DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS

HC Deb 03 November 1961 vol 648 cc493-585

[FOURTH DAY]

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question—[31st October]

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:— Most Gracious Sovereign, We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.— [Sir R. Robinson.]

Question again proposed.

Mr. Speaker

I think that it would now be for the convenience of the House if I were to say that I have selected for the subject matter of debate on Tuesday the second official Opposition Amendment.

[But humbly regret that the Gracious Speech contains no practical proposals directed to achieving sustained expansion of production without inflation, the necessary increase in our exports, and justice as between different sections of the community.]

11.20 a.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey (Sunderland, North)

I have previously confessed to the House a weakness for reading advertisements. The other day I read one which began with these words, though I have forgotten what it was advertising: Strength. Power. Energy. Fierce. Vigour. Nerve. That is a good catalogue of the qualities which a Conservative Minister of Education ought to possess. At the same time, it is equally true that these are the very qualities which the present Minister of Education does not possess. However, I will return to the right hon. Gentleman in a few minutes.

This a general debate on the Address, and I want, first, to say something about the Minister of Labour. I want to protest as vigorously as I can against his brutal, callous, short-sighted and mean action. Those are not my words. That is what the general secretary of the Institute of Professional Civil Servants has said about him. The general secretary is a much more mild mannered person than I am. He is a very sober official, responsible to a very responsible organisation. He was complaining about the absolutely outrageous decision of the Minister of Labour to close the training centres at Kidbrooke and Long Eaton and reduce the numbers who are to attend fifteen industrial rehabilitation centres. I am sure that there is not a Member of the House who has not personal knowledge of the wonderful work done at these centres. It is appropriate at this stage to pay tribute to a predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman. We regard these centres as a tribute to the late George Tomlinson. We all have personal knowledge of case after case where a disabled man has had his sense of respect and usefulness restored by attending these centres. This is the sort of mean and sordid economy which we associate with the Tories in the inter-war years. We do not intend to tolerate a return to that state of affairs.

The difficulty about economy is that a good deal of economy can be effected not only by direct action such as this but by inertia. In the last Session I was very impressed by the debate on apprenticeship and industrial training. This affeots any discussion on education, because for a long time we have had our eyes in the bulge—or, perhaps I should say, one of the bulges—the one that is moving out into industry. Everyone who heard that debate was convinced that in this matter there is a case for Government action and leadership, which would in turn stimulate action in industry. If this opportunity is not taken and the shadow of the Treasury inhibits action, we shall an opportunity for which we will pay a generation.

Now, to return to the right hon. Gentleman. First, a few words about day release. We are here concerned with the same young people. In the 1956 White Paper the Minister of Education assumed a growth in day release of 40,000 young people a year. Against this background the right hon. Gentleman's Annual Report is very melancholy reading. The numbers have been practically static. This again demands leadership from the right hon. Gentleman. I know that he is conducting discussions, but is this again the type of thing which will be inhibited by Treasury economy?

To come to the direct economies, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his statement in July as a matter of form he made the customary announcement of educational cuts. There were the reductions in authorisations of minor works, that is, the suspensions, the delays, and what are now called the adjustments. I will again go to a non-partial source and say that they are adjustments which The Times Educational Supplementdescribes as a euphemism for the vacillation treatment. We should by now realise that nothing can be more wasteful than this"go-stop","on-off"policy affecting works such as this.

The Parliamentary Secretary has previously told us about the difficulties and the shortage of manpower in this field. It is a wasteful use of that manpower to have this continual change. It is not so very long ago that we had the cuts. Only a few months ago the Minister himself was taking a great deal of credit for the increased volume of minor works. Now we again have these cuts. The cuts are not unimportant, because one aspect of them, as all of us who go to schools realise, is the dramatic difference between the conditions in some of our schools. This is unavoidable. We compare modern schools with old schools. When we are considering minor works, we are considering the modernisation of the old schools. I ask hon. Members to think of the effect of this upon an authority such as London. On the contrary, there should be very great and sustained pressure to do what we can to iron out this inequality between the children attending our schools.

I understand that a third of these schemes will be cut as a consequence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's economy. I hope that the Minister of Education will take the opportunity this morning to say something about the 1963–64 programme. I always used to enjoy the late Aneurin Bevan speaking about priorities, but I am always apprehensive when a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer talks about priorities. What will be the effect of the new policy on the 1963-64 programme for primary and secondary schools?

We welcome the proposals in the Gracious Speech concerning school leaving dates and grants to students, as far as they go. We shall have a short opportunity to debate them and I do not wish to anticipate that debate now. In any case, the proposal about school leaving dates is taken from the Crowther Report. However, I want to press the right hon. Gentleman about the major recommendation of the Crowther Report. When are we to have a Government announcement about raising the school leaving age to 16? This is overdue. Two years ago the Crowther Report called for an announcement then. The optimum period within which to extend the school leaving age was envisaged as one of the three years between 1966 and 1969. We are getting perilously near these dates.

This again brings back recollections of the pre-war Tories. Throughout the 1930's the Tories undertook to raise the school leaving age. This was an item of Conservative policy at each General Election, but nothing was done until we had a war and a Labour Government. We do not want this decision to be delayed until it becomes merely a statement for General Election reasons. Time is passing and we want a decision now. We want an announcement now. I am sorry if I embarrass the right hon. Gentleman, but we want a decision to be made and plans made to implement the decision.

We will have an opportunity later to discuss grants to students, but I should like now briefly to raise an allied question, that of maintenance allowances. The time has now come when we should make an entirely new approach. There are two enormously encouraging features about modern education. One is that everyone is now convinced that the estimates of the pool of ability have been proved wrong. We ought to be greatly encouraged by the fact that it is now quite clear that the pool of ability among our children is much larger than was envisaged even a few years ago.

The other encouraging thing is the voluntary staying on of children at school. Those are two things which the Minister should recognise and by which he should be encouraged as much as anyone else. They should evoke initiative and encouragement from the Government. For this reason, the Opposition now suggest that we should now reorganise family allowances, graduating them according to the age of the child and with a particularly steep rise for those remaining at school after the statutory school leaving age. What are the Government's reactions? The right hon. Gentleman knows that I have declared an interest in this and that my interest so far convinces me that this is a matter in which the authorities are particularly parsimonious. I hope this morning we shall get some encouragement from the right hon. Gentleman.

However, as the right hon. Gentleman will have expected, today I want mainly to deal with the teachers. I recognise that the right hon. Gentleman has played his cards very skilfully and is able to claim credit for outmanoeuvring the teachers. Unfortunately, he was holding his hand for the Treasury. A Conservative Minister of Education especially ought to have education as his first interest. There are two professions in this country which one would have thought it was almost impossible to bring out on strike, the doctors and the teachers—in view of the nature of their responsibilities and their sense of devotion. It is remarkable that the Government should have brought both professions to the verge of strike action.

I have always felt that one of the marked characteristics of a Conservative Administration was its contempt for the professional classes, an under-estimate of their value. Here we faced a situation in which the teachers were nearly brought to strike action and in which some were. When we discussed this matter in the early hours of the morning, before the Recess, the right hon. Gentleman accused me of playing politics. I make the accusation against him that his attack on Burnham was a callous exploitation to enforce a settlement with the teachers. I say no more than that because I do not particularly wish to exacerbate the present position, but we have to face the fact that the teaching profession is exasperated, frustrated and riven by bitterness which it has not experienced before.

The right hon. Gentleman cannot fail to recognise that, cannot fail to see that he has great responsibility to repair the damage he has done. It is in that spirit that I put three questions to him. He will remember that a week ago, when referring to the offer of the local authorities in due course to recall Burnham, my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) asked whether the right hon. Gentleman had authorised such an offer, or would be bound by it. The right hon. Gentleman made a most unfortunate intervention when he said: I made it clear that the Government were not bound by it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd October, 1961 ; Vol. 646, c. 614.] He appeared completely to wash his hands of it. My right hon. Friend said that if that was so, the teachers' leaders had been completely misled. The present situation is very unsatisfactory and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will say more about it this morning and try to clear it up. If the feeling of being misled persists, matters will be made very difficult over the next few months.

The next question arises directly from the Queen's Speech itself. We are told that the Government intend to amend the law relating to teachers' salaries. As my hon Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) said earlier in this debate, the teachers understand and have understood from the right hon. Gentleman that his position was that he had to pursue the recon-stitution of the Burnham Committee because the Government as a whole felt that the time had come when all local government services and the Civil Service negotiating procedures should be reviewed.

There is a big change in the Government's position towards the Burnham Committee. While the salary offer was not agreed, the right hon. Gentleman was in the position of feeling himself bound to introduce legislation to implement it. He said that if he was to do that, he had to deal with Burnham. However, he is no longer in that position and the teachers cannot understand why, having been removed from that dilemma, he is now proceeding to deal with Burnham without any question of the general issue in the public services. As long as that position obtains, the teachers' leaders will believe that they have been misled. I have not been briefed for the local authorities, but it is clear from their publications that they take the same view, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will try to clear up that matter.

My third question is of equal importance—that of school meals. We cannot disguise the fact that there is a deep sense of grievance in the teaching profession about school meals. The right hon. Gentleman has indicated that he is considering it and I hope that this morning he will undertake that it will receive his immediate attention and that he will ameliorate the present position. He has a particular responsibility to deal with these matters because the dispute has undoubtedly done enormous harm.

I will give a simple practical illustration. A few days ago, I visited one of the few large comprehensive schools in London and I was tremendously impressed by the work done there. The school is a success because of all the extra work done by the teachers, work outside the school hours and outside the normal ordinary school duties. The effect of the dispute on these energetic vigorous, public-spirited people was plain to see.

This is the burden on the right hon. Gentleman and it is his responsibility to do all he can as quickly as he can to repair the harm he has done. He has himself confessed that the heart of all educational problems is the supply of teachers. Whether we discuss Crowther or anything else, we always come back to the question of teacher supply. Moreover, running through all these problems is the over-riding priority of the need to reduce the size of classes. It was for that reason that, when we last discussed education, I took what I thought was the moderate target of the elimination of over-size classes by 1970. Anyone who took part in that debate will have been driven to the conclusion which I reached—that, as things are now moving, that is a completely unobtainable target.

Let us pursue more immediate targets, and I apologise for reminding the right hon. Gentleman of Brighton in view of the humiliation he suffered there. Let us turn to primary schools. It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to talk in general terms about primary schools, but today there are over 20,000 over-sized classes in the primary schools—and in this context we are talking about quite impossibly oversized classes; those with over forty pupils.

Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin)

Would the hon. Gentleman give the percentage throughout the country of classes with over forty pupils?

Mr. Willey

I shall ask the Minister to reply to the hon. Member. The reason I put this to the right hon. Gentleman is that at the moment I am concerned with teacher supply and the need to deal with 20,000 classes which are far too large.

Mr. John Harvey (Walthamstow, East)

I am not unsympathetic to the arguments the hon. Gentleman is putting forward. All hon. Members attach the greatest possible priority to this, but would the hon. Gentleman think back to another point he made earlier when he asked the Government to make a decision about raising the school leaving age to 16, because these things are surely related? In view of the considerable increase today in the number of those voluntarily staying on to 16, where does the hon. Gentleman put the priorities between reducing the size of classes and raising the school leaving age?

Mr. Willey

I am discouraged because, after all, this was a matter I dealt with when we last debated education. I spoke then of the need to implement the Crowther Report. We are now dealing with the overall demand for more teachers. I am dealing with that at the moment and the fact that the demand is no more ambitious than to accept things as they are. However, as I have said, I am not prepared to accept that, for I believe that we should announce immediately the acceptance of the Crowther recommendation to increase the school leaving age to 16.

I was dealing with primary schools and I was in the process of pointing out that 20,000 classes contain over forty pupils. This is quite preposterous. If we accepted for the primary schools the same standard as we do for the secondary schools, we must face the fact that 83,000 classes have more than thirty pupils.

If we turn to the secondary schools, where the standard is thirty, I can meet the inquiry of the hon. Member for Wal-thamstow, East (Mr. J. Harvey) by expressing it in percentages. Sixty-three per cent. of the children in our secondary schools are being taught in over-sized classes. No one, I think, will dispute that we should seek a common standard for both secondary and primary education and say that all classes over thirty are too large by present educational requirements. If we do that we must face the position that no less than 131,000 classes are over-sized and are larger than thirty.

Let us, then, accept a more immediate target. Suppose we say that we will reduce all classes to thirty by 1965. In March, the Minister said that to do this we should require 110,000 additional teachers. If he gives an estimate today, he will revise it upwards. This is without tackling Crowther or anything else. So we must be realistic and face the situation with which we are confronted today; that to attain this modest target and to eliminate all over-sized classes— to reduce them to thirty we would require 110,000 new teachers.

Against this elementary requirement there has been an increase in the last twelve months of 5,200 teachers. I am using figures which are given in the right hon. Gentleman's Annual Report. That represents a fall of 200 over the previous twelve months and 400 over the figure two years ago. Next year, on top of this and to aggravate our difficulties, we face the year of intermission when we will not get recruits from the training colleges.

I do not want to go over the ground I have previously traversed, but this situation is made even more discomforting when we remember that within the numbers of teachers coming into our schools each year over 3,000 are untrained and unqualified. Hon. Members may think back to the board schools.

I have no apologies for raising this again, for this is the essential crisis which faces education. It is a case of too little and too late. Unfortunately, the right hon. Gentleman has a double responsibility because he is the Minister who in 1956 said that it was too late to build any more training colleges. After all, he said at that time, by 1960 the school population would be declining. Of course, in any case that was an inadequate reason. The Minister should have been determined to improve standards in our schools. He has a heavy responsibility and more still he is not facing the essential problems of today, and this is what is wrong with education at the moment.

What is the Minister doing in the field of teacher supply? His efforts represent no more than this; he has increased the training course in the training colleges from two to three years. That we all applaud. After all, it was recommended forty years ago. I say in parenthesis that we all pay tribute to the staffs of the training colleges for the magnificient way in which they have cooperated and have enabled this to be carried out.

But if we increase the period of the course then, naturally we must increase the number of places or otherwise there would be a fall in the number of teachers recruited from the training colleges. This was the first reason that impelled the right hon. Gentleman to introduce his programme for training college expansion. The other was that when he was previously Minister of Education it was estimated that we would get a net increase of about 7,000 extra teachers a year. In fact, there has been a short-fall of roughly 2,000 on that estimate.

The right hon. Gentleman in his present plans is doing little more than to deal with these two problems. But, in fact, there are two minor problems, for the whole circumstances have been dramatically changed. There have been two massive miscalculations. The first is the extent of wastage of teachers. In the last twelve months 22,000 teachers have left the profession. More alarming is the fact that this wastage is 4.000 more than a few years ago.

The sescond miscalculation and the other major problem concerns the school population. When we discussed education last, the right hon. Gentleman told us that when he was previously Minister of Education he estimated that there would be 6 million children in schools in 1965. He now discovers that there will not be 6 million but 7 million and that by 1970 there will not be 7 million but ½ million.

These axe the two new factors which demand a new approach. Running through these shortages are particular shortages which we discussed in our last debate, such as the shortage of mathematics teachers. We have subsequently had a further conference on mathematics where the opinion was expressed that unless something was done there would be a complete breakdown in the teaching of mathematics in the next twenty years.

We have got these particular difficulties which are not being dealt with, but, more important than that, we have got the overall difficulty created by these two new circumstances, the increasing extent of wastage—teachers leaving the profession—and the dramatic increase in the school population. I am not going to blame anyone for the miscalculations; it will not carry us much further. What I hope is that these miscalculations, these new circumstances, will be recognised. We have got to face the fact that we are confronted with an emergency and that we have got to have a crash programme to get more teachers as urgently as we can. I see that the Parliamentary Secretary is with us, and I say that when we are facing a situation like this it is hideously irrelevant to talk about minimal improvements in teacher supply.

