HC Deb 28 January 1957 vol 563 cc811-22

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Oakshott.]

10.40 p.m.

Dr. Horace King (Southampton, Itchen)

May I first congratulate the hon. Member on his new appointment? He follows an excellent junior Minister whom educationists throughout the country have learned to like and respect. I hope and believe that the new Parliamentary Secretary, although he is back again inside the political gaol from which he escaped for a few months, will acquit himself well while in his new post.

I deplore the fact that his chief has been chosen from another place, remarkable in history for the number of Education Bills that it has thrown out. That observation is not personal. I do not mind the noble Lord moving from battleships to scholarships, but education, which the Conservatives exiled from the Cabinet until we made them put it back, ought to have a senior spokesman in the elected House of Parliament.

The serious overcrowding of our schools is shown by the figures I am about to give. By law the maximum size of classes should be 30 for secondary schools and 40 for primary schools. In 1938 there were 8,700 senior—what would now be secondary—classes of over 30 and 38,000 primary classes of over 40. In other words, there were 47,000 oversized classes. In January, 1955, there were 35,000 secondary classes of over 30 and 37,000 primary classes of over 40—or 72,000 oversized classes. There are reasons for this. There was the raising of the school-leaving age in 1946; the dramatic increase in the birth rate between 1945 and 1950; and our failure to provide enough new schools and teachers to hold the 1938 position, bad as that was.

It is true that schools come steadily off the stocks, despite the cuts imposed on local education authorities by two successive Ministers—I hope that the Minister will note the latest protest of the County Councils Association about this—and that the number of teachers has steadily expanded. But a Select Committee of the House, the National Advisory Council for the Supply and Training of Teachers, The Times Educational Supplement and now The Times itself have called attention to the fact that we lag behind in building and in the supply of teachers.

The incidence of large classes now moves from primary to secondary schools. In January, 1954, the number of overcrowded primary classes was 40,447. In January, 1955, it had dropped to 37,011. But we must not therefore imagine that the primary school problem is solved to the extent that we can draft hosts of primary teachers to secondary schools. There are still 37,000 oversized classes to wipe out. Primary teachers have borne the heat and burden of the day for ten years. It would be wrong to prevent the decline in child population from getting primary classes down to the standards prescribed by law. Moreover, even in 1965 the infant schools' population will be 162,000 higher than it was in 1938.

The "bulge" is now steadily packing the secondary schools. In January, 1954 there were 33,347 oversized classes, but in January, 1955, there were 35,428. The overall shortage remains; it is merely the incidence which is shifting. Post-war Governments stepped up the supply of teachers. First, there were the emergency-trained teachers who, I think it will be agreed, are giving a good account of themselves today. Then, the number of training colleges has increased from 78 to 133. The annual intake of colleges and university departments of education has increased to over 15,000, but the annual wastage from the teaching profession by retirement, marriage and other causes is 10,000.

Experts thought that an extra 5,000 teachers a year would hold the 1950 position, but an annual return of 2,000 married women gives now an annual increase of 7,000, so that the increase has outstripped expectations. Indeed, experts hope that once the "bulge" has passed though our schools, this steady increase will provide teachers for the next operation—first, to get back to the 1938 figures and then on to the standards laid down by law, so that all children will be educated in the size of class prescribed for them. Even that will mean classes double the size in which 250,000 privileged children are throughout these critical years being educated in private schools.

But while the picture some years ahead looks promising, let us remember that although the school population stops increasing in 1961—it will have risen from 4.9 million in 1947 to 6.8 million in 1961—the decline after that is at first slow. As late as 1968 there will still be 1⅓ million more school children than in 1947.

The burning question is, what can we do for our children now? They are moving from classes where the maximum should be 40 into classes where it should be 30. Secondary schools now face hardships as great as those that the primary schools have endured for ten years. Indeed, even the new buildings, the so-called senior schools, built just before the war cannot cope with the massive intake of secondary school children, and, as for the older, shabby ex-elementary schools, they are almost breaking down under the strain.

There is also the fact that the teacher shortage, like the position of bad schools, is a matter of geography. It is unevenly distributed. We have still the shameful village schools and the cramped slum schools of some industrial towns. Same local education authorities have always been short of teachers. Some local education authorities have an extra burden of children. For example, whereas the national increase is under 50 per cent., Hampshire has doubled its child population since the war. Some industrial areas face a similar abnormal expansion in the number of children and also the counter-attractions of thriving industry and good employment there for potential teachers.

