ENGLISH SCHOOLS, SOUTH AMERICA (Hansard, 30 November 1954)

§ Mr. M. Follick (Loughborough)
As this is the first day of the debate on the Gracious Speech, I had hoped that we might have started the Adjournment debate much earlier—

§ Mr. Follick
The matter I am raising tonight is little understood in this country, but, nevertheless, is of great importance. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson) has remarked, about half the students at the polytechnics are from abroad. This morning I received a letter from Lima the capital of Peru, addressed to me by the Secretary of the Federation of British Industries there. He writes: Thank you very much for your letter of November 18th"— his reply is dated 25th November— and enclosures. It is very good of you to be taking an interest in these engineering students, and I am sure it will be greatly appreciated by them as it is by my Committee. I shall be very interested to hear the result of your intervention regarding the English schools in South America, which is a matter of great importance for British influence in this part of the world. It should be noted that this letter was written, not by an educational person, but, as I say, by the Secretary of the Federation of British Industries.
What is the importance of these schools? Some of them are very long established; I think that St. Andrew's School in Buenos Aires was established more than 100 years ago. They are very fine schools. We have them in the Argentine, in Chile, Peru and other parts of South America. Most of them have first-class grounds, good playing fields and fine buildings, but many of them—I cannot say all—are finding themselves in 138 difficulties because of the economy cuts which the present Government thought necessary to make after the last General Election.
In figures, those economy cuts were not very large, but in many cases they made the difference between success or failure for the school. I shall speak for the moment of the very fine English school in Santiago, Chile. There, I understand, the cut was not much more than £500 a year. The cuts were carried out by the British Council. It was the British Council who gave this extra money to the schools to help them. There is a campaign against the British Council. I think that campaign is being waged by some authority or association that does not understand the great work that the British Council is doing for this country.
I have had a lot to do with the British Council in foreign parts. I doubt whether any hon. Member has had the advantages and benefits from the British Council that I have had. This summer I was in South America. I know every State of America from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. In the Summer Recess I gave over 30 lectures, 23 in Spanish, some in Portuguese and German, and the rest in English. I gave six broadcasts, mostly in Spanish, and I took part in two brains trusts.
It was all organised by the British Council. Naturally, they did not pay any of the money. I paid all the expenses out of my own pocket. I did that as the work of a British citizen travelling abroad. I had no benefit from it. I was acting as a good British citizen trying to do his best for his country while he is abroad, learning as much as I could and giving as much information as I could. But I could not have done it without the organisation of the British Council.
I went into every room in this very fine school at Santiago and I saw its playing fields. In fact, I spent nearly a whole day there. Nobody could have been prouder than I, as a British person, finding this very fine English school in this foreign country. Most of the teaching is not for English people but for Chileans. It may be asked why we should spend money on educating foreigners. The answer is that every pupil who goes to one of these schools and learns about British ways and habits, who learns our language and some of our history, what 139 we have done and what we are doing in the world, becomes a good pro-British help in that part of the world.
Later on, many of these pupils want to go to a university in Europe, and those who can, including the sons of wealthy people, come to a British university. A student who has studied engineering or technical subjects here, on returning to his own country will choose to use British engineering instruments and British machinery in his work. There we have the sequence of some of the benefits to be derived from the English schools in South America.
Americans have never failed to understand this infiltration of Americanism through education. I was in Beirut two years ago and went over the American university there. Every student who leaves that university is a help to America in the Lebanon. There was a university there previously but the Americans put their university in Beirut, too. Lebanese Arabs went to the university and left it speaking English, and they give weight to the American way of life in the Lebanon. I have here a magazine in English which is distributed monthly in the Lebanon. They also have a newspaper in English which I receive from the Lebanon. It will he seen how the infiltration of language and teaching goes through the Lebanon to the benefit of the Lebanese who have been to that university.
After the First World War I was active in educational work in Madrid and was attached to the Madrid University. In Madrid there was a good German school; it was not a political organisation but a first-class educational establishment Well-to-do-Spanish families sent their sons to the German school and boys who left that school went to German universities and later returned to Spain pro-German. In the four years I was in Spain I found that a large proportion of the pro-Germanism which existed in Spain during the First World War and long afterwards stemmed from this very fine German school in Madrid. We do not have to be political to bring people to our way of thinking and behaviour, if our way of thinking and behaviour is a standard which they understand.
That is the basis for my bringing forward tonight the question of the impor- 140 tance of these English schools in South America. Probably not one person in 100,000 in this country understands it, but in South America they understand it. Can we afford, on account of economies, to lose that influential instrument which we have in our hands in that part of the world? It is about the only territory remaining in the world today where we have a certain amount of freedom of trade and commerce. All the rest is gradually becoming closed. There are about 160 million to 170 million people in that part of the world. They are largely pro-British because America is their neighbour and in many instances American policy has not suited them.
The English policy was not so much a strategical policy as a commercial policy, and the South Americans have liked our system and behaviour in commerce. These schools did provide the basis for developing that friendliness for Great Britain and with friendliness we get commerce. If they like British people very often they are attracted to visit Britain, to see the things we have here, the things we like. In turn they develop a liking for those things as well. I give the instance of football, which was a development of this country. Nowhere are people madder about football than in the Argentine, Uruguay and that part of the world.
If these schools are forced to close down on account of financial difficulties we shall lose a fine instrument of friendly penetration. The school in Santiago cannot afford to take teachers out from this country. It has to put up with the teachers it can find in its own country. The young Chilean at an English school does not want to be taught by a Chilean-bred teacher but by a teacher from this country, who knows everything which is happening in this country at the moment. That cannot be done now because these schools have not the means to do it.
I appeal to the Minister to see whether he can bring pressure to bear on the Chancellor of the Exchequer so that the economy cuts instituted a couple or three years ago may be restored and these schools made able to carry on as they did in the past, developing the British system of education in those countries and providing a good system of education of which we and they can be proud. They could then develop this state of friendliness that redounds to 141 our benefit and, as the Secretary of the Federation of British Industries pointed out, we should not throw away the very valuable influence we have in that part of the world.
The population of this country is rising to 52 million. We cannot afford to lose a part of the world where trade can be valuable to us. We must use every means in our power to conserve whatever trade we can in any part of the world, and that part of the world is perhaps the best for us. We have tradition there, we have trust there, we have friendship there. Do not let us lose these schools on account of economy cuts. Economy cuts which may save only a few tens of thousands of pounds, may be the cause of our losing tens of millions of pounds and great friends if ever these schools disappear.