What we are concerned about is a determination to face this new situation and to take action. As I said when I began, I do not think the right hon. Gentleman, with all respect, has got the dynamism to tackle a job like this. But unless it is tackled, education is going to be irretrievably impaired over the next few years. I share the view of most people that today in society there is nothing more important than education. It is education which both determines the shape and quality of our society and creates the opportunities for that society.

I conclude, therefore, with the words of Dr. Bronowski. They are these: If we fail to make the best of the education of our own citizens, the future will belong to the nations that do not miss the chance

11.52 a.m.

The Minister of Education (Sir David Eccles)

Before I come to the very interesting speech by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey), I want to make a suggestion to the House. I believe it would be of considerable advantage to those of us who are interested in this subject if time could be found during this session for one or two debates devoted to particular aspects of education. We had such a debate in June on a Motion by my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior) about the public schools, and I believe the House appreciated the concentration of the discussion on an important topic.

In the debate on the Address we cannot have such concentration. It is an occasion on which hon. Members, quite rightly, raise any matter they like. But possibly, if both sides agreed, we might find in the course of the next year one or two days or half days for definite subjects. The hon. Gentleman himself has raised, I should say, half a dozen topics on any one of which the collective wisdom of the House could well be taken over half a day.

If I may now turn to the hon. Gentleman's speech, he spoke about the forecast of legislation in the Queen's Speech, which mentions three subjects on which we propose to introduce legislation. The first Bill is published today; it is already in the Vote Office, and it deals with students' awards and school leaving dates both in England and Wales and in Scotland. I can only say today that on both parts of the Bill we would have liked to have gone further, and on the appropriate occasion I will explain why we must accept half a loaf as being better than none. I think it is foolish not to take the first half that one is offered.

The hon. Gentleman devoted, as I expected, a good deal of time to the teachers, and I should like to follow him there. The teachers are very often spoken of as if they were a single body of men and women with one clearly defined interest and speaking with one voice. The truth, as we know in this House, is very different. The scale, complexity and variety of the legitimate interests and needs of this very great profession will always be extremely difficult to embrace and to reflect through one single negotiating body. I think one ought to pay great tribute to the Burn-ham Committee which, through a series of three year reviews, has achieved an astonishing measure of success in reflecting the interests of so great a body of teachers. But all the same, in the opinion of many competent judges inside and outside the professional education service, the difficulties of satisfying everyone in the teaching profession have steadily increased and I am quite sure that the time has come to take a calm look to see if we cannot improve the procedures. It is about this that I wish to say a few words.

I should like to begin by giving a brief and, no doubt, incomplete picture of the huge and widely-spread force of teachers which now must make a bigger and more urgent demand upon our educated manpower than any other organisation or profession in the country. Hon. Members will know from their wide experience of modern business that sheer size brings its own new problems, and it is so with the education service. We have in England and Wales today 286.000 teachers serving in 30,000 schools. Of those, 116,000 are men and 170,000 are women. The 30,000 schools are of very different kinds and sizes, and they are situated in varying localities which have quite different powers of attraction for people to work in those areas. So some areas are very much shorter of teachers than others. Some kinds of teachers are much harder to recruit than others.

Some of the shortages have nothing whatever to do with salaries, as for instance the difficulties created by the increasing number of young women who retire early from the profession. Others, such as arise from the national competition to secure graduates in science and mathematics, have very clear salary implications; and in between those two there is a whole variety of particular situations, but at any rate it cannot be said that salaries have deterred applicants from coming forward for the available places in the training colleges in larger numbers and with higher qualifications.

There is another problem within this great force of teachers, and that is the rate of turnover of the staffs of the schools. I think all hon. Members know that this is really much too high today for the good organisation of the schools. This is a problem which often occurs in industry, and there very great trouble is taken at least to mitigate the bad effects of a high rate of turnover. There are many other pressing problems. I shall not try to describe them all, but I think it must be clear that the salary structure of such a vast and widely spread body of men and women will have important influences on total recruitment, on the recruitment of particular types of teachers, and on the efficient and harmonious working of the schools themselves.

A change has come about in the relationship between salaries and the schools, and I am bound to note with regret that, since I first went to the Ministry seven years ago, dissatisfaction among different groups of teachers with the salary scales and structure has increased both in extent and intensity. Again, looking forward to the growing needs of the schools, I have become more keenly aware of shortages of particular kinds of teachers, some of which, as we all know, will be extremely difficult to overcome. This means that we have to deal with a great complex of the personal problems of the teachers themselves, and problems of staffing and organisation in the schools.

I am sure that, with the help of the House, we can find better procedures in the Burnham machinery which will help teachers as individuals, help the local authorities as the people directly responsible for running the schools, and help me as the Minister to discharge my duty to see that the service is efficient and progressive.

What in broad outline would the changes be? Any salary structure or increase in existing scales of salaries will always have two dimensions, the total amount of the money and the way the money is distributed. The final arbiter of the amount of money available out of public funds has to be the Government and Parliament. I do not think anyone denies that. The power to decide on the financial limits to a salary increase for teachers has always been there in Section 89 of the Act, and it could never be a dead letter. I think we agree about that. But the distribution of the money is in a different category, because here the local authorities, the teachers and the Minister, all three partners, have legitimate and well founded views about the distribution. We shall never have a satisfactory result unless each is ready to listen with an open mind—I stress with an open mind —to what the others have to say on the subject.

This is just what has not happened up to now. In the past, the Government have had no recognised means of making a contribution to the discussion of this vital problem of the interaction of the salary scales and the good working of the schools, and, in particular, we have not been able to make suggestions which would stem from our view of the education service as a whole, which we are in quite a good position to see from the Ministry, having the assistance of Her Majesty's Inspectorate and a general overall sight of what is going on. That is the background to the legislation and the changes in procedure which are contemplated.

Mr. George Thomas (Cardiff, West)

The Minister has said that the Government have an interest in the overall sum. I gather that they have an interest also in the way the sum is to be distributed. Is he saying that the Government should tell the Burnham Committee at the beginning of its deliberations what the overall sum will be to be shared out, or are they to consider, after the local authorities and the teachers have put forward their demands, whether they will wait until later before they announce the overall figure?

Sir. D. Eccles

The hon. Gentleman has raised a very important point on which the teachers are anxious to have an answer. If he will allow me a minute or two, I shall do all I can to clear up the matter.

I have been asked whether this legislation was, as it were, something separate which I felt ought to be introduced anyway, no matter what the economic circumstances of the time were. My answer to that is"Yes". I am sure that we can make improvements in these procedures, whatever happens in the rest of the economy. Of course, it will be very much easier for us When my right hon. Friends have, with those concerned, worked out new means of bringing all kinds of incomes into closer relation with what the country can pay. I shall return to that shortly. I never allowed the teachers or the local authorities to have any doubt at all that we wanted this Bill and that the need for it arises from the limited and unsatisfactory power given by Section 89 under which the Minister can only approve or reject outright an award referred to him by the Burnham Committee. If, in his judgment, an award conflicts with the national interest, he is powerless to prescribe any alternative scale, and he is equally powerless if the committee fails to reach an agreement.

As the House knows, on this occasion the committee did not at first agree on the new salary scales within the total of £42 million. That, of course, showed up at once the weakness of Section 89. If the teachers were to receive any increase in salary from 1st January next, I had hurriedly to prepare legislation to be brought in at the beginning of this Session.

I think that the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) was using an unfair word when he said that I was blackmailing the teachers. As I understand the English language, a blackmailer is one who tries to extract money from someone else. I was trying to give the teachers £42 million, and that is hardly to be described as blackmail. Perhaps I may interpose to affirm again what I said in reply to the right hon. Member for Huyton the other day.

It was made absolutely clear to all members of the Burnham Committee—I think I must have repeated it three times —that, since we are now in financial trouble and cannot be sure when the pause will end, it is not open to me to say that a new negotiation could start on any definite date. The local authorities said that they were quite ready to start talking again not later than 1st July next. They may be right to say that, but, in the middle of a pay pause, the Minister could not be asked to say in relation to one section of salary earners,"I give you an undertaking that the pause will be over."I made that very clear. Of course, we all hope that it will be over, and the signs are not bad, but I think that no member of the Burnham Committee would give any other account of the way in which this particular point was handled.

I am very glad—I believe the whole House shares my sense of relief—that the teachers' organisations did agree on 18th October to recommend new scales on the basis of the £42 million. We all, local authorities, teachers and Minister, disliked very much the idea of making changes in the Act without adequate time to discuss them and the way in which the new procedures and powers would be used in future. We are all relieved that the Bill did not need to be introduced until after Christmas.

Dr. Horace King (Southampton, Itchen)

Before the right hon. Gentleman proceeds to his next point, I am sure he wants to be fair to the record. He suggested to the House that he contemplated bringing in legislation because he was faced with the fact that the two sides of the Burnham Committee had not agreed. He objects to our talking about blackmail, but the simple fact is that it was to a Burnham Committee in which both sides had agreed that he said that he would have to bring in legislation altering the Burnham procedure unless they accepted his £42 million and not the £47½ million which had been agreed.

Sir D. Eccles

That is the result of the law as it stands, once I had vetoed the £47½ million, which I did after the £42 million was known. The Burnham Committee never agreed on the £47½ million and submitted it to me ; certainly not. It only agreed very quickly after it knew that £42 million was the limit. It is not blackmail to say to people if I introduce a Bill, which I must introduce in order to pay out this large sum of money, that when the Second Reading speech is made I am bound to describe to the House how the powers will be used. The House would think me a very poor Minister if I did not do that. Therefore, it was only honest to point out to them that if I was forced to bring in this Bill very early, I would, equally, be forced to describe how the powers would be used. This was exactly what I did not wish to do, so we are all glad that there is now a pause for discussion.

When the Bill comes in, Parliament will be asked to give the Minister the means to deal constructively with two possible situations. First, a deadlock in the Committee; and second, a disagreement between the Committee and the Minister when, in the judgment of the Government, a recommendation by the Committee conflicts with the national interest. It is of very great importance to make it quite plain to the local authorities and the teachers that we regard the proposed modifications in Section 89 as asking for a reserve power, and that it is our aim in the coming discussions to arrive at procedures which will be of real help to the Burnham Committee and make it very unlikely that the powers will ever be used.

In order to do that, we have to get away from the present position in which, if the Minister has to veto an agreement, as he now has the power to do, he must do that without having had any opportunity at all of a round table talk with the Committee before the whole of the negotiations have been completed. It seems plainly in the interests of the authorities and the teachers that we should exchange views and seek to arrive at agreed decisions by give and take.

Now I come to the point raised by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas). He is quite right in saying that some teachers fear that under the procedure of the kind I have outlined they would be presented with a global sum at the outset of the negotiations, and that if this were done in their case and not in the case of other public servants they would be singled out in an unfair manner for a restriction that did not apply to other salary earners. I have two things to say about that global sum.

In the first place, we have never had any intention of communicating or laying down a global sum at the outset. What I would propose is that we should reserve the possibility of indicating some financial limit after the Minister's representatives had had a full discussion on the teachers' claims, and of the views of the local authorities. In other words, the Burnham Committee will become very much more alive and, I have no doubt, kicking than it is now, and that is all to the good. It is all so very crude and unsatisfactory only to mention the global sum when I veto the whole thing, and I am sure that hon. Members in all parts of the House will see that this is a desirable change.

Secondly, my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor has made it quite clear that the Government are engaged on working out means to bring increases in all kinds of incomes into better relation with what the economy can afford. This we must do if our money is not to be eroded by rising prices and if economic growth is not to be slowed down by inflation. At the moment, we have not means of giving a substantial increase to one set of salary earners without touching off a whole series of other claims based on the doctrine of comparability. The quick reaction to the police award showed how true this is and how much it is in the interests of a group of salary earners who have put forward a claim for betterment that such betterment could be granted without repercussions all across the field. That is not so at present. I explained this at some length to the Burnham Committee on the 4th September, and if any hon. Gentleman would like to have a copy of what I said I shall be very glad to send it to him.

I do not see how proposals of this kind, and they are only proposals because the discussions have hardly begun, can be described as tearing up Burnham and destroying the freedom of the teachers. On the contrary, the new conditions of post-war full employment make it impossible for Burnham to do the job which the local authorities and the teachers want it to do unless constructive changes of the kind I have outlined are made.

There is another aspect of the Burnham Committee to which I should like to refer, and that is the composition of the teachers' panel.

Mr. Michael Stewart (Fulham)

Would the right hon. Gentleman clear up this point? He has told us that the Chancellor is engaged in studying how to get all incomes in line with the national increases in productivity, and that he regards that as very important to his whole argument. Can he make clear when he says"all incomes"whether he means only wages and salaries or incomes from rents and dividends as well?

Sir D. Eccles

My right hon. and learned Friend, if my memory serves me right, said all incomes, meaning wages, salaries and profits. That is the phrase, I remember, which he used, and we should realise that if we are to get a real grip on inflation, it is right across that board of incomes that new policies are required.

Mr. Ede (South Shields)

Does that mean that the same rule will apply to the Police Council?

Sir D. Eccles

I think that question has to be addressed to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I am answering for education. One knows that the right hon. Gentleman straddled both schools and police, and that he has had great experience of both.

I was coming to the composition of the panel. I have always felt, and so have all my predecessors in office since the war, that the right principle for representation on the teachers' panel was by type of school. That principle should avoid overlapping and it should allow the personal interests of the teachers and the needs of the schools to be considered in a fair and balanced manner. I still think that in logic this is the correct principle. But it will work only if the great majority of teachers feel that their interests are adequately looked after on the Burnham Committee. In the last year it has become apparent that a large and growing number of schoolmasters did not consider that their very real anxieties were having an adequate hearing.

As a result of that, I came to the conclusion that I had to make a difficult choice. I could either stick rigidly to the principle of representation by schools and allow these male anxieties to grow, or invite the National Association of Schoolmasters to serve on the Committee. I looked at the matter again very carefully and came to the conclusion that it was more likely to serve the long-term interests of the schools if the Association were put on the Committee. But it has given me an assurance that it will not seek to oppose the principle of equal pay in the negotiations for future changes in salaries. I very much hope that the schoolmasters will be welcomed on the Committee. The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) spoke about this matter last Tuesday, and, I thought, gave us very wise advice with which I should like to associate myself.

I have been impressed for some time by the sound sense and clear thinking which I have had from the National Association of Head Teachers. This is a body with 14,000 members. Therefore, practically half the head teachers in the country belong to it. I do not know that they have any particular salary claims, but they have shown me that they are deeply concerned about the point with which I began my speech, namely, the inter-action of the salary scales on the organisation of the schools for which they have a particular responsibility. I have, therefore, also asked them to join the Committee because I am sure that their advice will be valuable.

By adding these two new members to the Committee, I hope that the different points of view among the teachers will be more easily reconciled. They know I desire as much as any teacher that the profession should be strong and harmonious in the shortest possible time. There is much to be done in that direction and I think that it is better that they should sit round the table in the Burnham Committee to see if they can bring about the desired result.

The hon. Member for Sunderland, North turned from the question of teachers"salaries to problems of supply. The size of classes remains our most serious problem by far. Before I go into this matter, I think that it is right that I should remind the House of what has been achieved. The local authorities and the training colleges have done a very remarkable job through the years when the small age groups born just before the war were passing out of the grammar schools. Over the last decade, the number of children in schools increased by 20 per cent., but the number of teachers increased by 28 per cent.

Mr. G. Thomas

Over how many years?

Sir D. Eccles

In the last ten years. I doubt whether any Western country has a better record, but whether they have or not it does not alter the fact that no one can be satisfied with what we have done or sanguine with the immediate prospect.

I agree very much with what the hon. Member for Sunderland, North said about the difficulties which lie ahead. In one direction there will be a change for the better We can look forward to a worth while improvement in the teacher-pupil ratio in secondary schools. Even at the end of the 1960s, their school rolls are not likely to rise much above the present peak figure, and for a time they will decline. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, we expect more children to stay on at school after 15 years of age. I have no doubt that in time we shall have to have another look—we had one not so long ago—at maintenance allowances. There are bound to be shortages of particular kinds of secondary teachers, but, all in all, it is reasonable to say that the staffing position in secondary schools will be better.

