter some attention.

I want to say a word on the matter of multiple defects. For many years I have been intensely interested in the problem of the deaf-blind. Fortunately this is a small problem, but it is acute. There are not many educable deaf-blind children in the country but they are there, and although the London County Council has been persuaded to accommodate children from seven years onwards, the vital years are not being covered. We want to get these children almost as soon as they can toddle and do what we can for them in order that they may develop. We have the glorious example of how that can be done in the person of Dr. Helen Keller. We should like to see every one of these deaf-blind children converted into Dr. Kellers. It is essential that a start should be made as early as possible. I should like to know how the Minister proposes to deal with that matter and also the question of multiple defects from epilepsy. All these defects are there, and they constitute a problem which is a vital one to a great many people. I urge the Minister, with that well known sympathy for the afflicted which he showed so well when he was piloting through the House the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act, to give this matter very real consideration. This subject is so inexhaustible that I feel there is a great deal more I could say, but true to my promise, I will end now with the hope that the Minister will give this matter all the consideration which it deserves, as I know he will.

8.25 p.m.

Sir Ernest Graham-Little (London University)

In the ten minutes I am allowed I want to stress chiefly two subjects which were discussed by my right hon. Friend. While he was speaking about aphasic and spastic disorders in a special school, I felt that that was surely a matter for the medical profession rather than for educationists. They are evidently the appropriate authorities to deal with them, and my right hon. Friend is wasting time in trying to do something by educational methods when it is the medical aspect which should receive attention.

The other thing about which I wish to speak is the very critical condition of the national schools in face of the stampede of graduate teachers away from them when there is so much work for them to do there. I will give just this one small cross section of this flight. A certain grammar school, which I know well, lost 21 graduate teachers over a certain period. One-third went to independent schools where they received very much better pay and treatment—and I want to emphasise the question of treatment because it is not the remuneration which is the principal reason for the flight from the national school. The other two-thirds went to a most curious collection of pursuits, the British Council, the Church, administration and industry. One of them, an honours graduate of my university, after teaching science in the sixth form for six years, was receiving only £457 per annum. He is a born teacher, but he said that having a wife and two children he could not on that salary maintain his proper position as a school teacher in the sixth form. He went into industry and immediately received twice that remuneration.

The other day I had a letter from a high-school master in which he said that he had just lost his junior physics teacher, an honours graduate in science whose commencing salary under the Burnham scale was £330 a year. He received a commencing salary of £900 a year when he left that school and went into industry. All of us who were present during the passage of the Education Act will remember a certain degree of consternation among the university Members at the announcement of the Burnham scale. The scale was considered again on 20th February, 1945, when a special Debate was brought on in the House. There are eight hon. Members representing universities in England and Wales, of whom six took part in that Debate and were absolutely unanimous in condemning the Burnham scale for graduates. I would remind the Committee that in 1944 a highly authoritative committee on the training of teachers, the McNair Committee, pressed the importance of recruiting university teachers in the national schools. They put forward two schemes, A and B. A concluded a report with this warning, that if the training of teachers in the national schools came to be divorced from the university, disaster must overtake the whole Act

I press the urgency of this matter, and the primary necessity of persuading, or otherwise influencing, the Burnham Committee to take steps to improve the position. Unless some immediate steps are taken, the whole of this class of teachers will disappear from these schools. It should be obvious that we cannot obtain competent science graduates unless we have capable science teachers, and that in their absence the Barlow Report cannot be implemented. I have the fear of my right hon. Friend being drawn aside from this, the main point. I admire his imperturbability, and his faculty of stonewalling. He has given me figures of emergency teachers and temporary teachers. There is one figure which I have failed to get out of him, and that is the number of graduate teachers who are comprised in the new draft to the schools. A year ago, there were 1,035 temporary teachers in the schools, but a few months later there were more than 5,900. Would my right hon. Friend tell me the present total of graduate teachers? Unless speedy action is taken in this direction I feel sure that my right hon. Friend will be disappointed with the results of the new Act.

8.35 p.m.