Figures are dangerous, but they give a rough picture of this aspect of the problem. In three rural counties the pupil-teacher ratio last October was Cheshire 29.8, Hampshire 28.9 and Westmorland 22.3. In a few boroughs the figures were Bournemouth, 25.7, Southampton 26.7, Birmingham 31.1, Wakefield 31.1 and Hull 32.1.

Compare with these the Welsh counties of Cardigan 18.7, Montgomery 18.3 and Radnor 17.3. And these disparities were tending to increase. For that reason the National Advisory Council for the Training and Supply of Teachers recommended last year, as I did in an earlier debate, that every local education authority ought to be given an establishment … something like its fair share of the national supply, and during the critical years should not exceed that, so that teacher-starved areas might recruit more teachers.

At first, the previous Minister was coy, the professional bodies were hostile and the better-off local education authorities had not always played the game when similar sharing out of young women teachers was tried after the war. Each had good reasons for not supporting rationing. But the fact that all have been compelled by circumstance to agree that the Minister's proposal is a good one just shows how desperate the position is. I therefore commend the Minister's Circular 318 to the country, as one anxious about secondary education and especially as a member of the Hampshire Education Committee.

But there are some caveats. This must not mean the direction of teachers from primary schools to secondary schools. I was glad to see the disclaimer of the West Riding authority, another hard-hit authority, on that score. I see no hardship in a young teacher coming out of college and not finding a job in the town and the school he has chosen. No profession can guarantee that its young entrants can count on selecting the most convenient posts at once.

There is a golden opportunity for young men and women of ambition in the rural schools of Britain, despite the physical condition of some of them. Birmingham is a good local education authority and the shortage is no condemnation either of the city or of its local education authority. I would urge, too, that some, and only some, of the primary teachers should volunteer to help to cope with the large numbers in secondary schools. Every good teacher is a teacher first and a specialist afterwards. Some of the keen ones will, I hope, take advantage of the short-term courses offered for special training for the emergency. This is a call for voluntary service.

I believe that the teaching profession wants to help. It has a duty by its members in the grim areas of overcrowding. No child ought to have his primary schooling in oversized classes followed by his secondary schooling in oversized classes. The profession is resolute and determined that primary education must not foot the whole bill for the Government's inadequacy. Primary education has been the Cinderella for over fifty years, and was even so in the last Burnham award.

Despite what I have said about general teaching ability, primary teachers have special skills from training, experience and endowment. It is educationally unsound to try to build up the superstructure of British education, secondary education, in all its promise and progress, if its foundations, primary education, are always to be sacrificed or weakened; so any transfer from primary to secondary must be done with good will and free will and must not check the primary schools' advance to reasonably sized classes.

Incidentally, I hope that some day we shall end the crass anomaly of fixing the size of primary classes at 40 as compared with 30 for secondary, as though education depended on the physical size of the children. Similarly there must be free will and good will in the relations between local education authorities. I am glad that they seem to be wanting to support the Minister, and that there will be, no need for sanctions.

But the poorer local education authorities must not rely on quotas to solve their problem. It will be a bad thing if they sit back and say, "We are bound to get our ration anyway". They must go out and actively recruit teachers, and they must look at what is wrong in their present set-up. Education of 18th January, 1957, reported one local education authority as having 189 primary schools. Only 38 have water-closets, 37 have no staff lavatory, 41 no hot waiter, and 144 have no staff washbasins. When are local education authorities going to see that teachers do not have to work under conditions that the Factory Acts would not tolerate for other workers?

Thousands of teachers, especially in small schools, are given a host of ancillary jobs to do. I was staggered at the figure I found in last year's Ministry of Education Report: 12,000 out of 29,000 head teachers are also full-time class teachers.

Local housing authorities can help to make teachers mobile by providing housing accommodation, if they really want to save their children by getting more teachers in teacher-starved areas. But all this merely helps in the sharing. The basic problem is the shortage itself, especially if we want to see education advance, and the teacher's training extended to three years. I have already promised to allocate the time equally between myself and the Minister, otherwise I would give some of the reasons for this important reform. I would only say that if we keep the training colleges at their present physical size, the introduction of the three years' teacher training would mean cutting down the annual intake to the profession by nearly one-third every year.

What we want is greater physical accommodation at the training colleges—hostels, teaching space, equipment, staff—so that the training colleges can still have the same annual intake. If that is done, the cost for introducing the three years' teacher training will be only one year's supply—one year's output of the training colleges, at the moment of its introduction.