The outlook in the primary schools is very much less satisfactory. Here, as we all know, we have had to contend with two factors beyond anyone's control, namely, the high rate of wastage of serving teachers, and a new rise in the birth rate. By the end of the decade, there will be several hundred thousand more children of primary school age—perhaps nearly half a million. I cannot forecast the birth rate with accuracy, and, of course, that is why we get into these difficulties. We could outpace the new bulge and make a big reduction in class sizes if it were not for the increased rate at which young women teachers are leaving, either on marriage or later to bring up their own children.

In 1959–60 we recruited 17,000 women and lost 15,000. This is where the extra 4,000 a year wastage comes from. It is a wastage rate of 9 per cent. among all women serving in the schools. This change in the wastage rate, a change for the worse, has radically altered the staffing prospects of the primary schools. About half of all the girls coming out of the training colleges today leave the schools within five years. This position must get worse because now we have a three-year training course. The girls will come out one year later: that is not to suppose that they will all marry one year later, and therefore the rate at which they leave the schools is likely to increase.

What are we to do about these losses? How can they be offset? The best immediate prospect is to recruit more married women either as trained teachers returning to the schools or older women willing to be trained as teachers. We have started campaigns in both directions and the first results are promising. We must all hope and work for a larger number of married women teaching in the schools, both full-time and part-time, within the next ten or fifteen years.

On the training college front, I only wish that we had started the expansion earlier, but we did not have the forecast of the birthrate which would have justified it. We are now carrying out a very large programme, doubling the number of places. It is going well, but, as was anticipated—I think that I have mentioned this to the House before—it is taxing the resources of some of the sponsors of teacher training colleges to the limit. Leaving aside the difficulties of sites and building, the problem of staffing this enormous increase in the number of teacher training colleges will be very difficult. I hope that the House agrees with me that, even though it may mean some grammar school masters and mistresses leaving schools and going to the colleges, that is the right thing.

I wish to say a word or two about day colleges and mature students. The tradition of the training colleges has been to provide residential courses. We must go on providing them, and we know that the pressure for these places from young people is very strong and will remain strong. All the same, I am sure that we ought to provide a larger number of places for older students, both men and women. Women especially, with the experience which they have had in their homes, are very welcome in the schools. If we can expect them to serve rather longer than the very young entrants, that will help us to offset the wastage in primary schools. I am glad to say that in the last two years the number of men and women over the age of 25 in the general training colleges has increased from 1,000 to 3,000. A good movement is going forward.

Experience has shown clearly, however, that we need some colleges devoted specially to the day student. Ten years ago, there was only one such college, at Manchester. A second was opened at Leeds in 1959 and now we have taken a big step forward and founded another six colleges. The number of students in those colleges has risen from 230 in 1958–59 to nearly 1,200 this year, and it will be 1,700 next year. I am greatly indebted to the administrative efficiency with which the local authorities have set up these day colleges. They have hardly ever taken more than a bare twelve months from start to finish. It is remarkable.

What one wants to ask is whether this is a new source of teachers which is capable of much further expansion. The fact is that we do not yet know. We do not know whether the candidates who are coming forward now are an accumulation of those who would have been willing to come forward over the last few years. We shall have to wait a year or two to see whether the demand for these places continues. If it does, it may well be right to increase the number of these day colleges.

I should like to say a word about the building programme, to which the hon. Member for Sunderland, North referred. The only cut which we have had has been a cut of about £5 million, if my memory is right, in minor works. As the House knows, our total programme is running at about £120 million. The reason for the cut in minor works is that this is the only annual programme, I am glad to say, in educational building now, and its effect on reducing the overload is altogether more immediate than if one tried to interfere in any way with the major programme of new schools and colleges. As it was clear that there was this great overload on building, this was the place where the education programme could make a small but nevertheless useful contribution.

The major programmes, which are settled some time ahead—I think that all the local authorities have welcomed very much the forward planning—are in the following position. The programmes for 1961–62 and 1962–63 are settled at the highest rate of school building we have ever done. The 1963–64 programme would normally have been announced by now, but I have agreed with my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to keep it back until the whole of the public sector programme for 1963–64 can be dealt with. I have explained this to the local authorities. I have asked them whether the delay of another few weeks will mean any loss of momentum in planning for 1963–64 and they have assured me that it will not. I hope, therefore, that before long the schools in that programme can be settled and the plans got on with.

I wanted to say a word about the gap between the two systems of education, the maintained schools and the independent fee-paying schools. We had an interesting debate on the public schools in June out of which it seemed clear to me that the majority of hon. Members— almost every hon. Member—on both sides of the House wanted to see this gap closed or at least narrowed. I share that wish. As I said then, the Government would not be willing to try to move in this direction by spending large sums of money buying places at independent schools to be filled with boys and girls selected, nobody knows how, but ultimately by the Minister. We consider it a sounder policy to use the resources available from public funds to raise the standards of maintained schools and to increase the overlap in educational standards between the two systems which is growing all the time.

I never thought, however, that that was all that could be done and in the debate in June I said this about the public school entrance requirements: If the entry to a public school could be as easily prepared via a county primary school as a fee-paying preparatory school, that would be all to the good. It would lead to a mixing up process in the primary schools."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th June, 1961; Vol. 642, c. 896.] Recently, at our party conference at Brighton, I repeated that suggestion, saying that I thought it would be a good thing if all, or nearly all, parents sent their children to maintained primary schools. I never gave the slightest ground for thinking that the Government would use compulsion or that any form of legislation to achieve this was in our minds. Of course it was not. If there has been a misunderstanding, it has arisen, not from the words I used, but from the manner in which they were reported in certain papers.

It has always been the confident expectation of the maintained system that in time more parents would choose, for their own reasons, to send their children to primary schools because they themselves were satisfied that that would be the best school for their child. We have always held that as our objective.

On the other hand, if parents feel— and some of them always will—that they can secure a better education in a private school, they are absolutely right to send their children to such a school. Of that I have no doubt, if they can get a better education. My experience, however, has led me to think that a good many parents do not know how excellent some of our primary schools are. I do not think they reckon them within their field of choice. That is a pity, because when a child can get a really good education at a primary school—and that is more often so than is realised—there are additional and valuable social advantages in sending him there. I said at Brighton that small children learn and play together without any sense of difference. They make friends very easily and that this should happen among children from all kinds of homes appears to me highly desirable. I do not think there is any real difference of opinion on that in any part of the House.

It is wrong to think, as some people, I believe, imagine, that if the established middle-class send their children to primary schools, that is something revolutionary, almost Socialist. It is not revolutionary at all. It is happening now and it is happening more each year. This is often, but not always, a matter of hard cash. The young salary-earner in the professions or in business who has no private means and two or three children simply cannot afford the fees of the independent boarding schools. I am glad to say that one begins to hear of other parents who could afford the fees but who choose a primary school for the reasons which appeal to me.

I have had in mind these two ideas. First, I should like to encourage, for educational and social reasons, a movement that is already taking place. Secondly, I would like to suggest to the public schools that they should give the primary school child as good a chance to pass his entrance examination as a child whose parents are able to pay fees. If the public schools can do this, then the choice of secondary school for many parents will become much wider, and that must be good for the public schools and very welcome to many parents and their children.

I apologise for speaking so long, but I do want to return for the final moment to the subject with which I began, and that is the teachers. Anyone who followed the Burnham negotiations will have felt that there is something more than salaries worrying the teachers, and also that, in spite of all the rough things which have been said and written, the teachers are very reasonable people when they can hear the argument fairly and fully put. Over and over again I have been confronted—and my hon. Friends confirm this from their experience—with allegations about what the Government have done or intended to do which were so wide of the mark as to make one wonder where these ideas started—[HON. MEMBERS:"Hear, hear."]—and yet once we had a chance to talk it over with the teachers we found, I do not say agreement on all points, but a comprehensive understanding of the facts, which many other sections of the community might well envy.

This experience prompted me to ask, why is it that a good many teachers give the impression of being so isolated from the world all around? I think it is a very baffling question to which I do not believe there is a simple answer.

One has to remember how fast the teaching force has been increased since the war. It now contains nearly 100,000 more men and women than it did fifteen years ago, and one can easily forget what a tremendous lot we are asking of these comparatively young men and women. Up until now we have only been able to give them two years' training, the great majority of them—training into which an enormous amount of subject teaching has had to be crammed. Then back they went to the schools where they had very recently been pupils themselves, to face all the problems of our adult world. They have had to contend with a great deal which is new and disturbing—the earlier maturity of the pupils, the greater sums of money boys and girls now have to spend, the long hours of watching TV, the promptings of the mass advertiser, and many other influences. These are matters which did not complicate the task of teachers before the war, and yet the teachers today are expected just the same to instil into their pupils high standards of morals generally speaking stricter than those practised by society at large. Now all parents expect teachers to teach their children to behave better than they behave at home. The teachers have succeeded in this difficult task to a very remarkable degree but only to find that a few months after leaving school their pupils have unlearned much of what they were taught at school.

I think this must be a great source of frustration. Because how easily a teacher can get the feeling that our postwar society puts these great demands upon him and then works against him when he tries to meet those demands, and if frustration of that kind has shown itself sharply and very widely in the dispute over the difference between £42 million and £47½ million I am sure we have got to look deeper than the £5½ million for the real cause.

Hon. Members try to understand those causes, and, of course, I do myself, and we all want to help the teachers. Heaven knows all teachers are not saints, but they speak the truth when they say that the cause which they serve is sacred, and I find them now asking the general public—all of us—for a greater recognition of their responsibilities in the context of society as it is now; that recognition is not just a question of money, but much more a question of sympathy and understanding and active support. We shall have in the next year or two many opportunities of affording them that support, and I hope we shall all do so.

12.45 p.m.

Mr. James Boyden (Bishop Auckland)

The right hon. Gentleman is indeed a curious Minister of Education. He has just said that no one can be satisfied with the progress in the supply of teachers. With regard to the recruitment of married women and older women he wished he had started the programme earlier. With regard to the recruiting of mature students and providing day training colleges we ought to provide more places. Then finally, when he looks at the position with regard to mature students, we do not know whether there is an adequate reservoir of talent to be recruited or not, and he comes here in his smooth way putting this over as an advertisement for ten years of Tory rule.

It is really quite incredible. Many people may wonder whether he could satisfy the legitimate interests of the teachers, and create an atmosphere in the social services and in the educations system for expansion, not only by allocating the right sort of resources but by creating at atmosphere which puts educational advance and social improvement in the fore of the national interest. Instead, the Government allow spivs to make fortunes without limitation. He says that he wants to put the right weight on the right qualities. It would be interesting to see the number of teachers he and his colleagues have recommended for honours and awards in the Honours Lists.

I can remember when the right hon. Gentleman came down to this House to deal with the Crowther Report. The atmosphere in the public galleries, the atmosphere in the Lobbies, was one of hope. If he had said then that he was raising the school leaving age to 16 in 1968 or 1969 or 1970 he would have done at one stroke what I have been saying about creating the right atmosphere. He would have given the country the feeling that education really mattered. But what did he do? He came along and temporised in the elegant manner in which he has just been temporising, and made a case that, because of the shortage of teachers and the over-large classes, this must be his first battle. Then he has the nerve to say the things I have just repeated to him.

The trouble is that, although he thinks the argument is over £5 million, the argument, as he concluded just now, is over the status of teachers. How can he expect to get more recruits for the teaching profession if the people who are in the closest touch with the recruits to the teaching profession are disgruntled?

He knows very well that the typical Crowther picture of wasted talent, a greater waste of talent than there was over Blue Streak and things of that description, is to be found in the appalling waste of working-class children, particularly girls, who do not maximise their talents. I will quote only one Crowther figure: 51 per cent. of the children of the managerial class stay on at school to 17; 2 per cent. of the unskilled workers' children. This is a shocking waste which cannot be dealt with till the whole atmosphere is revolutionised and unless the expansion of resources is accompanied by equal dynamic on the part of the whole Tory Government. I agree that in the Gracious Speech there is a mention of an amendment of the law relating to school leaving dates, but that is a very small thing compared with raising the school leaving age.

The Minister specifically referred to the recruiting of mature students. He has also said from time to time when we have been debating education that we should concentrate on recruiting married women. Day training colleges are a move in the right direction, but from my own experience I am sure that there would be a possibility of considerable recruitment to colleges of a number of mature students in a wider field than just teaching. The Minister's campaign to get married women back to the schools is a limited campaign. There ought to be a campaign for recruiting married and older women for other spheres as well as teaching. There are great gaps in the social field, and the Younghusband Report emphasises strongly the needs there. If the Minister's campaign for recruiting married women were taken wider he would obtain useful results in many directions.

One of the particular unfairnesses in the modern educational system has been the effect on the 28–34 age group, again particularly among the women. They were the boys and girls who suffered their schooling during the war. Whereas a number of men had opportunities of training after the war and in the postwar years, and were able to make up for their loss during the war, far fewer women had this opportunity. I therefore ask the Minister to pay some attention to this category.

I should like to suggest to him something which has been submitted in evidence to the Robbins Committee and which he might adopt without waiting for the Robbins advice on the subject. It is that he should create an advisory service for mature students and appoint staff skilled in handling people of this sort and knowledgeable about the social services. He should organise a recruiting campaign going wider than the recruitment of married women for teaching. He could locate such staff in the divisional inspectors' offices. He would certainly have to appoint additional staff, but many of Her Majesty's Inspectors would be suitable to assist.

The right hon. Gentleman would also need to use the B.B.C. which is very slow to publicise in a semi-advertising way some of the national needs. Here is a field in which it might be tempted to take an active interest. I know that the Minister is interested in the possibilities of television and broadcasting at off-peak times for education purposes. I should like to think that in the current state of affairs, when the B.B.C. and independent television are more open to advice than they have sometimes been, he could push this argument to them a good deal further.

The very great difficulties which mature people seeking wider educational facilities experience is seldom realised. They do not know what facilities are available. They are often singularly modest about their own possibility of achievement. Despite what has been said about training colleges being adaptable in this way, they often find a fussy attitude on the part of training college principals, though they find that some are very co-operative. They find awkward regulations at universities and a great deal of talent is wasted because there is not a broad enough attitude towards the actual students who are coming forward at the moment. If in his Bill to deal with student grants the right hon. Gentleman can make a point of meeting the needs of the mature students who want to attend long-term residential colleges such as Ruskin, Hillcroft, Fircroft and Coleg Harlech, it will be a great advance.

I have received a letter from a former adult student of mine which is rather alarming. It reads: On application to the local education authority I was awarded an Adult Exhibition"— it was to Durham— which made provision for a wife and family. Later in the year, however, I was informed that this had been cut to a bursary on the grounds of new State regulations. It appears that unless the grant is to be used for a bona fide degree course the State will not subsidise a Major Award and the L.E.A. is obliged to accept these regulations. I hope that is not so and that the Minister will say that the obligation is on the local authority and that this situation is not due to some advice or to some impending legislation which the Minister proposes to bring forward.

This is only common justice. I do not maintain that the flow of adult students will revolutionise the teacher-training position, but it will make a difference. I ask the Minister to use his influence with Vice-Chancellors and the University Grants Committee to see that more flexible arrangements are adopted. Some are extremely sensible. The regulations in Oxford and Durham, with which I have had a great deal to do, are very sensible in the matter of admitting mature students, but I hope that when the Minister speaks on the proposed new Bill he will emphasise these facets of the question of entrance for these students.

Finally, in this connection, I would ask the Minister to consider expanding existing residential colleges and possibly setting up one or two more. He knows that through his Ministry he can give capital grants for the expansion of colleges but I do not believe that he has done so. I suggest that he has a conference with the authorities of the residential colleges and takes a step forward in this way by being ready to make these grants within his power for expansion.