Mr. Linstead (Putney)

I would like to say how refreshing it was to mark the enthusiasm and the enjoyment with which the Minister came to the Committee and asked for this Vote. We all noticed the relish with which he trotted out "H.O.R.S.A. and S.F.O.R.S.A.," and many must have felt that a good schoolmaster was lost when the Minister came to the House. I wondered whether the picture he painted today had not really too much of sunshine and too little of shade. We were all glad to hear the note of optimism, but I think he might at the same time have underlined some of the difficulties with which his Department will be faced in the next few months. We have all been hoping to see a steady expansion of this great Act through primary, secondary and further education, and the indications are that that development will be hampered, if it is not halted, for the time being, as a result of the economic difficulties through which this country is passing.

Possibly the Minister was justified in the optimism he showed on the figures he was able to produce to the Committee about the supply of teachers. I must say they came to me as a surprise. He said there is no question of our being short of teachers, and he was able to report that for the next few years he would get 10,500 after a two-year course, 11,600 after a one-year course, and presumably a number of graduates from the universities, with the result that, even with a retirement of 7,000 a year, there will be an annual increase of from 15,000 to 17,000 in his manpower. If he has his teachers, almost three-quarters of his battle is won. He can afford to be optimistic in spite of the financial and economic difficulties with which he will be faced, because the teachers are the core of his problem. He introduced one small point of interest when he told us there would be something like 2,500 what I would call "pupil-teachers" used for the time being while waiting to take their teachers' courses. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us what it is proposed to pay these pupil teachers during the year they are waiting before going into training colleges.

I feel that the Minister passed too lightly over his problems in connection with building. He said they had never been a determining factor in education. He told us what is being done, but he might just as well have told us what remains to be done, because that is an enormous task. Looking at London, one sees a 20 or 30 years' rebuilding plan urgently necessary before the ancient Victorian schools can be put into good order. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary could tell us on what basis the allocation of materials is made to his Ministry. Presumably there is a global total which is divided among the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the various Service Departments, and so on. As far as I know, we have never been given any idea what proportion of that total allocation is available for his Ministry, but if we knew that it would help us to support the view of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. S. Marshall) that subdivisions of labour and materials should be allocated to local authorities and that they should be given fairly wide freedom in determining the priorities of buildings within their areas. That is essentially a local problem.

We were all glad to find that the Minister was prepared to face a future of expediency and making-do. It is clear that he will have to make-do in a good many areas in the carrying out of this Act. After all, palatial buildings are not needed for education. If they are light, airy and warm, we have the essentials. The Minister's development of his H.O.R.S.A. programme is an indication that he is prepared to face realistically the building problem in front of him. I would suggest to the Minister for his consideration that he will be faced with limitations of building programmes and development generally, but that education is not solely a matter of the schools. Can he use some of his financial resources, which will be unemployed because he cannot get men and materials, to encourage and subsidise organisations which can carry out education, not in an academic sense but in the sense of living education? I am thinking of bodies such as the Boy Scouts or the Girl Guides or the Boys Clubs, which, with a little money for headquarters or accommodation, can be encouraged to do work for which the Ministry itself may find it difficult to get facilities.

Has he considered the great potentialities of the cinema clubs as educational centres? On Saturday mornings in London the children gather together in the cinemas waiting to be fed so to speak, with educational material. There are good films shown in these cinema clubs, and there are poor films. What an amazing opportunity for the Board of Education to sponsor the production of really great educational films. What opportunities there are in the history of our own country to produce educational films not entirely of the dramatic type of "Henry V" but, for instance, the Roman Wall and the life of a Roman legion, which could be turned into an exciting film in which the young children in these large Saturday morning audiences would simply revel, and in the course of which they would learn their English history. [Interruption.] The choice can be made according to the taste of the audience, but I do not think that a young audience in the twentieth century is particularly interested in the political strife of 100 years ago.