But I return to the immediate problem, and would make one further practical suggestion. I would ask the Minister whether he will not defer from National Service young men coming out of training colleges, and release those at present serving. That would give us a desperately-needed 2,000–3,000 extra teachers for the present crisis at once. I must admit that I do not like the differential call-up. One of the good things about National Service is that it is fair. But for agriculture and mining we place the urgent needs of the country first, and in this crisis I believe that we ought to do so for secondary education. Again, the Trades Union Congress proposal, just announced, to cut the call-up by six months would give us 500–1,000 extra teachers.

To illustrate to the House how grim things are in the worst areas, on 23rd June, according to The Times, the Chairman of West Bromwich Education Committee said that its schools were 20 per cent. below proper staffing establishment. In one year in Birmingham, according to The Times of 11 th August, the number of secondary modern pupils went up from 49,720 to 52,926, but the number of secondary modern teachers went down from 1,788 to 1,650. In 1955–56, the figures were: all secondary pupils up from 66,205 to 70,678; all secondary teachers up from 2,599 to 2,658–60 extra teachers for 4,000 extra children.

Six months ago the Birmingham education authority officer estimated the shortage at 1,128 teachers and prophesied an "inevitable breakdown". Of 4,765 classes, 3,297 were oversized, 2,493 of them being over 40. Over the weekend the same officer wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Shurmer), saying: The position remains extremely serious…it is a little better than last January. I have tried to work out from his figures, which are not yet finalised, how much better it is—probably 249 teachers better than the estimate which he gave in August. So that Birmingham is still nearly 1,000 teachers short.

Last July the chief education officer of Hull spoke of "a crisis in 1957" and the fear of a four-day week there. The Times of 11th July said: The whole apparatus of education—especially on the secondary and technical side—is hopelessly overtaxed. No good administrator can be satisfied if he knows what talent is slipping through the nation's hands. We have achieved much since the war, but not enough. Talent is indeed slipping through our hands. I urge the Parliamentary Secretary, and through him the Minister—whose first public speech was fired with a glow of idealism—to tackle both the special problem that I have raised tonight and the overall task of which it is just a sample. That task is not only of desperately holding on to what we have achieved, but of pushing on to the goal of the 1944 Act.

As a Socialist, I hope that the Minister's period of office will be short. Long or short, I would urge him to launch a few torpedoes at the Government on behalf of education, and tonight's debate is a call for action on a most urgent problem.

10.56 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Sir Edward Boyle)

I thank the hon. Member for Southampton, lichen (Dr. King) very sincerely for his kind remarks about myself. I should also like to thank him for having given me notice of the points that he intended to raise. I will of course ensure that my noble Friend sees them. There are also some points which I will bring to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour and National Service.

I agree with the hon. Member very much about the importance of National Service seeming fair. The very first problem which came my way when I was first a junior Minister at the Ministry of Supply, two and a half years ago, was about the deferment of National Service for certain craftsmen. The complications and correspondence that arose made me realise as nothing else might have done the enormous difficulty of breaching any further the principle of universality by classes of deferment. But I know the hon. Member is aware of the difficulties, and I will see that the Minister of Labour is acquainted with what he said.

The hon. Member spoke of serious overcrowding in schools. It is certainly true that classes in primary and secondary schools are larger than they should be, but it is encouraging that the teacher force is increasing each year and that that increase is more than enough to match the additional needs arising from the post-war bulge and to make possible some improvement in staffing. I shall have some figures about that to quote later in my speech. The trouble of course is that the teachers are unevenly distributed among authorities. The scheme announced in Circular 318 is primarily designed to correct part of that maldistribution although of course not to bring complete equality of staffing in different areas which of necessity vary in their circumstances.

Circular 318, which was issued by the former Minister after consulting the various local authority and teacher associations, called for a twofold contribution from local education authorities—first, readiness to apply with vigour suitable employment policies and, secondly, the acceptance of the principle of fair shares to which the hon. Member referred. Those two contributions depend on one another for their effectiveness and both are essential to the success of the scheme.

First, a word about employment policies. I know that my noble Friend feels it is essential that we should make full use of what I think in the jargon of the Ministry is described as immobile teachers—that is, married women. Secondly, it is essential that teachers over retiring age should be encouraged to stay on. Thirdly, it is essential that full use should be made of part-time teachers.

Now I come to what perhaps is even more important, the question of fair shares. Each authority has been given a guide to its own share of the teacher force as at January, 1958, calculated on a national basis. My noble Friend fully recognises that some marginal adjustments may have to be made to take account of local circumstances of which his predecessor might not have been aware, and discussions about these adjustments are still taking place. At the same time, room for flexibility here is of necessity limited, and I think the scheme will be frustrated if adjustments significantly reduce the 3,500 posts in question. We want flexibility, but not so much as to frustrate the scheme.