There are one or two miscellaneous matters which I should like to bring to the Minister's attention. I asked him a Question in July, 1960, about the maintenance allowances for handicapped children remaining at school over the age of 15 years. The answer was that when there was an opportunity for legislation he would look into the matter. Now, when he is considering grants for those sections of the community who intellectually and socially are very much better off than the handicapped children, I would ask him also to look at this small field.

I also ask the Minister to take more interest in the provision within our own institutions for overseas students. When I looked the other day at the University Grants Committee's figures of the number of overseas and Commonwealth students who are in our universities I was disappointed. The total figure has increased, but the percentage has slightly declined since 1938. Whereas in 1938 5.7; per cent. of graduates and postgraduates came from the Commonwealth, last year the percentage was 6.2, but the percentage of foreign undergraduates and post-graduates has declined from 4.4; per cent. in 1938–59 to 4 per cent. in 1959–60. Therefore, relatively, we are not doing any better than we were doing in 1938.

Sir D. Eccles

I know the figures and I am sure that the universities are doing their best, but it is worth remembering that the increase in other institutions of higher education, and particularly in the technical colleges, is enormous and we are making much larger provision for them now.

Mr. Boyden

I am well aware of that, and it increases the strength of my argument that universities should take more foreign and Commonwealth students. No one can say that the demand of students to come here and the need in this country are not absolutely overwhelming. I feel that it is a matter for negotiation and discussion and I am sure that we can do better.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies (Isle of Thanet)

Would the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden) also include within that ambit the importance of seeing that countries with friendly relations with us, such as Persia and other parts of the Middle East, should also have a share? It is only through our universities that the training that is required by people in those countries, particularly in the Middle East, can be obtained.

Mr. Boyden

I do not dissent from that. I merely want to draw attention to the fact that although, absolutely, we are making an improvement because the universities have expanded, we are not relatively doing any better than before the war. This is quite a serious, weakness.

I would criticise the right hon. Gentleman's insensitiveness to the problems of adult education generally. If he created the right atmosphere amongst teachers, he would do much better in recruiting teachers. I am quite sure that if he undertook a policy of expansion in adult education, he would, in the same way, help very much to create an atmosphere among adult students which would go right through the community.

I would remind the right hon. Gentleman of the Montreal Declaration last year. At one of the few international conferences where East and West could agree, the final Declaration, which was unanimous, said this about adult education: In the field of international understanding, adult education in today's divided world takes on a new importance. Provided that man learns to survive, he has in front of him opportunities for social development and personal well-being such as have never been offered to him before. Further, it says: The countries which are better off have an opportunity of helping those which are poorer, they have the opportunity of such an act of wisdom, justice and generosity as could seize the imagination of the whole world. With their help, illiteracy could be eradicated in a few years, if, preferably through the United Nations and its Agencies, a resolute, comprehensive and soundly planned campaign were undertaken. We believe profoundly that this is an opportunity which ought to be seized. Again it says: But it is not only in developing countries that adult education is needed. In the developed countries the need for vocational and technical training is increasingly accepted, but it is not enough. Healthy societies are composed of men and women, not of animated robots, and there is a danger, particularly in the developed countries, that the education of adults may get out of balance by emphasizing too much vocational needs and technical skills. The right hon. Gentleman knows my views on adult education, and we have met several times to discuss this matter. It is a great pity that in the Gracious Speech, where there are references to improvement in some fields of social endeavour, the words relating to education are the bare bones of the matter. The right hon. Gentleman's general inability to create the right atmosphere of expansion is set out in the one bare sentence in the Queen's Speech. It means that next year will not be a year of expansion and rapid progress but a year in which, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer plays the tune, the troubles to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred will come back on us in increasing force.

1.4 p.m.

Mr. Ian Fraser (Plymouth, Sutton)

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden) dealt, in the main, with problems of teacher supply, of which he has considerable experience. I want to address myself more to the point on which my right hon. Friend concluded his speech.

During the whole course of the dispute which has been raging in the teaching profession during the past months, nothing has more impressed me than the way in which the reaction of the teachers has been at every stage far more violent and, I would even say, bitter than the actual facts at that point in the dispute could possibly have been held to justify. It is quite clear that this dispute, not in itself over points of any very fundamental importance, has uncovered a state of discontent and, for many sections of the teaching profession, a state of what one might perhaps call low morale which deserves our attention.

Again, I have been very strongly impressed from the start by something referred to by my right hon. Friend, namely, that this is not fundamentally a question of pay. It goes very much deeper than pay. As far as I have been able to isolate the principal sources of discontent in different parts of the teaching profession, it seems to me that they are strongest in what are really the two opposite ends of the very wide field which the teaching profession covers.

The deepest discontent seems to me to be among the primary teachers. The real bitterness, I think, is there. The cause of it seems to be two-fold. Partly it is the state of mind towards the rest of the teaching profession, which I hesitate to call jealousy, but there is something of jealousy in it. Many primary teachers are deeply jealous of what they consider to be the better terms and the extra weightings of importance, so to speak, which they believe to be given to secondary school teachers. That is on the primary side.

The other rather deep source of discontent seems to be at the other end of the profession, among the more highly-qualified secondary school staffs. Certainly a number of them with whom I have spoken during this dispute have complained of and resented being linked in the public mind with the more militant and perhaps more noisy sections of the profession. They had been led by what has happened in past months, perhaps more strongly than before, to hope for some completely separate system of negotiation of their salaries and other terms of service which would have the effect of perhaps widening any gap that there may be between them and the rest of the profession and would certainly pay still more attention to their special problems.

It is a curious thing that this dispute in its early stages, claimed by the teaching organisations as importing more unity into the profession than it achieved at any time before, has produced the opposite result. It has had the effect of emphasising the underlying discord in the profession. If that is in any sense a true diagnosis of the position, we ought to concentrate on measures throughout the whole profession which are primarily directed at improving professional morale, and it seems to me that there is a real case and a real necessity for improving professional morale in the profession at the moment.

I have been very much struck and surprised by the value which primary teachers seem to attach to public acknowledgment of the worth of their work. This goes back to what my right hon. Friend said at the end of his speech, that the primary teachers have a feeling that society is not behind them. They crave—that is not too strong a word for their feelings—for public acknowledgment by people in high positions, by Ministers and others, and this is a symptom of the sense of insecurity which they have because they believe that public opinion and society generally are not really behind them in their work.

Their actual grievances axe much more specific than that. Primary teachers will often talk to one as if it were true that they were on a wholly different scale of remuneration from the rest of the profession. That cannot be true of the basic scales, because they are the same. But the primary teachers feel this very deeply in connection with the incidentals of the salary scales—graded posts, calculation of head teachers' salaries, the different pupil ratios employed in calculating rewards and so on.

I suppose that we have always faced in the primary field the great difficulty which all professions must face, that the highly remunerated are those who are fewest and most highly qualified. Very often one comes up against the difficulty in the primary field that the qualifications held by members of the profession in that sphere are not very difficult to achieve and are achieved by very many people. But there is, obviously, a tremendous difference between that position and the actual existence of very highly skilled, competent primary teachers such as we find there.

I have been greatly impressed by the need to devise a more sensitive instrument, particularly for primary school purposes, for measuring merit so that one can reward merit where it really exists, so that the result would be that when one got a highly rewarded primary teacher he would be a person of whom any good judge of people would say,"There, indeed, is a person fit to stand beside those who are eminent in other professions."That is the standard at which we must aim, though I appreciate that it is a most difficult problem.

What I have said deals principally with the primary school teachers, and it would not necessarily assuage anything like all the discontent which exists. I wonder whether there are not measures which we could take more widely throughout the profession which might have the effect not only of raising professional morale but in some way—this seems to be the very desirable result of raising professional morale—of drawing the profession more closely together. The unity of the profession has in some degree been damaged by the dispute.

It may be that one line to which not a great deal of reference has been made during the dispute might have certain possibilities. It is important that one should be able to examine what goes on in staff rooms and common rooms throughout the primary schools, the secondary modern schools and the grammar schools. I get a chance to see this, as many hon. Members do. There are many hon. Members who have served in the profession; I have not done so, but I happen to be married to a serving teacher.

It seems to me that there is an underlying tendency, derived from the past and from different conditions, to look upon the teacher as a person who is rather less than an officer, someone not quite as important as I believe a teacher ought to be. I refer here to the relationship of the local education authorities with the teachers they employ. Right from the top of the scale in famous establishments to the grammar school end we find teachers dining under less than dignified conditions, certainly under conditions less than those which would be regarded as fit for an officers' mess. We find containers of food, aluminium what-nots, dripping with gravy, being brought in and put on desks in rooms not normally used for feeding but cleared for teachers' meals. A great deal of that may be necessary and has sprung from a perfectly sound principle, that the children must come first. The teachers themselves are always the first to say that. They will cut their own throats at once if one makes suggestions for improving their conditions ; they always say, "Do not bother about that. The children come first."

However, surely the opposite must be the case with the local authorities. Surely, in that respect it is not true that the children should come first. If we want to educate the children properly, the teachers must come first in the eyes of their employers. This is the same principle as is applied to officers in the fighting services and in other spheres, and it is only in that way that we shall be able to free the teachers fully so that they can give their minds to the education of their charges.

This is not entirely a matter for my right hon. Friend. In its detail, it is much more a matter for the employers of teachers and the teachers themselves. However, it may be that a determined campaign could be initiated by the Ministry to improve the actual daily living conditions and status of teachers throughout the whole scale. By this I mean the actual conditions under which teachers do their job, and I would term it "treatment as officers."

I have particularly mentioned meals because that aspect obtrudes more on one's notice as one goes round schools. There is also the fitting up of staff rooms. Teachers might, perhaps, be given as much accommodation as we have in this House—which is not much—to help them to do their work. Such accommodation is lacking in some cases. I do not know whether it should stop even there. I have a good deal of sympathy with the discontent about administrative work. In the case of staffs where the morale is good, the school meals question does not raise a very great ripple on the surface, but I would point out that administrative chores have grown immensely in our schools since the war, and they seem to me to be still growing.

I am speaking here mainly about female education. I happen to see more of it because my wife happens to be in it. It is my opinion that the women who are teaching girls are becoming more hard worked year after year. They may themselves be in part responsible for it, because women are much more conscientious creatures than men and make a bigger job of administrative work. Among other things, the training college entry problem adds to the work every year. During term time, many of these teachers do not get to bed at a reasonable hour, and that is certainly the case with grammar school teachers. If there are measures which could be taken in a reasonably economic way to relieve the teachers of some of the administrative burden, they would be well worth adopting. I refer to the provision of some secretarial work, and so on. It would have to be on a very great scale, but it would be of great value.

Finally, I shall try to draw those threads together and back to what seems to me the fundamental problem behind all this. It is a question of the maintenance of what has been called the unity of the profession. It is something which temperamentally I find myself very much drawn towards—this conception of the unity of the profession—when I am challenged in a common room, as sometimes I am, in a grammar school.

To defend this idea and say what really is the logical background behind the idea of the unity of the profession I do not find altogether easy to do, because there is a tremendous gap between the lives, the responsibilities and backgrounds of those at one end of the educational scale compared with those at the other. The field is enormously wide. It is not easy to defend in any sort of logical way the concept of the unity of the teaching profession as between the primary end of it and the end of it which is engaged in preparing candidates for scholarships at universities.

It seems to me that what has happened and what will happen under this new Burnham system which is now proposed is going to be a tremendous test of that whole theory on which hitherto our system of State education has been based. I am sure that the test of the new Burnham arrangements will amount to whether in fact things can be done in such a way as to maintain that unity as a living force or not. From such contacts as I have had with teachers I am in no doubt that that unity is gravely threatened at the moment. It is gravely threatened by what has occurred and by the underlying facts of the case. A tremendous effort will have to be made through this reconstituted system.

I am glad that it is to be reconstituted because I do not think that in its original form it would have done the job which will be the main task before us. I am certain that it is worth one more very strong effort, both inside the Burnham Committee and—as I have tried to suggest—outside the Committee in more general measures designed to raise the whole professional morale throughout the profession. I am sure that it is along those two lines that we may hope to make real and successful progress.

1.23 p.m.

Mr. Sydney Irving (Dartford)

I have considerable sympathy with the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. I. Fraser). I think, as he does, that this situation is not something which has arisen immediately but that it is a culmination of a long period of dissatisfaction.

If the hon. Member is right in saying that there is a jealousy on the part of the primary school teachers, I feel that that is not unjustified. I believe we have never yet accorded the primary school teachers the right sort of importance, and that this failure has had repercussions on every other stage in our educational system. The hon. Gentleman said that we ought to accord them respect and the proper treatment to which they are entitled. He said also that this was not only the responsibility of the Minister of Education. I say to him that the example set by the Minister in the last few months is an example which the rest of us in the country would not like to see followed in the treatment of teachers and in according them proper respect. Many of the things about which the hon. Member spoke are, of course, the direct responsibility of the Minister—conditions in staff rooms and buildings, and so on.

Finally, the hon. Member spoke of the unity of the profession. What can fragment the profession more than the sort of distribution of salary scales which the Minister is proposing in the £42 million distribution by which he has upset the whole Burnham machinery?

It seemed to me when listening to the Minister that he argued the difficulties to such an extent that he became obssessed by them. We got once again the old formula that we must"wait and see". Therefore, despite the picture built up by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) of the desperate shortage of teachers, we are going once again to wait until the situation becomes more acute and the position deteriorates even more before taking the action which is necessary.

The Minister took exception to the use of the word "blackmail." I do not think that anything we heard him say this morning will alter the view of teachers, or of some hon. Members, that he did extract £.5; million from the figure which was already regarded as totally inadequate by the teachers. That will do nothing to deal with the problem of the shortage of teachers, which will get worse as this decade goes on. We have watched the compulsion on the Minister, brought about by the tremendous reaction in his party to the statement he made at Brighton—a compulsion that made him publicly wriggle just a little on the statement he made and retract just a little, but we hope that he will not withdraw entirely.

We believe that this compulsory, or preferably voluntary, change is a state of affairs which ought to come about. If we are to work together as a united nation, children must learn together at the formative stage in the schools.

Mr. W. Yates

Which does the hon. Member mean—voluntary or compulsory?

Mr. Irving

Whether or not it is voluntary or compulsory, I think it is the direction in which we ought to work and I should like to see both sides of the House united in this aim. We have our own views, but we welcome the step forward taken in this direction.

In 1944 we passed an Education Act which was a blueprint for educational development over a period of fifteen years. It provided for three things—a statutory power to the Minister to direct, a statutory obligation to provide sufficient primary and secondary schools of the right character and with the right equipment and so on and, thirdly, it envisaged a period of educational guidance of one sort or another which would last virtually from the age of 2 years for some children to 21 years of age when those young people could be absorbed as adult members of the community.

Over the years we have seen neglect of the nursery school system, neglect of the county colleges and, until last year, neglect of the Youth Service. This was a plan for comprehensive national development and now, seventeen years after the Act, we are at least twenty years away from achieving the minimum targets laid down in that Act. We have completely failed to reach even the minimum targets laid down in the 1944 Act.

I believe that this is due largely, if not entirely, to the failure of the Government to accord a sufficiently high priority to education. I believe that this is one of the dissatisfactions of the teachers, because they have come increasingly to recognise that not only have we not caught up with our own needs but, in many aspects of the service, we are falling behind what is being done and the effort which is being made in other countries with whom we have to live and against whom we have to compete.

This failure, I am certain, is recognised outside this House and by almost everyone except the Minister and the Government. Therefore, while I welcome the offer of the Minister to discuss particular problems in debates in this House in the months to come, until we get a changed attitude to the priority of education we shall never solve these problems within the whole service. Whether we are concerned with the quality of living or our survival in the highly competitive modern world of science and technology, I believe that the consequences of the failure of the last few years will be tragic indeed.