I offer one suggestion to the Minister. My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) was able to show us today the sort of literature which he now has time to read. In my school days I would have called it a cross between a comic and a "blood." The Minister's literature presumably is "School and Life." I would suggest that after school they "swap," and that the Minister has a look at the sort of literature which is read by the boys and girls for whose future he is responsible, because it indicates their approach to life, and the way to get hold of the boys and girls is probably the realistic and vivid approach which the literature they read indicates.

I have talked about the need for realism, and I hope the Minister, in his Department, is approaching the problem of the development plans with the education authorities in a spirit of realism. I would apply that particularly to the development plan of the county of London. There, I fear, there is grave danger of a quite unreal educational programme being put up as an enormous facade which will never result in any practical consequence. The London County Council are proposing to go in wholesale for what they call multilateral schools of 2,000 children——

Mr. Eric Fletcher (Islington, East)

It is contrary to fact to say that the London County Council are going in wholesale for multilateral schools containing 2,000 pupils. They are going in for a certain number of multilateral schools, but not all of 2,000 pupils. They are of various sizes, some with as few as 600 children.

Mr. Linstead

I take my own borough of Wandsworth, which I know very well. In the London County Council plan for the borough of Wandsworth there are to be five 2,000-pupil schools—in that one London borough. I say that is bad education.

Mr. Gibson (Kennington)

Why?

Mr. Linstead

I will tell the hon. Member why. First, it is entirely unreal. It is unreal because the sites are not there, and are unlikely to be there, and it is extremely unlikely that in the next 20 years it will be possible to put up those gigantic places. The education is bad because a school of that kind can never be a community of its own with an organic relationship to the area in which it exists. [An HON. MEMBER: "Eton and Rugby."] They are boarding schools with a domestic life of their own. These are day schools, which are going to draw pupils from very wide areas, and they will have no relationship to the locality in which they are situated.

I wish to make a comparison between the multilateral and the mammoth school. We do not need a mammoth school of 2,000 pupils in order to have a multilateral school. I went to a multilateral school, which in those days was simply called a grammar school, and we had modern classics, and science. It was, in fact, a multilateral school, and there were 600 pupils. They got all the advantages of a multilateral education without the disadvantages of these enormous barracks or factories which the L.C.C. prefer to set up. We are entitled to ask from the Parliamentary Secretary for some expression of opinion from the Ministry as to their policy in regard to this proposal of the L.C.C.

Mr. E. Fletcher

I hesitate to intervene again, but I think the hon. Member is doing a disservice to London education by describing the schools the London County Council are proposing to build as factories or barracks.

Mr. Linstead

We are at least agreed at the moment that they are proposing to build them. A few moments ago we were not even agreed on that. I wish to turn for a moment to a problem which has already been discussed during the Debate. That is the need, during the next decade, for encouraging more scientific and industrial research and training in this country. More and more this country has to live on its wits, instead of on its material wealth, and we are going to need more and more industrially trained personnel. If the hon. Member for the University of Wales (Professor Gruffydd) had been here, I would gladly have entered into controversy with him on the amazing discourse he gave us today. He started with the sixth Book of the Aeneid and led us through the underworld of, it seemed to me, 100 years ago at the least. I think we must start, in discussing this question of technological and scientific education, on the basis that today there is no reason why we should not get, on a scientific basis, a fully liberal and thorough education, in the best sense of the term. We cannot cut out English or foreign languages, but if we take a subject such as chemistry, or biology, in the hands of the right teacher, dealt with in the right way, we have all the materials there for a full all-round education. I commend to the Minister in this connection the recent Report of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee on certain problems of producing really good scientists.

Basically, the problem is that there has been competition between the technical colleges and the universities, and our old friend "parity of esteem" comes into the picture also. It appears unfair that a man should go through long courses of a high standard at a technical college, which in many cases is in every way the equivalent of a university, and find himself, at the end, presented with a diploma awarded by the college, whereas the man who has been more fortunate and has got into the neighbouring university, comes out with a degree. It is not merely a question of the piece of paper which he holds in his hand. A degree opens the door to research work, to higher degrees, to all sorts of better opportunities, both in education and in industry.