§ The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Lord John Hope)
Nobody, least of all Her Majesty's Government, doubts the great value of these schools in South America, where they are doing a fine job. The schools were founded originally by members of the British community so that their children could have a British type of education.
The schools went through two stages of development. The first stage was that the British community formed limited companies to run them. The second stage was that they were then helped by nationals of the countries concerned who realised the limitations of their own system. That was the start of the schools. They are non-profit-making and the parents themselves are sometimes shareholders.
When the British Council began its activities in Latin America, it seemed that one of its most useful activities would be to support these schools, and this support began in the late 'thirties. I emphasise straight away to the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Follick) that this support was intended primarily to give these schools a good start where it was wanted.
Particularly did this interest of the British Council focus itself in Chile, as the hon. Member knows. There, the British Council is itself a shareholder in four of the schools. It also has a share in one of the schools in Peru. One advantage of this shareholding was that it 142 enabled the Council to be represented on the boards of governors.
Now I come to the principle of subsidising, which can have only two objects. I am not laying down the principles but am stating the principles which the British Council itself has put; they are principles which we support. First, subsidies must enable schools, which would otherwise fail to do so, to maintain themselves. Secondly, the subsidies must increase the efficiency of such schools by enabling them to pay for facilities in the matter of staff, and so on, which would otherwise be beyond their means.
Where sufficient demand for a school exists, it follows that the school should be able to become self-supporting in a reasonable time. What the British Council says—and we believe it is right—is that if a school cannot do so, this means that there is not sufficient demand and that a subsidy, therefore, would be unwarranted because it would be unwanted. As I said, the original object of the subsidies was to put the schools on their feet.
The hon. Member for Loughborough referred to the school in Santiago. I take it that he was referring to The Grange.

§ Mr. Follick
Yes.

§ Lord John Hope
It is interesting that our information and the British Council's information does not exactly coincide with the impression gained by the hon. Member.

§ Mr. Follick
I was giving the information that I received at The Grange.

§ Lord John Hope
The British Council is a shareholder of the school and I am bound to assume, therefore, that the Council, like the hon. Member, knows a certain amount about it.
The position as we know it is that The Grange is doing very well and that what subsidy there was was withdrawn because, in the opinion of the British Council, it was no longer needed. The Council, in fact, has no knowledge that the school cannot afford teachers from the United Kingdom. I will, of course, look into the hon. Member's assertion, but that is our information at the moment. Therefore, as far as we know, the prospects for that school are not as gloomy as the hon. Member suggests.
143 It is true that there were these cuts in several of these schools. They were not very big cuts, because the original subsidies were not very big. It was felt that, as I am sure the hon. Member would be one of the first to agree, it was unwise and unethical to continue the payment of subsidies, even though they were very small, where that would have amounted to subsidising inefficiency, simply to wasting the taxpayers' money, although it might have been only a little.
To show how carefully this matter has been gone into I would point out that there was, for instance, one school at Punta Arenas where the British Council thought that the withdrawal of the subsidies—and withdrawal had been intended—might lead to the closing of the school, so the subsidy has been temporarily maintained. It will, therefore, be seen that the business of cutting subsidies is being closely and fairly watched.
I said just now that we have no evidence that the school on which the hon. Member focused his attention is unable, because of these cuts, to afford British teachers. Indeed, my information on that 144 question, relating to all the British schools in South America, is that the Council is regularly recruiting teachers where there is no subsidy. Certainly, that is so in Peru, and that is so in Venezuela.
The hon. Gentleman very rightly stressed the value—I think it is incalculable—of British influence extended in this way in this part of the world. We do not minimise it. We do not want to do anything that will do so. We want to help, and where we can help we shall help. I am bound to point this out, however, to the hon. Member, to whom I am extremely grateful for raising this most important and vital subject, of which, as he said, so few people know. Our influence is really not lessened when we withdraw the payment of what is, in fact, the money of the taxpayers of this country where that money is not needed. What we must do, and what we try to do, is to spend it where it is needed. That we shall continue to do.