We hear a great deal of talk about the need for economic growth. This is what was said recently by J. C. R. Dow, the Deputy-Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research: Most of the economic growth has to be explained as the result of gradually increasing cleverness in making use of existing resources as a result of a more and more highly educated population. It is fantastic, when we need economic growth so much, that we are restricting education both in terms of teachers' salaries and in terms of building. We shall pay a very dear price for this in the years to come.

Because of the failure of the Gracious Speech to give an assurance that this new priority will be accorded to education, I want to deal in some little detail with some of the aspects in which we have fallen short. I will take building first. The Minister said that last year he approved the biggest programme this country had ever known. What he did not mention was that local education authorities asked for £100 million more work than he was prepared to approve. They submitted programmes for £214 million, and £110 million were approved. This meant that in almost every area projects which had been on the stocks for a very long time had to be set back for a year, two years and sometimes even longer.

It is to the credit of many Tory-controlled local authorities, as well as Labour-controlled local authorities, that they did not hesitate to complain and criticise the Minister bitterly. The Chairman of the Kent Education Committee told Kent Members that, on the programme which they had set themselves, secondary education in Kent could be brought up to a proper standard only by 1975, and that if the Minister's programme were adopted the time would be 1990. I believe that the locally elected people are much more capable of assessing the need than is the Minister, and in relation to the need they recognise that we are doing far too little.

The Minister repeated today that the reason for this is that there are not adequate building resources. That is a strange doctrine to come from Conservatives—the doctrine that the man in Whitehall knows better. It indicates a complete somersault from their previous attitude.

I do not think that this is good enough, because in the very period of which the Minister has been speaking— a period in which he says that there has been a strain on building resources —a rash of offices, petrol stations and inessential buildings of other kinds has occurred in every town in the country. I believe that aesthetically we should have been better off without some of these blocks, but it has meant that many of our children will have to continue for many years to be housed in totally inadequate buildings.

In my constituency about a quarter or a third of the schools were built in the last century. The Government's priorities are clearly wrong. Just as on salaries and the wages pause, the Government can take direct action only in the public sector because of their inability to control the economy and their unwillingness and failure to plan. We have the unedifying spectacle of the Chancellor of the Exchequer saying, after ten years' deterioration of the situation, that he is now in favour of planning, although not, of course, Socialist planning. This seems to me a strange double-talk to come from a responsible Minister. I must confess that the Chancellor's conscience reminds me of a certain key which lies in a case to be seen as hon. Members go out to the Terrace. It was once used to open the vault where Guy Fawkes hid in another place. It folds into different lengths for different occasions, and it seems to me that the Chancellor's conscience exhibits a similar flexibility in this respect.

Of course, the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to say that he does not agree with our priorities, that the public good should be given priority over private interests. But this is something we already know. We think that school building is not getting sufficient priority. A further setback is to be found in the cuts in the minor works programme announced in Circular 13/61 of July, with its announcement that final approval of minor works would be suspended from the date of the Circular, 28th July, until 1st October, and then would proceed at about half the rate of the previous approvals and would be spread over eighteen months. Those of us who have anything to do with educational administration know what a blow this is. We know how much improvement work has been done in our schools under minor works approvals— such as improvements to sanitation, and the provision of dining rooms, additional classes and new playing spaces. Many of these projects have had to be shelved.

This means, in a divisional executive in my constituency, that the local grammar schools will not get the additional laboratories which were planned for them in the near future under this works programme. When the Minister is urging that grammar schools and other schools should increase the amount of their science teaching, it seems to me to be sheer lunacy to take action leading to the shelving of such valuable improvements. I ask the Minister, what is to be the future of these restrictions, and are they to continue indefinitely or only for as long as the pay pause and the economic restrictions continue?

I want to know more clearly about the question of the approvals for the new period 1962–64, because if these are to be the subject of further cuts and further restrictions, then in my constituency there is a high probability that if some of the schools which have been submitted in the programme are turned down, a substantial number of children will not be able to get education when they reach the age of five. This is a very serious matter indeed.

Mr. Rees-Davies

On whose authority does the hon. Member make that statement?

Mr. Irving

That is my impression.

Mr. Rees-Davies

The hon. Member is speaking of Kent County Council, is he not? Has he any authority to make that statement? I shall deal with the point later, but his statement is utter nonsense.

Mr. Irving

The hon. Member may know something about the other end of Kent, but he knows nothing about north-east Kent, which is an area of rapidly expanding population, expanding more rapidly perhaps than most other parts of Kent. There are schools planned for 1964–65 and the children are already on their feet, and if these schools are postponed those children will not get into schools at the age of five. Perhaps I will send them down to the hon. Member's constituency at the other end of Kent.

This is a very serious problem, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give some indication of what the policy is to be in terms of the new programme, because we understand that so far no discussions have been entered into about this programme. It would be all right if the Minister could tell us that the restrictions on school building were imposed so that there could be an expansion of teacher training and teacher supply, although I do not believe that such a choice is necessary. I have always believed that we need both, but I will certainly accept that a good teacher in a poor school is better than a poor teacher in a good school.

But despite what has been said today by both the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North, the teacher supply is not only not improving but is deteriorating seriously. We already know that a quarter of the children in our primary schools are in classes of over forty and that 64 per cent. are in classes of over thirty. I do not believe that this is teaching at all; when we reach that stage it is not teaching but child-minding.

In the last two or three weeks we have heard much about juvenile delinquency, the lack of morals and the difficulties of probation officers, and even about girls who regard a lack of sex experience as an indication of being "a square". To me the essence of education is the interaction in an intimate way between the adult, mature mind of the teacher and the developing mind of the child, in such a way as to stimulate the best in the child. I do not believe that that can be done in classes of upwards of forty children, nor even in classes of over thirty. That is why we advocate in our policy statement that the aim Should be to bring down all classes to a size of thirty.

The Minister of Education would have done much more for education if he had increased teacher supply rather than give us that homily about religious instruction the last time he spoke. It is not that religious instruction is not important, but the most fundamental problem in education is to get the child-teacher relationship right. Until we do this, we shall not give education a chance. While I do not think that we still hold out the same rosy hopes for education as some of the 19th century Liberal educationists did, I do not think that education at its best has had a proper chance in the State schools to be able to bring about the standard of society of which education is capable, given the proper child-teacher relationship.

I believe that the resistance to education mentioned in the Crowther Report in the third quartile stems largely from children in large classes who are unable at an early age to get their foot on the ladder of opportunity. They lose enthusiasm and confidence and become disillusioned long before they get to the secondary stage. It is, therefore, the height of folly to skimp educational expenditure and guidance at this vital formative age only to have a much higher social and financial cost in dealing with the failures of education at a later stage.

It is not only a question of the shortage of teachers. I am convinced that the great majority of teachers are dedicated and competent, but there are still a minority who are not. Some of them would be better out of our schools. To look at the bare figures of teacher shortages is not to get an assessment of the quality of teachers in the schools, a level which must be increased. Indeed, a head teacher cannot be blamed if he brings in someone to mind a class, irrespective of qualifications, because unlike most other jobs a class will not sit placidly and quietly waiting for the teacher to return while we begin to develop teacher recruitment.

I have two divisions which impinge on my constituency. Both are 60 or 70 teachers short, which is about 8 per cent. of the total. In both divisions there are teachers who might not be teaching if the standard of teachers were higher. Added to this, the unexpected factors of the increased birthrate, the increased number of children staying on at school, and the number of teachers who will inevitably be drawn out of secondary school to technical education, will create a crisis in the next five or six years. The position will be much worse than we have seen in recent years.

As the Parliamentary Secretary knows, we have no teachers coming into the schools next year. The 4,000 places which were approved in 1959 will not start yielding teachers until 1964. The further 8,000 which were approved in 1960 will not start producing teachers until 1966. There will be a considerable deterioration in the teacher position in the next five years. I am not convinced that the Minister has taken the necessary steps. Nor am I convinced that his campaign for recruiting married women has been sufficiently successful to meet the need.

Therefore, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North in asking for some crash programme and urgent action to improve the situation before it becomes very much worse. Despite the increase in teachers going into the training colleges in the last few years, when the figures issued by the clearing houses are analysed it becomes apparent that very few teachers of first-class ability could not get into the training colleges last year. Some authorities have put the figure as low as 90 men and 30 women. Much more must be done in this respect.

We are falling behind in other parts of the education service. John Vaizey, of the University of London Institute of Education, has recently said that per million of the population this country is training only half the number of highly-qualified technologists that Canada is training, a third of Russia's figure and only one-seventh of America's. Our output is no greater than that of Yugoslavia. This bodes serious consequences for us when we have to come into competition with the countries of the Common Market and of Europe generally in the very near future.

It is exactly the same in the university field. At present this country has only 120,000 to 140,000 places. The Government promised 175,000. I will give hon. Members some idea of how far we are behind. For 1 place in 4 in the United States, there is 1 in 9 in Canada, 1 in 10 in France, 1 in 12 in Russia and 1 in 22 in this country. The 175,000 promised places will provide us with places in universities for only about 5 per cent. of our young people. When the whole Government programme is achieved we shall still be behind other countries.

I have the privilege of being a member of the executive committee of the sponsoring body of the new university at Canterbury. We have an enthusiastic sponsoring body and much support from industry and local authorities. It is unlikely that this university or any of the new universities which have been approved will start producing students of a qualified kind this decade. In the science debate I drew attention to the delay which will inevitably be caused by the deliberations of the Robbins Committee. The Government have decided that they cannot give any new approvals until the Committee has reported. This failure is very serious, but it typifies the failure over the whole of our training field and applies to our apprenticeship system also.

I want finally to deal with expenditure. There has been an increasing realisation, which has come about in the last four or five years since the publication in 1957 of John Vaizey's book "Cost of Education", that we compare very unfavourably with many other countries and, indeed, with our own past. The book showed the melancholy fact that in 1955 we spent on education a smaller percentage of our income than we did between 1931 and 1935, which were years of a world depression.

Mr. A. Bourne-Arton (Darlington)

Much has happened since 1955 and the figures are now very different.

Mr. Irving

I had intended to hurry over this matter because several of my hon. Friends are waiting to speak. However, I will deal with the point. As the years have unfolded there has been increasing evidence that we are making a smaller effort than other countries. U.N.E.S.C.O. bulletins show that we were spending only £1 per head of the population as against £2 in America and £3 in Russia. The P.E.P. book on Britain's economic growth showed that France and Western Germany were spending a larger percentage of their national resources on education than we were. The Government may point to the last two or three years and argue that this country has stepped up its expenditure on education and, of course, it depends how expenditure on education is assessed. However, I suspect that if we examine our figure at the present moment and compare it with that for France and Western Germany—everyone knows that the current figures are not immediately available— we shall find that the real and absolute position is that those countries are spending more in real terms than we are, because the expansion of their rate of growth has been so fast that they can afford, even by keeping a similar percentage, to go ahead of us in this race. Whichever way we look at it, the Gov- ernment do not come out in a very favourable light.

In every respect the position is serious. It is the culmination of a long series of dissatisfactions on the part of teachers —the failure to accord them a professional status and a professional salary, the large classes, the shortage of teachers, and the general failure to accord the proper priorities to education. It is also because teachers rightly have the impression not only that they have not got the betterment to which they think they are entitled, namely, proper professional salary, but that they have been falling behind other professions.

I want to make my attitude plain. I deplore strikes. They should be unnecessary in the public services. The service of the police, nurses, teachers and doctors is so vital that nothing should interfere with it. However, if the Government and democracy are to withdraw the right to strike and of militant action from people in the public services, they have a moral obligation to pay special attention to the salaries and conditions of people from whom they expect a sacrifice. The Government have utterly failed to do this. Not only have they used these people, because of their inability or unwillingness to control the private sector, to get at the private sector, but they have made them the first recipients of blows of this kind.

I am convinced that we will not get an expansion of our education expenditure until the Government change their attitude, or we get a new Government. There will be serious damage to the whole prospect of education if the Minister proceeds to interfere in the negotiating machinery. He said this morning that he wanted only to make effective the things which the local education authorities and the teachers wanted. If they want them so much, why is there this tremendous reaction and resistance on the part of the teachers? It is because they see this as an attempt to interfere with their freedom of negotiation and a possibility of restricting the amount which is spent on education, either in salaries or in other ways.

The Minister has said that more and more people in this country are beginning to realise that education, although not usually a short-term investment, provides in the end the best dividend, for with education a country can help itself towards better standards of living. But at the same time he has proceeded to attack the whole education service. In this respect he must be either hypocritical, or blind to what he is doing.

Our attitude is better summed up in the document produced by the Labour Party,"Signposts for the Sixties", which deals with the question of the difference of approach and says: Children are the nation's most valuable asset Yet, despite some improvement in the last few years, this country's ' investment in people' is still tragically inadequate. Under Tory Free Enterprise no limit is set to the amount of our national resources and intellectual talent consumed by the popular newspaper, the glossy magazine, the cinema, commercial television and the advertising industry. Where these profitable undertakings are concerned, no salaries are too high, no offices too lavish. But when it comes to building schools and paying teachers' salaries, strict economy is the order of the day. Until we get a proper concept of the priority which should be accorded education, we will not get satisfied teachers or the education service which we require and which is desperately needed.

1.52 p.m.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies (Isle of Thanet)

The hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Sydney Irving), who has just treated us to that dissertation, is a statistical targeteer; that is to say, he is one of those who works out the whole principles of education or whether we manage to get X per cent, more than somebody else or some other nation. My approach is fundamentally and diametrically opposed to that.

I start by being worried about the conditions of today. We are a nation which has" never had it so good", a nation, therefore, of "haves" and of a desire of everyone to want to have rather than to want to be. We are a nation of "having" persons rather than a nation of human beings. What we have to do is to consider how this nation can get back to some of its principles and once more become a nation of human beings. It would be discourteous if I did not deal with a few of the arguments first, but I want to deal with the relationship between child care and education and the difficult problems of crime, showing how these two are one problem.

We want to educate human beings into the richness of life rather than into the riches of life. That is my approach to the problems of education. I begin by saying that, of course, that cannot be done in the schools unless we have contentment of the teaching profession, and contentment is not just a question of salary. Last week, I had the pleasure of spending a weekend with some teachers, including a young man who had been a Communist and who came from Wales. An admitted Socialist, he had come here in order to serve in the East End of London, regardless of salary, because he thought that that was his proper duty. Those of us who know about teachers and understand some of their problems know that conditions in schools are vital to the service which those teachers wish to render.

As a lecturer of many years standing —quite apart from the lectures which I sometimes have to deliver in the courts today—it is my view that one can teach a class of 40 perfectly well if one has people who are ready and desirous of learning, while one cannot teach a class of ten if those ten are a bunch of unruly Teddy boys. Those are some of the matters with which I want to deal.

I believe, as I said years ago, that Burnham should have been reconstituted. I wanted it to be reconstituted for I was afraid that the sort of thing which happened in July would happen. I remember swearing rather violently when the pay pause hit the teachers, rather than someone else, in July. I wish that they had succeeded in negotiating their salary before the pay pause came in. I understand that Sir Ronald could not carry his crowd with him, and I have great sympathy with him in that respect. Consequently, they have found themselves in the forefront of the battle.

I hope that any changes in the Burnham Committee will be made to apply to the Whitley Councils in the same way and at much the same time, and that if there is to be some form of national salary scale throughout the whole of the public sector of industry— which later will affect private industry— it will be made quite clear that it is a national policy and will not affect only teachers rather than any other part of that sector. It is up to us today to try to dispel rather than add to the discontent.

Having said that about teachers, I hope that family allowances will be studied as a matter affecting the Ministry of Education, although others may pay the allowances, and that there will be a complete change. I hope that the French system will be considered. I do not want to go into details, but we have much to learn from the French about family allowances, which are an integral part of an education policy.

I turn to the difficult ground. I preface it by saying that in my constituency in East Kent there are probably more teachers than in any other constituency. We have not only the usual type of school, but the unusual type, and the best known prepera-tory schools as well. I should like primary schools to be brought up to the standards of the best preparatory schools, and I have no objection to the not-so-good preparatory schools being made subject to rather keener supervision by the Ministry of Education. One of the difficulties about bringing primary schools up to the standard of preparatory schools is not only intellectual but sporting.