Therefore, I feel that there is a peculiar obligation on the Minister to use his influence with the universities—and with all respect to him, heaven forbid that he should ever take the universities under his control—to persuade them to cast their mantle over their local technical schools or colleges. It is ridiculous that in a great city like Birmingham there should be practically no liaison between the great technical college there and Birmingham University. So one could go over a great deal of the country. He should also consider whether there are not a number of the great technical colleges which are now ripe for incorporation as universities. One can think of the Royal Technical College, Glasgow, the Merchant Venturers' College, Bristol, and the Wedgewood Technical College, Burslem, and others—great colleges which are, to all intents and purposes, ripe for incorporation as universities.

Mr. K. Lindsay

Is the hon. Member suggesting that these colleges should have the constituent properties of a university, and should be made so in advance of Nottingham, Leicester and Exeter?

Mr. Linstead

I am not saying that there may not be an intermediate stage of university college status. Hull, Exeter, Leicester and Southampton are well on the way now to incorporation as universities. There is the alternative of encouraging the University of London to extend their interest in technology. If they were to set up a faculty of technology, and to extend the external degree system within the faculty of technology as widely as they have done in the faculty of science, it would go some way to solve the problem to which I have been alluding.

I conclude by returning to what I think is the essential of any sound educational system, that is, the element of freedom. We are in for a period of contraction which will hit the Ministry of Education, as it will hit every other Ministry. That will carry with it the implications of increased control from Belgrave Square over activities throughout the whole of the educational field. Within that increased control lie the seeds of difficulty and frustration for local education authorities, for governors and for teachers. We all know the boast of a French Minister of Education that at any particular time, he knew what every child in every French school was doing. That, as we see it, means death in education. I would plead with the Minister, and I am sure that his own human sympathies would lie in the same direction, to give as great a freedom as he possibly can to local authorities, governors, headmasters and teachers. Let them experiment; do not control them too tightly over the expenditure of every penny that passes through their hands; do not impose too rigid national examination standards. Above all, make it easy for the man and woman of character and individuality to find a satisfying life in teaching. When this period of contraction comes, the Minister will have to fight for his priorities. I am sure that he will have the backing of every hon. Member in his endeavour to get high in the list of priorities. As a broad national policy, I hope we will all agree that the last cuts to be made should be those which fall on the young.

8.55 p.m.

Mr. Cove (Aberavon)

This Debate has been conducted under very great difficulties. There is the shadow of the world situation, which impresses itself upon us and there is also the difficulty caused by the fact that so many hon. Members want to speak. I hope to take up only a few minutes and I will curtail my remarks as much as possible. I would like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary what is his fundamental attitude to the whole of our education system, in this sense: does the Ministry still maintain its attitude towards the tripartite system? Is it still in the position that it was when "The Nation's Schools" was issued. I am not quite clear about this matter. This is a very popular document.

Mr. G. Thomas

What is the document?

Mr. Cove

"New Secondary Education." There are lovely pictures in it, grand pictures. But I would like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether or not the general outlook is the same in this document as it was in "The Nation's Schools." I would prefer very much that the Ministry of Education, instead of publishing photographs of the lovely, beautiful schools, which are the exception in our English education system, should print photographs of what actually exists. What actually exist up and down the country are filthy insanitary buildings, black-listed schools which have not been touched since Trevelyan occupied the post now held by the right hon. Gentleman. I suggest that the main job of the Minister of Education in a Labour Government is to see that the whole of the primary system is improved and that all the amenities are provided. I would like to know whether or not that is true. I am afraid that, as I follow the speeches of the Parliamentary Secretary, I find him deeply tied to the old classical tradition and that he is somewhat unresponsive to the needs of the new modern world.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Hardman)

Good gracious!

