HC Deb 07 March 1961 vol 636 cc267-71

3.56 p.m.

Mr. Woodrow Wyatt (Bosworth)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the establishment of a Higher Education Service on television. My proposed Bill is a modest little Measure, which is supported by the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Education. So far as I know, the only person who has considered the matter and is opposed to it is the Postmaster-General.

The Russians have twelve times as many science and applied science teachers as we have, yet their population is only four times as large. If we were making a comparable effort in teaching science, technology and engineering, the correct figure would be for the Russians to have only three times as many science and applied science teachers as we have.

On the other hand, we have at least twelve times as many television sets as the Russians have. While they have been following a rigorous policy of capital investment, we have been having a consumer spree. I am proposing, in my Bill, that we should use our vast army of television sets to better purpose without interfering with existing programmes.

Apart from schools broadcasts, television is, broadly speaking, restricted to 50 permitted hours a week. Any adult or advanced educational programmes have to come out of these permitted hours. As there are likely to be minority programmes, neither the B.B.C. nor commercial television is very willing to cut out regular entertaining or serious programmes to make way for them. With commercial television there is the additional disincentive of possible loss in advertising revenue.

For the most part, on Saturday and Sunday mornings the screens of both are not in use. Both the B.B.C. and commercial television are anxious to use these times for adult educational programmes, properly sponsored by educationists. But the Postmaster-General refuses them permission.

In America, Russia and Czechoslovakia, tremendous efforts are being made to supplement other forms of technical, scientific and adult education by television. In Britain, there is terrific enthusiasm among educationists to do the same, but the Government, in the shape of the Postmaster-General, are deliberately stopping them. He is not even moved by the plea of his right hon. Friend the Minister of Education, who said at Swansea, on 16th September, 1960: Would it not be a very good thing if television programmes of adult education were put out on Saturday mornings? This is a period when millions of people have time to look in, say from 9 to 10. I hope we shall see Saturday mornings used for this purpose. Unless the Postmaster-General changes his attitude, the Minister of Education will have to wait a very long time before we do so.

What can be done in these periods? Many eminent scientists believe that our shortage of science teachers, for example, is so great that it is essential to make good some of the deficiency by using television. Sir Harry Massey, Professor of Physics at University College, London, and a very distinguished scientist, emphasised to me again only this morning that he attaches very special importance to using the television medium in scientific education. He authorised me to say that, in his view, there was an ever growing scope in the work which could be done in television in this direction—incidentally, work vital for our advance and survival.

The B.B.C., always the pioneer in these matters, is commendably starting, it hopes next month, a half-hour programme for adult education on Saturday mornings. To do this, the B.B.C. has had to take five minutes a day off its normal weekday programmes. Otherwise, that obscurantist gentleman, the Postmaster-General, would have refused permission.

All the commercial companies have substantial departments working hard on devising schemes for scientific and adult education, but they are not allowed to start. Associated Television has told me that it would at once go into action with an hour of adult education programmes on Saturday morning if it was allowed to do so. It would like to begin with programmes for teachers at training colleges, which it has been asked to provide by its educational advisory committee in the Midlands. Associated Television also has even more ambitious schemes than that. It has a project for producing a programme which would be a kind of university year to be viewed in conjunction with specially issued booklets. It would also like to undertake industrial and technical college educational programmes.

A.B.C. wants immediately to launch an hour's programme every Sunday morning at a time which would not interfere with churchgoing. Its aim is to provide adult education for people who left school at 15 and went into industry. It has been working out its plans with the Workers' Educational Association.

Imaginatively used, the television screen could supplement and give an enormous boost to the work admirably done in the past by the Workers' Educational Association. The number of people willing to sit in classrooms late at night is now fast diminishing, but the number willing to stay in and take in educational material on the television screen is fast increasing.

Both the companies I have mentioned are willing to provide programmes without any advertising whatsoever. They will be a free gift to the nation. Granada has similar proposals for advanced and higher education if only the Postmaster-General would give it the go-ahead. It would put out at least one extra hour a week on a weekday and the educational programmes would not have any advertising material surrounding them.

As might be expected, the B.B.C. has been giving tremendous thought to the same problem. It would give high priority to programmes on atomic energy and other aspects of science as well as providing a number of series of programmes offering courses in particular subjects and aimed at a definite audience.

No one is trying to replace teachers by television. What they want to do is to experiment with the production of programmes to supplement the deficiency of teachers and extend the range of technological advanced and scientific education to the interested adult population generally.

Why is the Postmaster-General withholding his consent? He says that he is waiting for the Report of the Pilkington Committee, but at the very earliest that Report cannot be ready for a year and it will not be debated until the summer of 1962. No action will be taken on it for at least two years.

If the Bill were proposing a new educational channel, or something complicated and expensive like that, I could understand the hesitation, but I am not proposing anything of the sort. What the Bill would enact would be an alteration in the powers of the Postmaster-General to compel him to allow any television service, whether commercial or B.B.C.—which wished to provide adult or higher education outside the permitted hours, and at its own expense and without the inclusion of advertising, to do so.

The Bill also provides for the Postmaster-General to be advised by a small committee of educationists as to whether the programmes proposed were of educational significance. That is to avoid the danger of extra hours being obtained for programmes purporting to have educational value, but which were not really backed by any educational institution and which had no connection with a serious and defined educational project.

As I understand, any fear that the B.B.C. might have that commercial television would take an unfair advantage of any extra hours by putting out pseudo-educational programmes would be removed by that provision. But my inquiries also make it clear to me that the B.B.C. and commercial television now mean roughly the same thing by "adult and higher educational programmes", even though they differed on the subject two or three years ago. There is nothing whatever today to prevent the Postmaster-General from going ahead.

My Bill would also provide for special financial assistance to the B.B.C. if lack of money hindered any worth-while educational series which it would like to produce. The B.B.C. has not asked for this, and nor would I insist on it if there were any substantial opposition to it, but it could be very helpful.

Adult and higher education by television is a new field which needs a great deal of experiment before the right answers are found. No one supposes that he has the ideal solutions ready made, but the only way to find out is by putting out some programmes and building on the results obtained and the reactions received.

If the Postmaster-General would listen to the Minister of Education—as I hope he will—much valuable ground work could be done between now and any conceivable time that action might be taken on the Pilkington Report. The experimenting has to be done anyway and the sooner we get on with it, the less likely we are to fall behind other nations who have been very quick to seize on the educational opportunities arising out of television.

We seem to have got into the habit, in many areas of our national life, of taking no decisions but shelving them all on to committees. Surely, in a simple matter like this, we do not have to lose two years waiting for a committee to tell us that the nation ought at once to have something of enormous potential value at no cost to the public Exchequer.

The B.B.C. and the commercial television companies are ready to go ahead. Only the lazy Government, paralysed by complacent inertia, lag behind.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Wyatt.