I would send a son to a preparatory school because, as an old broken-down athlete, I have a great preference for bringing up athletes. If I wanted a son to play cricket well, I would send him to a good preparatory school. I do not ask hon. Members to share that view, but if they are keen sportsmen they will agree that there is no doubt that a good preparatory school has an advantage. With respect, we have to do much to assist His Royal Highness and many others in the National Playing Fields Association and similar bodies to try to increase the standard of sportsmanship and games in primary schools throughout the country for the benefit of future athletes.

Throughout the country most schools are good, but it is probably not generally realised that most crime by young people is committed by people coming out of certain schools which are bad schools. They are not bad schools in themselves. They have various difficulties. Most of them, practically all, are in the big cities, and most are in more difficult areas in those big cities.

I wish to give the House certain information to show how with discipline we can stop or considerably reduce crime, and how we can help the teachers.

Mr. G. Thomas

The hon. Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) a moment ago challenged one of my hon. Friends on the source of his information. Can the hon. Gentleman give the source of his information for saying that it is the bad schools which produce the criminals?

Mr. Rees-Davies

Certainly I can. I do not propose to give the House the name of the school concerned. I shall give it to the Minister. I do not intend to divulge the name of the school for a very good reason, namely, for the protection of the teachers and others concerned. However, the hon. Member for Cardiff, West may rest assured that in matters of this kind I am speaking from thorough knowledge.

I will start by facts concerning one school in one borough in London. In this area 80 per cent. of the juvenile delinquents over a period of three years have come from this one comprehensive school.

Mr. Willey rose—

Mr. Rees-Davies

I do not want to take up too much time of the House.

Mr. Willey

The hon. Gentleman must realise that he has made a very grave accusation. Has he called the attention of the authority to that accusation which he is making publicly in this House?

Mr. Rees-Davies

Of course. This is an important and grave problem. When I am dealing with matters of this kind, of which I have considerable personal knowledge, in order to help deal with the problem of delinquency and crime, it does not assist for hon. Members to make such suggestions about accusations and so on. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that this is a tilt at comprehensive schools, I can assure him that it is nothing of the kind, and nor is it intended to be. I am in favour of comprehensive schools, in the right place and at the right time. But that has nothing to do with the question at hand.

This is the sort of thing that is happening today in some of these schools ; the turnover of daily supply teachers is up to 25 per cent. How can one deal with a school where 25 per cent. of the teachers are coming in sometimes only for a day? The actual turnover in a term means that there is hardly such a thing as a teacher employed from term to term. They are nearly all employed on a monthly basis. There are few teachers prepared to stay for as long as one year, while we were brought up to a method whereby teachers remained in the one school for ten, fifteen, perhaps twenty years. These are the real problems to be faced.

As I say, this applies in a few schools. This is not the tenor of the country, but it is vital to the problem of juvenile delinquency. Let us consider one day in the sort of school I have described. Looking through the door, one sees a girl tied up in the passage, gagged and bound. In another room a fire is going on and the furniture is being burned. In the third room one finds the slogan, "Jew Go Home, Mosley" on the board.

These are just some of the problems of hooliganism, and the question is: how can these problems be brought under proper control? The problem of securing the proper discipline necessary to enable teachers to carry out their job of teaching—and not only that, but to enable them to stay and work in schools where this sort of thing is happening and in which the teachers are doing their jobs and fighting to do so—falls into three parts.

Firstly, the recreational aspect—the physical training of boys. Many of these schools do not have sufficient playing fields where boys can, so to speak, be thoroughly well worked out to prevent them going around burning furniture and engaging in hooliganism.

Secondly, there is nothing like sufficient attention being given to the importance of ensuring that the headmasters and others in authority use the cane more than they do.

Thirdly, we must ensure that there is a genuine deterrent. The public school has a deterrent. If one gets sacked from a public school one has to go back to one's mother and father and teal trouble results. But if one is sacked from an ordinary primary, secondary or comprehensive school, what is the result? It is simply that one cannot be sacked because no power exists whereby one can be sacked. The result merely is that one does not go to school and, to certain types, that is exactly what they want.

I have thought up an idea which I shall pursue this year a great deal more. It is essential to secure a deterrent. That deterrent means that it will be essential to have disciplinary schools in certain areas to which children can be sent—those who would normally be sacked or dismissed. It is essential that these schools should be along similar lines to the new detention centres that are being set up.

The difference of the problem is that in the case of the detention centre one is dealing with a child who has been convicted. In this case—and some of them are a great deal worse, if I may say so—they are boys and girls whom it is vital to take away from the environment in which they are poisoning the minds of other boys and girls in their own schools.

In these difficult schools the headmasters and teachers have perhaps eight or ten boys who are thoroughly poisonous and perhaps half-a-dozen girls of very bad morality. May I give an example of this? The other day two young boys of about 15 went to a schoolmistress and said, "When can we have a bit of it with you, Miss?" What is one going to do with boys who make that sort of remark? The only solution is to take them away to some other place or disciplinary centre where they might be brought into hard physical and vocational training.

Mr. G. Thomas

Leave that to the teachers.

Mr. Rees-Davies

The whole point is that one cannot leave this to the teachers because if they give a thoroughly good beating to these boys it just does not have any effect. We know that some boys find the cane a deterrent, but others do not.

Mr. Thomas

It is a smear.

Mr. Rees-Davies

I do not want to detain the House for too long. I think this is one of the first education debates in which I have had the pleasure to be engaged, although I am devoted to the teaching profession and I have spent many hours with teachers. This is a subject this year—having departed somewhat from the other subjects on which the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) has always found me against him, such as licensing and matters of that kind—to which I shall devote much attention, especially the problems of juvenile delinquency, child care and the like.

I now turn to the criminal aspect. It is essential that we should seek a method of prevention. It is too late to influence parents very much. I believe that it starts in the schools. I hope that this problem will be looked at by the Home Office. We must be honest and try to persuade teachers to face up to these problems and be assured that we are all on their side and that we are not against them in this. It horrifies me to know that on any day a head teacher may not know whether he will have a complement of teachers, let alone the question of the size of classes. It also horrifies me to think that he may be genuinely worried if he canes a couple of these young rascals in case the parents complain. I do not believe that generally they will do so, but the fear is there.

It upsets me to think that a young teacher cannot control her class, especially since one has said to me "If I can control my class and teach them manners I shall reckon that I have done extremely well". When we reach a state in which the teachers cannot teach because of that sort of thing, it must be dealt with. I believe if we adopt my suggestion it will largely stop juvenile delinquency. However, I think the Tory Party was right, when the problem was discussed at Brighton, to realise that "flog 'em" is not really the answer, and there were a number of us there in reserve who could have dealt with other aspects of the problem.

Crime must not pay. Crime must repay. That is the key to this problem. Speaking from having seen a good many criminals over the years—I think probably with more direct contact than any other Member of this House, and that is no particular compliment to oneself—I am quite satisfied that penury and poverty today is not the trouble. Affluence is the trouble. It is the desire to have even more, to have more than the other man.

My local vicar, last week at Westgate, said what was absolutely right. He said "I had some of these young hooligans tear the pages out of the hymn books. Do you know what we did? We locked them in and left them until they had pasted every blinking page back again". This is the clue. First of all, we have got to have a system in which they can be made to repay the effects of their crime financially and by hard work. Therefore, we must get them into the detention centres. We must get plenty of good drill sergeants, like some of the men with whom I served in the Welsh Guards during the war, to teach these people, to run them, work them, scrub them, teach them to wash, to be clean in their habits and to have decent manners, and if they walk through the door first they should be taken back and made to go through it properly for the next two hours.

When we have got that treatment in the detention centres we have then got to deal with the prisons, I do not believe the trade unions will oppose us. It is said, but I do not believe it—not the men that I know—that they will oppose us in this country if we, from our experience, say, "When the prisoner goes into prison he should be made to work. He should be made to do a skilled job if we can train him, and he should be paid for the job whilst he is in prison so that when he comes out he can do an honest job of work and the community will not have to pay once more. "The other aspect is that a substantial proportion of the wages which he will be paid in prison will be recouped in order to go into a fund which should be set up to pay those who suffer from crimes of violence in this country.

If we work along those lines, if we say that we are going to send these people to detention centres—and the Government's building programme is magnificent in this respect, many of these places being open prisons—and if we put the men into prison determined that when they come out they will be thoroughly well-qualified to get on with a job, the only other thing we have to do is to look to the question of after-care.

Today we cannot get enough probation officers. I am not surprised because I am sure that they are overworked and underpaid and they have too many young rascals to look after. But what we have not got, and yet which is vital, is probationary after-care. When a man comes out of prison we must see that he is looked after. There should be a period of six to twelve months follow-up probation during which time he can be placed in work and steps taken to ensure that he stays there. Therefore, after a sentence, say of five years, when the man is released let there be a period during which he remains on probation.

I have thrown out some of the ideas that I had. I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education who said that the difficulty is that there are so many different fields to cover in a debate of this sort. I apologise for having led off into the subject of child care. But I come back to this point. If education is to succeed in this country, it will not succeed on statistics. It will succeed on developing human beings, and we must direct our attention to levelling up at the primary schools and at the best of the preparatory schools.

If we can get a better spirit of contentment among the teaching profession they will teach well, although they themselves know that a teacher will never be paid what a person can get in industry. The teacher does not expect it. But he does expect to be able to get conditions of work in which he can satisfy his personality. If, bearing in mind the rewards of other people, we do all we can to see that the teacher gets those conditions to which I have referred, we shall do more to help him than anything else.

16 p.m.

Mr. David Weitzman (Stoke Newington and Hackney, North)

I listened with some amazement to some of the extraordinary statements made by the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies). One thing that I am glad about is that he has had more experience of criminals than any other hon. Member.

I know that this debate is arranged mainly in connection with the subject of education, but I hope the House will bear with me if I depart from that subject to raise one subject which at least has the merit that it is a non-party matter. I have waited a long time to raise it, and the only reason that I do so now—the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education can sit back, for it is very little to do with education—is that it is not a matter that I could raise on the adjournment because it involves legislation.

In April, 1957, Dr. John Bodkin Adams was acquitted on a charge of murdering one of his patients. The House will remember that the trial took place at the Central Criminal Court. The learned judge who presided over the trial, Mr. Justice Devlin as he then was, in his summing-up drew attention to the power given in Section 42 (2) of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, for magistrates to sit in camera. He expressed the opinion that it would have been wiser if the committal proceedings had been held in private—and he gave this reason— because when you have a case of this character, which arouses widespread discussion, it is inevitable that reports should appear in the Press—and, as I reminded you at the very beginning of the case, the proceedings may be quite different from the proceedings as they emerge in this court—and that they should be read by people who subsequently have to serve on the jury. Following that statement, applications were made in a number of cases of committal proceedings and a number of them were held in camera.

It will be remembered that at that time there was considerable uneasiness at the publication of detailed evidence in committal proceedings, and the fear was expressed by many people that as the jurors may well have read the evidence, the subsequent trial of the accused person might well be prejudiced. As a result, the Home Secretary announced in the House on 4th June, 1957—that is more than four years ago —the appointment of a Departmental Committee under the chairmanship of Lord Tucker. The terms of reference were—and I want to read them— To consider whether proceedings before examining justices should continue to take place in open court and, if so, whether it is necessary or desirable that any restriction should be placed on the publication of reports of such proceedings ; and to report. I had the honour to serve on that Committee. The Committee held twenty-one meetings. It examined forty-one witnesses. It received eighty-eight memoranda of evidence. Among the persons or bodies who gave oral or written evidence were Lord Goddard, then Lord Chief Justice, the Attorney-General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Bar Council, the Law Society, the General Council of the Press, the National Union of Journalists, High Court judges and magistrates.

The Committee issued a unanimous Report on 10th July, 1958. More than three years have passed and nothing has been done. The members of the Committee and those giving evidence spent a considerable time in discussing the matter and in coming to a decision. The Committee was urged at the time to deal with the matter, an important one, with expedition.

On 27th July, 1959, over a year after the Report had been issued, the Home Secretary, in reply to a Question, said that the Report was under consideration but he was not yet in a position to make any statement about it".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th July, 1959; Vol. 610, c. 28.] On 19th May, 1960, nearly two years after the Report was issued, the Home Secretary, in reply to a further Question, said … the matter is a difficult and controversial one and I cannot at present give any further undertaking".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th May, 1960. Vol. 623, c. 1471.] But he undertook on that occasion to give the matter further consideration. On 26th May, 1960, he said: The matter is under consideration, but I am not in a position to make any statement"— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th May, 1960; Vol. 624, c. 73.] On 14th July, 1960, he was asked categorically whether he would implement the Report and when legislation was likely. He stated that he had nothing to add to his previous replies.

I raise this matter today because I am very much concerned at the position created. A serious issue affecting the liberty of the subject in a vital way has been raised. This was recognised by the appointment of a Departmental Committee. That Committee spent a great deal of time during a whole year hearing evidence and discussing the matter, producing a unanimous Report. Over three years pass and nothing is done. Not only is there no legislation, but time is not even provided to discuss the Report in the House. In my view, the Government are guilty of grave discourtesy to those who served on the Committee. It is a discouragement to those who desire to render public service in this way and, above all, by pigeonholing the Report, the Government have failed to deal with a problem which calls urgently for attention. I do not know whether the conduct of the Government is due to their fear of the attitude of certain sections of the Press in the matter.

I note that the Gracious Speech contains these words: Proposals will be laid before you for improving the machinery for administering criminal justice with a view to securing greater expedition and efficiency". I heard the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet speak about certain improvements which might be made in the criminal law, I do not know when. It would be foolish on my part if, having read that extract from the Gracious Speech, I were to assume that the Government mean to include in those proposals attention to the matter which I have raised.

I recognise that, by intervening today and raising the matter in this rather unorthodox fashion, with no responsible Minister present who can speak on behalf of the Government—

Mr. W. Yates

It is not an unorthodox manner at all. By the procedure of the House, this is the time when one may do so.

Mr. Weitzman

I agree that it is not unorthodox in that sense, but I am sure that there are many hon. Members present who feel very indignant that I should have intervened to deal with a subject not primarily connected with education.

Mr. Yates

No.

Mr. Weitzman

It is an important matter. I recognise that, as a result of my unorthodox action, in that sense, there is no Minister present who can possibly reply on this subject today. I can only hope that, as a result of my having drawn attention to it in this way, something will be said by the Government and—is it too much to hope?— something may perhaps be done about it.

2.25 p.m.

Mr. A. Bourne-Arton (Darlington)

Returning to the subject of education, I start by welcoming, as I think we all do, the reference in the Gracious Speech to further developments and progress in the education service. My right hon. Friend the Minister has a difficult task. I think that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) was right to say that the task was particularly difficult for a Conservative Minister. Much is expected of a Conservative Minister of Education. While I do not for a moment suggest that other parties are not from time to time interested in the education of our people, it is the fact that every major advance in education has been put on the Statute Book either by a Conservative Government or by a Conservative-dominated coalition. It is my right hon. Friend's duty and responsibility to live up to that tradition and maintain it. Further, he is in the difficulty that, in recent years particularly, the momentum of progress has been growing, and it is his responsibility to ensure that it is not checked.

During recent weeks and months, my right hon. Friend, the Government and others have come under considerable critical fire from most sections of the teaching profession. This is understandable. During salary negotations, the people concerned, naturally, fight hard for what they believe to be their due. However, some of the criticism which has been levelled at my right hon. Friend and the Government recently has been not only mistaken but at times deliberately misleading.