Mr. Cove

I will give the Parliamentary Secretary a chance to reply. I want him to reply in a very categorical manner. Does he or does he not agree to the tripartite system? It is a wicked system to segregate children at the age of n and assess their ability and what special aptitudes they have at that age. To try to do so is absolutely fantastic, and that is what I understand is still the sort of outlook—I will not use the word philosophy—of the Ministry of Education. I hope that we shall have a pronouncement tonight from the Parliamentary Secretary that they only want the local education authorities to expand with the multilateral schools. I want from the Minister a lead—a lead declaring that Labour Party policy is for the multilateral schools. There is a magnificent statement about the multilateral school in the second report of the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland. I would like the Committee to hear what it says. It refers to the tripartite scheme. The whole scheme rests on an assumption that each teacher and psychologist alike must challenge—that children of 12 sort themselves out neatly into three categories, to which these three types of school correspond. It is difficult enough to assess general ability at that age; how much harder to determine specific bents and aptitudes with the degree of accuracy that would justify this threefold classification? Status does not come with the attaching of a name or by a wave of the administrative wand, and the discussion to date has left the position of the modern school neither defined nor secure. What is the policy of the Ministry towards the modern school? Is it going to give children in the modern school the same amenities and opportunities as apply to the grammar schools? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] Well, when? Are we going to deny the children in the modern schools the opportunity of taking the same examinations as the grammar schools? I would like to have an answer to that. Are we going to give them the same freedom in that respect as exists with the grammar schools? I would like to know.

I wish I could have entered this Debate earlier, because, as a matter of fact, education is a very fundamental service, not only as far as the economic prosperity of this country is concerned, but as far as the maintenance of democracy is concerned, and democracy depends in the last analysis, on the education of the common people of this country, and the education of the common children of this country is to be found, or 90 per cent. of it, in a modern secondary school. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) put his Bill on the Statute Book—a very great effort. It has got to be fulfilled and made realistic by our people in office. I want to know from the Minister what is the policy of the Government in relation to the modern secondary school?

9.5 p.m.

The Parliamentary-Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Hardman)

I have 25 minutes in which to reply to a great number of points which have been raised in the course of this Debate, and I trust that hon. Members will not think me discourteous if I attempt to answer only a few of the many matters raised. Some of the answers, I could not give without consultation and reflection, and others, quite frankly, I am unable to answer at this moment without my book; I simply do not know the facts, I fear, therefore, that I have made a selection, and I hope to stick to it during my reply. I, too, deplore the fact that in a Parliamentary year we have the opportunity for only one lengthy Debate on education such as today, and I add my protest to that of the hon. Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. K. Lindsay) and the other hon. Members who have mentioned this point.

The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) raised a number of points, and I will try to take them scriatim. He mentioned the fact that bricks were available, and that, therefore, the Minister should make it priority No. I to get the bricks turned into schools. But we know that bricks, even though they may be stacked in the yards, are merely one of the problems. There is the grave shortage of cement, and, in many areas, of labour. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the inspectorate, as did other hon. Members in the course of the Debate. I am happy to have the opportunity of giving some figures in connection with this question. In 1945, the inspectorate was, approximately 300 in number; in 1947, it is about 440, and, in 1948, it will rise to 500. We at the Ministry recognise, and, indeed, the inspectorate itself recognises, that its real job is in the schools. There has been too much administrative work for the inspectors to do, but that work is diminishing. - Only this week I had the advantage of going to an inspectors' course at Wrabness, in Essex, where a number of inspectors were gathered together, not only to instruct, but also to learn the art of school camping, a most important part of the recreational work under the 1944 Act. There are also other courses which inspectors run, and which they attend.

The danger of the shortage of women teachers has been pointed out by the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden and by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Cardiff (Mr. G. Thomas), and others. I have the honour to be the chairman of the interim committee which is considering this problem, and we hope to be able to advise the Minister on the whole question of the recruitment of women for teaching, and their distribution in the teaching profession. It is, however, at this stage, that one can point out that certain emergency training colleges will, in the coming two years, be turned over specifically for the purpose of training women teachers, not only, as at present under the Emergency Training Scheme, in one-year courses, but also in the usual two-year courses.