A word, next, about partnership. The previous Minister was very much impressed by the strong sense of partnership, and good will which was evident on all sides at the October conference, and he and my noble Friend both realise that the scheme will be a success only if local authorities and teachers are prepared to co-operate wholeheartedly. I am sure that my noble Friend will very much welcome the hon. Member's wholehearted support of the scheme.

The initial reaction of local authorities has been very encouraging indeed, and the majority have already accepted the obligation to be guided by the policies and objectives detailed in the circular. I am therefore confident that a survey which we propose to make next autumn will show that authorities have been making their full contribution, each in their appropriate way, to this very difficult task.

I should like to turn to one or two particular questions which the hon. Member raised in his speech, and above all to the question of the reduction of the size of classes in primary schools. In the first place, if staffing standards in secondary schools are not to become disproportionately worse during the next few years, it will be necessary for a number of teachers to transfer from primary schools. That is the question of vertical transfer, in the jargon of the teaching profession, to which the hon. Member for Meriden (Mr. Moss) referred in some Questions which he asked last Thursday. The teacher-training establishments are already concentrating on training teachers for secondary schools, but they cannot meet the whole need. Moreover, many teachers in primary schools were trained for secondary school work.

Let me do my best to answer fairly the points which the hon. Member made in his speech. I know that many teachers are afraid that the improvement in staffing standards in primary schools which everybody wants will be prevented if we have this vertical transfer. The trend which we already have and which can be seen from existing figures is worth noting in this respect! Since January, 1954, the number of pupils per full-time teacher has fallen in junior education from 32.1 to 31.5 in 1955 and exactly 31 in January, 1956, whereas at the same time in our secondary schools the number of pupils per full-time teacher had risen from 20.9 in January, 1954. to 21.0 in January. 1955 and 21.4 in January, 1956. On seeing these figures it is difficult not to feel that there is a case for some vertical transfer from primary to secondary education, that that is essential, and that at present the trend in junior education is favourable while the trend in senior education is not so favourable.

I assure the House that the number of transfers which the Minister has in mind is not incompatible with a marked improvement in the staffing standards of the primary schools. Even if there is no worsening at all in the staffing standards in the senior classes below the 1955 ratio of 21 pupils per full-time teacher, an annual net increase of 7,000 teachers would make possible a steady reduction of the size of junior classes, and it is our hope and target in the Ministry to succeed in bringing about a complete elimination of oversized junior classes by 1961. Therefore, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we have his point very much in mind, but we do, honestly, believe that a degree of vertical transfer is not incompatible with continuing the favourable trend in primary schools, where, as I have said, we hope to achieve the elimination of oversized classes in four or five years from now.

I see that I have just two or three minutes left, and I would just say a word about the three-year teacher train- ing course. The hon. Gentleman, in fairly dividing the time with me, kindly left out this subject, so I will mention it now. I have already studied the advice which the National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers gave to the Minister last summer on this subject. I know just how anxious the educational world is to see the three-year course introduced. I also know that all sections of educational opinion regard it as important that the Minister should consider the three-year course favourably, and that the timing of its introduction should be announced as soon as possible.

At the same time—and I think hon. Members will agree that this is true of most educational reforms—we cannot take a far-reaching decision like this too quickly, because there are complex considerations of policy involved. In particular, we have to consider the effect on class size and the slowing down of recruitment and, as hon. Members know—land as I have just been saying—there is general agreement that a reduction in the size of classes must he a first priority.

I absolutely agree that this question of the distribution of teachers is highly relevant to the timing of the introduction of the three-year course. It would, indeed, he most unfortunate if, with a favourable decision on the three-year course, with a rapidly growing national teaching force and with bright prospects of a reduction in the size of classes, the maldistribution of teachers should still delay the introduction of the three-year course; it could conceivably happen that the distribution of teachers among local education authorities might be so uneven that the authorities which find it hardest to find teachers could not reasonably be asked to face the consequences of the introduction of the three-year course.

That is one reason why, like the hon. Member for Itchen, I welcome the measures which were taken last year to improve teacher distribution. If, as I believe will be the case, given the good will of teachers and local education authorities, they will succeed, then it will become possible to consider the three-year course in a far more favourable atmosphere.

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that both my noble Friend and myself fully recognise that the success of our educational plans depends in the last resort, to a very large extent on the quality of the teachers in our nation's primary and secondary schools, and that is very much in our minds. We also know that the foundation of the whole of our educational system must be the supply of teachers and the quality of the teachers. That conviction will guide our work, however long this Parliament lasts.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at eight minutes past Eleven o'clock.