We are told from time to time that the Minister has imposed a cut. The fact is that the teaching profession has been offered the greatest single award it has ever had. I am one who believes that we are not going fast enough in education, we are not spending enough, the present Government are not spending a large enough proportion of the gross national income on education, and they are not improving fast enough the remuneration of the teaching profession. But the Government are, at least, doing all those things faster than they have ever been done before, and the speed of advance is now greater than ever. Those are facts which should be recognised to offset some of the rather ill-advised and wild propaganda which has been going about.

We are told that my right hon. Friend has broken or frustrated a freely negotiated agreement. In fact, we know—I believe that the country is now coming to recognise this—that there was no such agreement in existence to break. I, and other hon. Members, no doubt, have been told by teachers that the Government appear to regard them as worth so little that many of them are paid less than policemen. It is true that anomalies in the remuneration of various people do occur throughout our national life. Dustmen are paid twice as much as house surgeons. The head teacher of a small village school, who may perhaps have no qualifications of any kind, is paid about twice as much as the vicar of the parish who may have a first-class university degree.

These things are true, but the suggestion that the worth of a person and of a person's work to the community is necessarily in direct relation to that person's brains to me smacks of arrogance, and I reject it utterly. What is more, I do not notice that house surgeons are queueing up to become dustmen, nor do I notice that the increasing number of men now going into the teaching profession are leaving that profession again.

Mr. A. E. Hunter (Feltham)

Does the hon. Gentleman seriously suggest that a dustman gets twice as much as a surgeon.

Mr. Bourne-Arton

I said as a house surgeon, and I think that that is a reasonable generalisation. The conception, even if it could be applied in a totalitarian system of a government able to direct the labour and remuneration of all sections of the community, that a person's worth and the worth of his work is necessarily in direct proportion to his intellect is something which seems to me to be quite arrogant and it should be rejected.

I do not want to labour these things, because I believe that the general mass of the teaching profession is coming to realise that some of the propaganda which many of them have too easily swallowed is not in accordance with the facts. While congratulating my right hon. Friend the Minister, if I may presume to do so, on his handling of this difficult and not pleasant period, I should also like to presume, and it is perhaps the greater presumption, to mention one other person. The Teachers' Panel on Burnham is led by a very shrewd, forceful and tough negotiator. He would not be where he is now if he were not that.

I believe that Sir Ronald Gould, a man of deservedly high international reputation, has been most unfairly abused and criticised by a small and noisy minority within his own profession. I believe that the patience and integrity of ;the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers has been demonstrated once again this year in these painful and difficult weeks, and I wonder myself whether some of the angry and abusive noises made from behind him might stem from a sense of recognition that had the N.U.T. supported him and its representatives on Burnham last spring, the story might well have been very different.

Throughout this debate, speaker after speaker has referred to what is, of course, the cardinal problem in education, and that is not only the supply but the quality of the teachers. We have heard the suggestion, and it has been suggested, apparently, by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden), that the Government ought now to raise the school leaving age to 16. He suggested a great deal more than the Crowther Committee suggested, because that Committee did not envisage that that could be done until about 1968, and then, it recognised, at the expense of further overcrowding in classes. Hon. Members have mentioned the most desirable and important objective that we should reduce the size of primary classes, not merely down to forty, but ultimately down to thirty, but we have not been reminded of what that will cost in the total number of teachers. [Interruption.]

I apologise if I am wrong.

I understand that when we have got primary classes down to forty, to reduce them to thirty, which is highly desirable, will cost an additional 50,000 teachers. If, by 1970, all goes well, and here, perhaps, the hon. Member for Sunderland, North will join issue with me, I believe that we might be increasing the number of teachers in service by an annual net figure of about 10,000 a year. If that is so, if we want to raise the school leaving age at a cost of possibly 20,000 teachers, we can do that, if we do nothing else, in two years. If we say that our next priority is to reduce the size of primary classes, it will take another five years, if we do nothing else, and I am sure that we shall be wanting to do other things. It is foolish to suppose that the shortage of teachers will not be with us for a great many years to come, whatever we do.

I know that many other hon. Members wish to take part in this debate. I suppose, for anyone who is not himself in the teaching profession, I can claim to know as much as most about the aspirations and feelings of teachers, since I have had the privilege of working closely with them for many years. I am quite sure that when the dust has cleared over these rather unhappy last few weeks, the great mass of the teaching profession will see two things more clearly than ever before: first, that they have been extremely well advised and led by their representatives on Burnham, and secondly, that, as before, this Conservative Government is, in every field that we can mention, not excluding the remuneration and conditions of service of teachers, increasing standards and improving them, heaven knows, not fast enough, but, at any rate, a great deal faster than ever before.

2.37 p.m.

Mr. Roderic Bowen (Cardigan)

This debate today has ranged over a very wide field, but I want to try to limit my observations to the specific matters which are referred to in the Gracious Speech.

I want first to refer to the announcement which has been made about the reduction in the number of school leaving dates in England and Wales from three to two a year, which is now provided for in the Bill which has been made available in the Vote Office. I welcome this step. It is introducing what might be called one of the consolation prizes provided for in the Crowther Report. I should like the Minister, even at this stage, to consider whether he could not go further than this at the present juncture. It is not a question of doing nothing or of making a specific pronouncement, as he has been pressed to do, about raising the school leaving age to 16. I believe that there is another alternative and that is the reduction of school leaving dates, not from three to two but from three to one. I should like to advance, quite briefly, arguments in favour of that course.

First, it is quite clear that if we did that, and it is the only way in which we can do it, we should be providing for a coherent and beneficial course of study for the last year. To my mind, one of the great problems in regard to school leaving is the difficulty in the last year. The Crowther Report recognised that. The statistics in the Report relating to juvenile delinquency during the last year at school are very interesting, and indeed very disturbing. I believe myself that there is great merit in having the last year of school one which, from the educational point of view, can be planned coherently, and that certainly would be achieved by reducing the dates from three to one. I should have thought that educationally all the arguments were in favour of a reduction from three to one. The other advantage is that it would be an extremely helpful step towards the eventual raising of the school leaving age to 16, which, to my mind, is far more important than the three to two proposition.

Another argument is this. It would not place anything like the commensurate strain either on accommodation or on the number of teachers that other advances might involve. It is interesting to find in the Financial Memorandum to the Bill that the point is made that the reduction from three to two would involve little or no additional expenditure for the schools. The reduction from three to one would not involve an accommodation problem for the schools or a great problem for the teachers. I hope that the Minister will look again at this point and will decide that he can go a step further than he has in mind.

One argument which can be raised against my proposition is that all school leavers will come on to the labour market at the same time and that industry, instead of being able to deal with the problem in two instalments, will have to deal with it in one. I appreciate the force of that argument, but I should have thought that a great deal could be done to meet that difficulty. Many school leavers could be placed in apprenticeships and training and the necessary arrangements made during the year. That is when it should be done, not at the panic period when children are about to leave school. If industry were asked to meet this point, it would only be asked to meet a point which it would have to meet in any event when the school leaving age was raised to 16. Therefore, I do not think that that is an insuperable difficulty.

I turn to the question of teachers' salaries the supply and standard of teachers, and problems in that category. There can be no doubt that what hangs over the whole problem is the question of rates of pay. From the points of view of recruitment, reducing wastage and maintaining the standard of teachers, that is something which must have prime importance in all our discussions. There are, however, other aspects, and I wish to touch on some of them.

In considering the immediate problem, we must differentiate between the position of the non-graduate and that of the graduate teacher. For the graduate teacher, the immediate problem is the shortage of training college places. It is not a problem of recruitment, but a problem of training. The authorities are turning down year by year exceedingly suitable material for training simply because there is a lack of training college places. I have had various estimates of the figure, but it certainly runs to several hundreds.

Mr. T. L. Iremonger (Ilford, North)

I think that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education gave figures, which were ninety men and thirty women in the last year.

Mr. Bowen

That is quite contrary to my information. Is it suggested that there were only ninety applicants for training college places who were suitable and qualified but were unable to obtain places? I should like enlightenment on that point. The information that I have is contrary to that. I am not talking about the number of people who apply and fail to get in—that is not altogether a relevant factor—but the number of people who applied to' go to training colleges but have been unable to go. I speak subject to correction, and I should be grateful for additional information on the point, but my information is that the figure is substantially greater than that which has been suggested and that it amounts to several hundred.

Mr. Bourne-Arton

If the hon. and learned Gentleman requires further enlightenment, he might get it from the National Union of Teachers, which published similar figures.

Mr. Bowen

The figures which I have are those given by the clearing houses. I should have thought that their figures were by far the most helpful on this subject. If they are correct, it is clear that we are losing hundreds of teachers every year because of the absence of a sufficient number of training college places. I do not think that the present programme for training college places, although it is certainly a distinct improvement, measures up to the problem. At present, we are doing no more than meeting the difficulties caused by the extension of the programme from two to three years—a little more possibly, but very little more.

With regard to over-sized classes, which is the crux of the problem, the picture is certainly not bright. I do not know whether we can be given the figures. I appreciate that more than one factor is involved here, but has there been any improvement in the last three years in the number of over-sized classes? Between 1959 and 1960, there was a small reduction in the percentage of children who were having tuition in over-sized classes. There was a reduction in the figure of children in oversized classes in primary schools from 24.2; per cent. to 21.7; per cent. In the senior schools, there was a reduction from 64.2;per cent. to 62.9; per cent. If my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North is right, that figure, far from coming down this year, has increased to 63 per cent. It is clear that during the last two or three years there has been, to say the least, no substantial change in the position.

From January, 1959, to January, 1960, there was an increase of 1,000 in the number of classes which were over-sized. I do not say that in criticism of any- body, but simply to make it clear that what is being done at present is not sufficient to deal with the problem and will not provide a solution in the foreseeable future. A great deal more will have to be dome in the provision of training college places for teachers in primary schools than has been planned.

Sir D. Eccles

As this is a most important point, perhaps I can help the House. At the moment, the number of boys and girls coming out of sixth forms in the grammar schools, which supply the great majority of the applicants for the training colleges, is increasing faster than the number of available places in the universities. While that movement is going on I think it is certain that we shall have more applications for the training colleges, and for that reason the average academic qualifications of those accepted will rise. It is very interesting. Even in the last two weeks, information has reached me that the average academic qualifications of students in training colleges next September will be higher than in September this year.

What we, therefore, have to consider is what will come out of the Robbins Report. Supposing we have a much larger university population, will we then get our due proportion of the graduates from the larger university population back into the schools? What will be the effect of that upon the size of the training colleges? This is a complex question in which, I admitted when I spoke before, we are caught out because we did not increase the training colleges fast enough or early enough and because the estimates of the birth-rate that we were given were wrong.

Mr. Bowen

I thank the Minister for what 'he has said. The Ministry, however, should not be entitled to gamble on an increase of entrants into the teaching profession from the universities and on that gamble refuse to admit the problem in relation to the shortage of training college places. For example, it would be no good saying in five years' time that we had not increased the number of training college places in the way in which the problem indicated we should have done, because we thought that they would be forthcoming from the increased numbers in the universities. That would be a specious argument.

A great deal has been said about the shortage in relation to science teachers and particularly mathematics teachers. I saw one recent estimate that the country needed 10,000 mathematics teachers and that we had got rather less than 5,000. Because of this emphasis on the problem in relation to science teachers, we should not close our eyes to the position of grammar school teachers as a whole and, in particular, with regard to those to whom we look to instruct the sixth form. The plain fact is that sixth form instruction has been done more and more by people in the over-50 age group. That is true particularly of science but it is true of the curriculum as a whole.

If one looks at the figures relating to the number of posts in respect of which there was no application or the number of posts which the authorities are unable to fill, one sees that the position in science is much worse than in the arts, but one sees also that the position in those other subjects is deteriorating and not improving. That is to say, looking over the figures for the last three or four years in subjects such as English or history—although the latter may not be a particularly good choice—one sees a steady increase over the years in the number of jobs unfilled, the number of jobs which are regarded as unsuitably filled, and so on. That strikes at the whole position concerning pay and status of the profession as compared with other professions.

In regard to pay, I have two or three short points to make. First, what is needed is a scale that is competitive in terms of other professions. That is certainly not an easy matter, but when one is making an appeal for recruits of a high standard in the teaching profession one is competing with other professions who draw upon the self-same sources for their new recruits. What we want is a competitive scale rather than a competitive start. Far too much emphasis can be placed upon the start and far too little emphasis on the problem of what should be the annual increments and what should be the maximum. It is in increments and in the maximum that we are failing.

Secondly, the scales of pay should be far more intelligible to prospective teachers. It is high time that we eliminated a great deal of the elaborate system of specialised pay in one form or another. Somebody who is considering whether to enter the teaching profession should have a much clearer concept put before him of his prospects if he enters the profession. One has only to look at the documents in relation to the present position to know how difficult and misleading it is to attempt to assess one's prospects in that regard.

Whatever arrangements are made, there should be some degree of flexibility. We have today, and we will probably have far more frequently in the future, schools with mixed staffs of graduates and non-graduates. I believe that if a non-graduate is doing work which would normally be done by a graduate, he should be paid the rate for the job. I believe that the same principle should apply to, say, a man with a pass degree who is doing sixth form work. I speak subject to correction, but I am told that there is far greater elasticity in this respect in Scotland than there is in England and Wales. Nevertheless, we should have scales which are easily intelligible and which still allow a degree of flexibility on the lines I have suggested. I welcome the plans for reform in the set-up of the Burnham Committee. I do not want to pursue now some ideas which I have about that. It may be that further opportunity of referring to them will arise.

It may be suggested that all these proposals which I have made would cost money, as, undoubtedly, they would. The Crowther Report and a number of speakers today have made clear what should be our attitude to expenditure on education. I suggest that there is one direction in which there should have been substantial economies in education expenses in recent months. I should have thought that substantial administrative saving should have been brought about by the introduction of the block grant system as distinct from the percentage system. Without going into the merits of the two systems, it should have been possible to reduce administrative costs substantially because of the switch from the one to the other. That is at least one small contribution towards all the other items of increased costs which are involved in what I have attempted to advocate.

2.59 p.m.

Mr. T. L. Iremonger (Ilford, North)

I was very glad to hear my right hon. Friend say that he was concerned to know why it was that so many teachers seemed to be so isolated—which was his word ; if I may put it another way I would say, seemingly so perverse in being misled as to the facts of the educational policy of all Governments in this country. I wonder if I may ask my right hon. Friend—perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary could consider when he replies —whether some effort may be made in teacher training colleges to explain the realities of national policy and of the problems which education gives to all Governments, so that when they do come out in their profession and they are faced with political issues, as they are today, they will at least be able to take a rather more objective and realistic view of these problems.

I should like to say straight away that I absolutely and uncompromisingly support the Government's policy in reference to the recent Burnham pay award, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend is absolutely right in standing firm by the Chancellor and in accepting the economic logic of his policy in the national interest, and in asking the teaching profession to play its part. I am perfectly certain that he is right in his intentions regarding the reorganisation of the negotiating machinery, and I only hope that the teachers' organisations will recognise that they now have the opportunity to take their proper part in deciding what this new negotiating machinery should be.

I have no reason, I am sure, to be ashamed of the Government's record in the light of developments which, as my right hon. Friend said, he really could not be expected to have foreseen. I see the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden) in his place. I think the criticism which he made of my right hon. Friend was just a little unfair, because what he was doing was to criticise my right hon. Friend for not having a crystal ball, rather than for the way in which he adjusted his policy to the situaton as it had developed. I think we are quite right in the continuation of our progress towards the elimination of oversize classes by 1970 by recruiting 71,000 extra teachers and in recognising that we are in fact maintaining an adequate flow of new recruits.

I was interested to hear the hon. and learned Member for Cardigan (Mr. Bowen) using this argument about, as he put it, the hundreds of suitable applicants turned away from training colleges. I have heard a representative of the teaching profession using exactly the opposite statement in exactly the opposite sense. What they were saying was how very few suitable candidates are being turned away; and they argued that this shows how inadequate are the scales of remuneration, because they are obviously failing to attract a sufficient number of recruits.