The right hon. Gentleman also asked for certain figures in connection with school milk and school meals. In August, 1946, school milk was made free of charge. The percentage of children having milk in the grant-aided schools jumped from 72 to 92. Since then, as he suggested, it has fallen back—perhaps the novelty has warn off—but only to 88½ per cent. In numbers, the increase is from 3,370,00g in June, 1946, to 4,300,000 in June, 1947. As regards school dinners, the number fed is now 2,350,000, which is 48½ per cent. of the number of children in attendance. The increase during 1946 was in the neighbourhood of 400,000, which was almost a record. Since the end of the war much progress has been made, although we are the first to admit that it falls a good deal short of what we hoped for. I am afraid I cannot pursue other figures in connection with these two matters, but I hope it will be agreed that, on the whole, we have been successful in milk provision and in the provision of school meals.

Figures were requested in connection with the size of classes. May I give a few comparative figures to clinch the matter? In 1938, classes of over 50 numbered 2,100. In 1946, they had risen to 3,823. The provisional figures for this year show a reduction, in classes of over 50, to 1,975. In 1938, classes of over 40, senior or secondary, were 3,950. In 1946 they had risen to 5,101, but in 1947 we are down to 2,807—again, provisional figures. As my right hon. Friend has said, we believe that the reduction in the size of classes need not wait for the classrooms which we know are eminently desirable. Improvisation can still take place, and in any case, so far as the supply of teachers is concerned, we can use any so-described surplus teaching population to help in the teaching of the larger classes where they still exist. Going about the country as I do, I have seen innumerable examples of how well, even in a handicraft class, with 20 or even fewer boys and girls, the provision of an extra teacher, or in some cases two teachers, can assist in fomenting the right spirit in the class and helping forward the work.

My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mr. Brook) drew attention to the extremely important question of university awards' after the closing down of the Further Education and Training Scheme, and I was very glad indeed that in the course of his remarks he laid such emphasis upon the importance of those who are interested in the arts as distinct merely from the specialists whom we have learned to respect, and rightly so, so much during the years of national emergency in the scientific field. We are aware of the very interesting figures which he mentioned in the course of his speech; but I would remind him of something which he already knows, but which he did not mention, and that is the fact that the Further Education and Training Scheme is making up a six years' leeway and, therefore, it is fair to say that at the moment and in the immediate future there is a breathing space in which to consider what will be the future of the training scheme proposals.

Then, too, the figures which he gave with respect to the increase in the number of State scholarships, the number of technical scholarships and major awards, are, after all, only annual figures, and it may well be that next year the Ministry will decide that those figures will, in many instances, have to be appreciably increased; but I want my hon. Friend to understand that we have this problem very much to the fore, and we realise that we shall soon have to make up our minds what will take the place of the Further Education and Training Scheme.

I now come to the vexed question of the grammar schools, which has been mentioned by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. The problem was mentioned in particular by the hon. Member for the Combined English Universities and the hon. Member for the University of Wales (Professor Gruffydd). I would like to know who is supposed to be attacking the grammar schools. Is it the Minister, or the Parliamentary Secretary, or the officials at the Ministry of Education? Is it the National Union of Teachers? What group is attacking the grammar schools? Surely, some members of the staffs of grammar schools are getting extremely touchy? There is no question about it—there is ample proof in a speech I had the honour myself of making at the annual conference of the Association of Assistant Masters, at Blackpool on 2nd January last—that we have emphasised again and again that we must maintain the highest possible academic traditions in the grammar schools. I have myself said up and down the country—and my right hon. Friend has done the same thing in much more effective terms than I have—in speech after speech that the nation cannot afford at any time in its history, particularly now, to do without the finest trained brains it possesses, from whichever class of society those brains come.

