§ 36. Mr. John Arbuthnotasked the Minister of Education what was the total cost for the last convenient 12 months of running the divisional education executive committees in Kent.
§ Miss Horsbrugh£186,700 was the estimated figure for 1951–52.
§ Mr. ArbuthnotIs a local authority empowered to abolish a divisional executive in a place where it may think that the expenditure is excessive or where the divisional executive may appear to be, as it were, a fifth wheel on the coach—interposed between the school governors and the county education officer?
§ Miss HorsbrughA local authority has power to reduce the number of divisional executives if it finds that money is being spent and it is not getting value for it. At the same time, as in the case of the nursery schools, I could not agree to the indiscriminate abolishing of the executives. We must look at each one individually, and judge it individually, in the same way as we do the nursery schools.
§ Mr. Charles PannellIs the right hon. Lady aware that her reply is somewhat misleading, because figures have been worked out in Kent to show how much each executive costs in administration—which is the point, I think, of the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot)—and they show that there are 17 divisional executives costing £300 a year each.
§ Miss HorsbrughThe figure I gave includes salaries, wages, office accommodation, printing, stationery, postage, travelling, statistical and other expenses, but not the cost of inspection or any establishment charges against the education service for the services of other departments of the authority.