Surely, we can, now and again, suggest that the grammar schools may change in certain respects? Surely, it is possible to suggest that there are two ways of training men of equal status—that there is the way of book learning, always absolutely essential; but that there is also the way of activity? I should have thought that after study in the classroom, learning from the reading of arithmetical text-books, one could go for a period into the woodwork room, and learn more significantly the importance of the arithmetical conundrums one had been doing. I cannot for the life of me see whence this attack on the standards of the grammar schools is coming. Surely, we can from time to time suggest that possible changes can take place. It is significant in my experience that some of the grammar schools, and the younger members of the staffs of the grammar schools, have not only themselves changed, but are changing, and are in agreement with many of the views put forward that certain changes can take place, even in the timetables of the old established, traditional grammar schools up and down the country. It is after all a very peculiar state of affairs that we have in grammar schools four or five classical masters and have only two or three for the teaching of modern languages? Surely, we can suggest now and again that certain changes may be of inestimable value?

The fact is that we have had university education for far too long, for far too few. That, surely, is the crux of the whole graduate position today. In other words, the grammar school education has been extremely successful. The grammar schools have shown the nation that in all kinds of professions the expert graduate is required; and now, in all kinds of professions, they are asking for more specialists, graduates from the universities. Here we are without the number of graduates to go round; here we are without the number of university places to take in all those specialists we require under modern conditions. That, indeed, is the crux of the shortage of graduates in grammar schools. There is no doubt about it, it is an extremely urgent and an extremely serious problem, and my right hon. Friend and I are very well aware that every measure must be taken to get graduate specialists into the schools in order to enable a greater number of graduate specialists to come out of the schools.

My hon. Friend the Member for Central Cardiff had many interesting things to say about school meals. May I add my tribute to what he said about all that the teachers are doing in helping to make this school meals service a success under extremely difficult handicaps? To go into a school and see there in a classroom, as my hon. Friend said, the cutlery and crockery, which are far from being of a very high standard, laid out on the rough tables from which our school children still take their midday meals, is to know it is not good enough. We intend that the school meals service shall be a contribution to the life of the school day, and a contribution, like every other activity in the schools, to helping to produce that sense of style which, I think, is the hallmark of the young person leaving school who intends to develop into an educated adult.

There is, it is true, a real crisis in regard to infant school teaching, and, as my right hon. Friend said, we are preparing to meet this serious deficiency. This means that immediate methods have to be employed to persuade the girls in the fifth and sixth forms to take an interest in infant teaching, and to convince them that the teaching of infants is as highly specialised a job as teaching the translation of Racine for the higher schools certificate. I would add, in this connection—because a question has been asked—underlining what my right hon. Friend said in his opening speech, that there is no question whatever of letting down those men who have been accepted for training as teachers. They are to be trained, and we shall be able to use them in all manner of ways in the wide educational field which the Education Act, 1944, now makes possible.

Mr. K. Lindsay

The Parliamentary Secretary is not denying, is he, that at the present moment there is a deficiency in both infant and grammar schools?

Mr. Hardman

I have suggested that there is a deficiency in the grammar schools, and I have also suggested that there is a deficiency of infant teachers in infant schools, so I have admitted what my hon. Friend requires me to admit.

I was rather surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove) suggested that some of my ideas might be too traditional and not in accordance with modern thought. Frankly, I have usually been criticised the other way about. I have always suggested that what I want to give the children is a sense of achievement. If we have a wide curriculum from which the children can choose, they will find something they can do well. To leave school able to do something really well is the finest contribution that can be made to the life of the adolescent.

The hon. Member for Ripon (Mr. York) and the hon. Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) drew attention to the village schools. I must say, I was delighted with the reply which my hon. Friend the Member for Epping gave to the hon. Member for Ripon in regard to rural education. No one questions the value of the village teacher. Three or four weeks ago, I went to a village school in Norfolk and encountered a very fine example of that type of teacher. He is still helping the farmers with all their area and weight calculations; he is instructing the young farmers' clubs, and he is helping the whole neighbourhood in a hundred and one different ways. Such a man is invaluable in the life of our countryside, and the happy, informal atmosphere of many village schools is of immense value in moral and social training.

Let us never forget, however, the deplorable condition of so many rural school buildings. When I visit schools I make my own reports on the school buildings. In certain rural areas—and, after all, it is the rural committees who are suggesting the closing of so many of these schools—there are scores of school buildings which were erected before 1870. In the last few weeks I have seen a dozen schools which were built between 1800 and 1815, and they are still in use, with the buildings unchanged. Let me quote from one report which I made on school B, as I called it: The school was re-organised in the spring of this year; there are 35 children, and a young teacher just out of college has started this term. When last visited, in February, the headmaster was virtually single-handed; he had part-time help in the afternoon, but it was so incompetent as to be worse than none—with 45 children from 5 to 14 years of age. The work was very poor. There is no artificial lighting at all. The playground wall has been broken down, leaving a wide and now generally used access to the school. It has been like this for many years. Neither of the boys' closets have seats. The glass in both doors to the playground is broken; the playground surface is completely broken. I do so agree with what the hon. Lady the Member for Epping had to say about playgrounds; sometimes they are not even there in our rural areas. That was a denominational school. Finally, I should like to say something on the very interesting point, which was raised by the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Linstead), concerning the old question of visual aids.

Mr. R. A. Butler

Is the Parliamentary Secretary not going to refer to the other important matters relating to the voluntary schools at this stage?

Mr. Hardman

On another occasion, perhaps. The Ministry have certain visual units, and are planning the production of some 20 films of an educational nature. There have been four of these films produced—"The Beginning of History," "Instruments of the Orchestra," "Houses in History" and "Local Studies." Then, as hon. Members know, the Ministry have set up two committees, which are investigating the teacher and production side of the use of films in schools. These committees have just produced an interim programme of about 100 visual projects suggested by the teachers themselves, and we are extremely grateful to the producers, teachers and local authorities for one more very fine example of co-operation in education.

Hon. Members have raised, not before its time in a Debate of this kind, the fundamental question of the purpose of education. It has been described as the necessity for producing character in the child. How is that character to be produced. May I make my own contribution in an attempt to answer that question? It is that the schools of today, made easier in the far better schools of tomorrow, should give our children the precision and accuracy which come with the teaching of science, and the profound satisfaction which comes to all of us when we command some technical skill and are capable of fine manual achievement. We are determined to see that the whole pageantry of the arts is there for the pupils to select, so that they may gain constant refreshment of the spirit from the whole world of the arts. To me, the most important thing of all, and it is what we need most in the world to take us along the road to achieve spiritual sanity, is the coming together, as the 1944 Act suggests, at the beginning of each school day, in that act of corporate worship. This dignified quiet, unhurried period, to which all pupils and teachers alike contribute in prayer, music and reading, is as important to the life of a school as the highest academic teaching to be found anywhere in the school timetable. Never was there a time when our people were so "perplexed with contrarieties." The teachers, by their insistence on the essential need for building up character, have all along refused to yield up" moral questions in despair." In the implementing of the 1944 Act with energy and vision, we want the storm ridden sky "to ripen into a steady morn."

Mr. R. A. Butler

I wish to state the attitude of the Opposition in regard to the outstanding Votes which will shortly be put. It has frequently been the custom in the past to oppose these. Votes, but I rise to say that on this occasion we propose to follow the procedure we adopted last year. This must not be taken necessarily as a precedent for the future when, we trust, some Votes may be regrouped so that we may be able to vote against those to which take violent objection, but which we cannot vote against now because they are included in Classes which would necessitate voting against subjects with which we are in agreement.

Resolved, That a sum, not exceeding £117,117,400, be granted to His Majesty to complete the sums necessary to defray the charges for the following services connected with Education for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1948, namely—

Class IV., Vote 1, Ministry of Education	£91,185,535
Class VII., Vote 6, Public Buildings, Great Britain (including a Supplementary sum of £225,275)	£25,931,865
	£117,117,400"

The CHAIRMAN then proceeded, pursuant to the order of the House this day, forthwith to put severally the Questions,

"That the total amounts of the Votes outstanding in the several Classes of the Civil Estimates, including Supplementary Estimates, and the total amounts of the Votes outstanding in the Estimates for the Revenue Departments, the Navy, Army and Air Services be granted for the Services defined in those Classes and Estimates."