I really do not think one can have it both ways. I think the fairest way to have it is to say that the facts are that in the last year the number of suitable candidates who were turned away from the admittedly overcrowded teachers' training colleges was, in the case of men, I think 90, and in the case of women 30. That, I think, suggests that the teaching profession at present just attracts enough recruits to keep the profession manned, but only just; in fact we are running into pretty low water, and, if scales of remuneration are not more attractive in the future, we shall find there is a deficiency in recruits. I think that that is the fairest way to have it.

Mr. Boyden

How does the hon. Member make out that the right hon. Gentleman needs a crystal ball to look into the recruitment of mature students? This question of talent has been going on for years and years, and the right hon. Gentleman could easily have looked at some of the reports about State scholarships, mature students, and so on, showing that the quantity of students might have been increased if the right hon. Gentleman had set about it in the right way.

Mr. Iremonger

I think the point my right hon. Friend was making was that there were major demographic developments over the last few years which could not have been foreseen in the beginning of the five-year period and in the light of which he had to frame his policy. Personally I think my right hon. Friend is quite justified, and I feel justified in defending him against the hon. Member's criticism. I think that the hon. Member is now taking a narrower point than he did when, in the opening passage of his speech, he made his indictment of my right hon. Friend.

I think we are quite right to look closely into this question, and I am glad my right hon. Friend asked himself whether future policy, as envisaged in the light of past knowledge, is both right and realistic and whether we can anticipate that we shall eliminate oversize classes by 1970. And can we expect to do so with the recruitment of the 71,000 teachers mentioned? And are we going to be able to recruit even that number with the present organisation of the profession and remuneration? These are questions my right hon. Friend has to ask himself, and he is quite right to ask himself, and I do not think party advantage should be taken of the fact that he has, in the light of information as it becomes available from year to year, to reassess his policy and make his decisions accordingly.

But when we are judging—and this is what the teaching profession is judging, from my experience and contacts with teachers in my constituency—the sincerity of the Government's purpose in putting education as a high priority in the investment of our resources and materials in an expanding economy, the best judgment we can make is based on the fact that over the past 10 years the proportion of the gross national product which has been devoted to education has been increased by 50 per cent. Any other criterion is always open to pettifogging arguments that it does not take account of the"bulge"or of the fall in the value of money and so on.

The proportion of gross national product is the figure about which there can be no argument. In the years from 1938 to 1951 the increase in the proportion of the gross national product devoted to education was nil. It was 3 per cent. at the beginning and 3 per cent. at the end, but in the last 10 years it has increased from 3 per cent. to 45 per cent. We cannot get round that figure when we are trying to examine the earnestness with which the Government address themselves to this problem.

In trying to make a fair judgment of the Government's intentions, one must also recognise that in an expanding economy with limited resources one can- not devote a greater proportion of the national product to one sector of economic activity without taking it away from others. My own view is that a very high priority must be given to education, because it is the most constructive and creative of all the social services, and it repays the national economy at a greater rate of interest than any other kind of investment. But we must recognise that interests conflict and that, if we want more of what there is from limited resources of men and materials for education, it must come out of other things, out of industry, the health service, the roads or whatever it may be. Therefore, we must recognise that there is a limit to the priority which we can give to education, although I think that that priority should be a high one.

I should like to sound one note of warning and anxiety and suggest to my right hon. Friend that he should have, as I think he showed signs of having from what he said today, a constant and serious regard to the morale and quality of the teaching profession. There is a danger that we might achieve our aims of recruiting adequate numbers of teachers and still fall short in the quality. I was very impressed by the anxiety expressed to me by older and responsible teachers that the teaching profession is in danger of being devalued, underestimated and underrated in the eyes of the community, especially in relation to other occupations.

Teachers say to me,"I teach children who have more spending money in their pockets than I have. They despise me and my way of life and say,' You are a teacher and look what you have to show for it. Look at what a lot I've got, and see how inferior you are'."It takes a great deal of moral fibre and ability to command young people to try to stand up against that pressure. I feel, therefore, some anxiety and I think that my right hon. Friend felt likewise when he said that we must look deeper into the discontent in the teaching profession and ask ourselves what is the underlying evil of which this discontent is a symptom.

I am very worried about it. The whole fabric of our education depends on good teachers who have the respect of the rest of the community, and any short-fall in this respect is a false economy. We are eating the seed corn of the community if we do not build up the teaching profession. Therefore the taxpayer and the ratepayer, as represented by the Government and the local authorities, must realise that education will demand an increasing share of public money and that that increasing share must go very largely into increasing teachers' salaries.

I apologise to my right hon. Friend for these generalisations. I know that he is perfectly right when he says that we cannot really generalise about teachers' salaries because there are so many different sections of the teaching profession, each of Which has to be regarded as an individual problem. But overall, more money has to be found. The point I want to make is this. Are we really satisfied that such a vital and expanding commitment can continue indefinitely to be financed to the tune of 45 per cent. out of a regressive tax, which is what rates are?

I think that the House should ask my right hon. Friend to consider with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether the time has not come to think again about the method of financing education, at least in respect of teachers' salaries, and whether it is not time that we should remove this commitment from rate-borne expenditure. I am the very last to want to take from the local authorities any responsibilities. I think that unless it has direct financial responsibility, the responsibility of local government becomes a farce and that we shall lose in the quality of local authorities.

All the same, I wonder whether we can go on trying to, finance to this extent teachers' salaries out of the rates. When revaluation comes into effect in 1963, whatever may be said about Orders in Council to see that the rates do not rise by more than one-third, there will be an outcry in this country about the increase in rates which will strain the endurance of elected representatives on local councils to the utmost.

Every politician knows that people pay their taxes in resignation and their rates in anger. The increase in the actual money that will have to be found out of the pockets of the ratepayers in 1963 will be very serious. It will be particularly serious because it is a regressive tax. It is not possible to temper the wind to the shorn lamb in rates as it is in taxes. This will press particularly hard on that section of the community which ought to be protected —the retired persons living on small fixed incomes. If there is £10 extra on their rates, it represents the cream of their existence. They are providing for their shelter and food within their incomes and they have just a little above that—£10, £20, £30, or £50 a year, quite a small sum—and that is the money which enables them to go away for a holiday perhaps or to visit a married daughter. This little amount which they have left to play with is really what makes their whole lives worth living in the remaining years left to them.

If we are going, as we are in the revaluation, actually to increase the rates of these people, there is no redress for them. It is no use saying that we will relieve them of Schedule A tax, or whatever it may be, because they do not pay Income Tax. We shall be taking this money directly out of their pockets, saying to them that the future of the community depends upon the proper financing of education and 45 per cent. of that has to come out of the rates. No wonder they squeal and no wonder the elected representatives will drag their feet when it comes to negotiating salaries.

I am not at all happy about the financing by local government of that expenditure. I supported my right hon. Friend's Local Government Act, 1958, when it was going through Committee. I am sure he was right in the idea of a general grant and of putting on local authorities the responsibility of deciding how they spend what money they have. I think, however, that by 1963 we shall have just about run them to the limit. We ought to find some way of taking out of the rate-borne expenditure just enough to give local authorities some room for manoeuvre, and teachers' salaries might well be a compact and suitable sum to take out of local government finance.

I urge my right hon. Friend to give very serious consideration to this before 1963, because if he leaves his decision until then he will appear to be forced by political pressure to do it. It would be very much better for him to think again now and decide in the light of his proper responsibility to maintain the calibre of the teaching profession. If he does, he can avoid the conflicts and humiliation which will come upon us all if he waits until 1963 to do it.

3.16 p.m.

Mr. A. E. Hunter (Feltham)

I am very pleased to have an opportunity to intervene in this debate on education, not that I claim to be, as many hon. Members on both sides do, an expert in education, but there are one or two vital points which I should like to mention.

On the subject of teachers' salaries, during the Recess I, like most hon. Members, received letters from teachers. I had many very nice letters from teachers living in my constituency, giving their point of view and expressing their keen disappointment because the Government never carried out the original proposals of the Burnham Report. They also gave me some idea of the struggle which many members of the teaching profession have.

Parents very often make sacrifices for their children who are going in for teaching, subsidising them while they are in training college, for few can live on the grant. Teachers marry young, buy a house on mortgage, and then children come along. One can appreciate what a struggle some young teachers have, especially in their early years in the teaching profession.

I do not go all the way with the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger). I do not believe that the teacher regards the salary as everything. After all, there are many jobs in life, including that of Members of Parliament, where the salary is not everything; what is more important is that such people have an interest in their work. The same applies to the teacher. He likes his work; he has a good job in life guiding the nation's young. He may feel, as those in other professions do, that he ought not to have economic difficulties and should be better paid. Nevertheless, the material side is not everything to the teacher.

All the same, I regret that the Government never carried out the original proposals of the Burnham Report, and I must add that there are a number of teachers throughout the country who feel that the Government acted meanly in taking away the £½5; million ; and I agree with them.

I was very pleased to hear the Minister say that there will be no cut in the school building programme of 1962 and 1963. This is most important to growing urban areas outside the big cities, such as my constituency. In such areas there has been a tremendous expansion in the last fifteen years, and the population there has increased. While the population is declining in some of the older boroughs, it is increasing in the newer urban areas, and there new primary, secondary and grammar schools are needed. Consequently, I am glad that there will be no cut in the present building programme.

I shall be brief because other hon. Members have been waiting here since 11 o'clock hoping to take part in the debate, but I wish to raise what I consider a very important matter. I am pleased that both the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary are present. I regard the Youth Service as part of our educational system. The years when a boy or girl leaves school at 15 until 20 are as important as the years from 8 to 15. They are years in which character is moulded, years in which persons grow up to become citizens of tomorrow. That is why I appeal to the Minister to see that, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer has any cuts in prcs-pect, he will resist any attempt to cut the proposals made in the recommendations of the Albemarle Report on the Youth Service in England and Wales.

This is a burning question. Youth centres are needed in our cities and urban areas. I was pleased to see that a national training college for leaders has been established in Leicester. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary can give some report about its progress, because I know that he takes a great interest in the youth question. These leaders are needed in many parts of the country. In some parts the Youth Service is breaking down because there are no leaders. We do not necessarily want to depend only upon paid leaders. I think that there should be voluntary leaders and part-time paid leaders. These leaders are an essential part of the Youth Service. Therefore, I hope that there will be no wielding of the axe on the expansion and extension of the Youth Service.

We also need purpose-built centres. Although a converted hut may be very useful, that method should not be relied upon. There should be a proper building housing gymnasia, a club room, canteen and library with sports fields attached. That would form a great attraction for a youth centre. We have not yet had an opportunity of fully debating the Albemarle Report. Some of us have tried to raise the matter by Questions. I was unfortunate when time could not be found for a Motion to be debated on the matter.

The period between the ages of 15 and 20 is of such great importance that we need the same enthusiasm and high class among leaders as among teachers. We want the best possible teachers in primary and secondary schools and we want the same type of leader in the youth centres. They are linked. The teaching profession can give a boy or girl a good start in education, but the youth leader can show the path through the world, not only in education but in the broad questions which confront us today. Many of the young people were born in a violent period of world history. A big bulge is coming from the schools on to the labour market and towards adult life. Therefore, this problem is becoming more urgent.

We want to fill these young people with enthusiasm for what is their birthright in this country. I appeal to the Minister to see that the axe is not used on the Youth Service, for the youth of Britain will be the citizens of tomorrow.

3.25 p.m.

Mr. James Scott-Hopkins (Cornwall, North)

I share the enthusiasm of the hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Hunter) for the Youth Service, which is part of a comprehensive educational service, and I hope that if my right hon. Friend's words, in his opening speech, are heeded by those concerned, we shall have a debate later on the Albemarle Report and that aspect of the education service. It is perhaps a rather narrow part for the debate but it is nevertheless important, and I hope that the point will be followed by those concerned.

There is not much time left today, and I hope that the hon. Member will bear with me if I do not follow his lines of argument. I do not wish to keep the House long. I want to refer to the very small proportion of children within our educational system who I think can be described as "forgotten", I refer to the educationally sub-normal within the education service. There are only about 45,500 of them in England and Wales— at least, that is the number about whom we know. It is just under 1 per cent. of the school population. But although they are a very small proportion of the school population, they are extremely important, and it is urgent that we should consider their needs. My right hon. Friend should see whether he can do anything to help them.

I think that no one will deny that the existing facilities for teaching these unfortunate children are not of the best; in the past, rightly or wrongly, we have not concentrated enough resources, financially or otherwise, on providing the kind of teachers and the facilities needed for these children. There have been other priorities. Earlier today hon. Members have talked about priorities, and without question these children have had the lowest possible priority.

There are three reasons for regarding this problem as urgent. First, out of the 45,500 children who are known to be educationally sub-normal, 12,000 are not being given special treatment at the moment but are within our ordinary primary and secondary schools system and within the private sector.

I have no intention of referring to correspondence which has been taking place between my right hon. Friend, the Parliamentary Secretary and myself about cases in Cornwall, but I refer to them to illustrate the point which I am making. In one of the secondary schools in my division 20 per cent. of the intake of the children are educationally subnormal. That is a very high percentage. In Cornwall there is no special school for these children. Naturally, parents do not like sending these children long distances to school, even if they can find them a place, because they are not able to accept the strains and stresses in the way that the more fortunate of us are. Parents do not like to send them away to special schools and sometimes are prepared to accept the conditions in the primary and secondary schools.

The second reason that this problem is urgent is that in the primary schools there are many children who are not recognised as being in need of this special treatment and yet who certainly need it. I blame nobody for this. I do not blame the teachers in the primary schools or my right hon. Friend and his Ministry. They are not trained to pick these children out. Yet these children exist and are receiving primary education which is not adequate for their needs. Therefore, they are falling further and further behind.

The third reason is that I believe that there are also children who are educationally subnormal but who are not at the moment known to be in need of special attention because they have not even got into the educational system. I believe that this applies to Cornwall. I assume that it must apply elsewhere Some parents who have children who are educationally subnormal, even on the borderline of the mentally deficient, are not prepared for their children to go into the State system—the primary and secondary schools. They keep them away from school and do not report them. To a certain extent this reflects on the officials of the Ministry of Education who go round checking up on whether all children go to school. I doubt very much whether all children do. There are children who do not. I believe.

A more cheerful aspect of the problem is what my right hon. Friend has done during the years the Tories have been in office. We have improved enormously—by 55 per cent.—the amount of room there is in special schools for mentally handicapped children. The number of pupils in special schools, not those in primary or secondary schools, has increased by 71 per cent. and the staff has increased by 121 per cent. over the last 15 years. This is a tremendous advance, although if the numbers of pupils are considered it does not mean very much. The figures are 32,000 pupils and approximately 2,500 teachers. However, it is a great advance and my right hon. Friend and his predecessors are to be congratulated on what they have done.

However, I have a shrewd suspicion that most of the advance has taken place in urban and crowded town areas. Places in the country—rural areas like Cornwall, Devon and elsewhere throughout the British Isles—have suffered. I am casting no stones about this. I am not envious. It is only right and proper that large cities and urban areas should have extra special schools as quickly as my right hon. Friend can provide them. In those areas the problem is probably just as great as it is in country areas.

One difficulty is that we do not know how great the problem is. I urge my right hon. Friend to institute as quickly as he can a study through L.E.As. to find out the exact extent of the problem in each L.E.A. area. How many children are there at the moment between 5 and 15 who need special treatment? How many children are there between those ages who are in the primary and secondary school system and not receiving special treatment? How many qualified teachers are there? What can he do to increase the number of specially qualified teachers by university courses? Fifteen go through a London University course per year and become specially qualified. Will my right hon. Friend examine the problem and see how quickly he can increase the number of specially qualified teachers?

I have been looking through the figures of educationally subnormal children. One of the things that strikes me is that the number of educationally subnormal children is greatest at the age of 12. From the ages of 12, 13, 14 and 15 the number progressively drops. That can mean one of two things. First, perhaps there is a certain amount of wastage. Secondly—'this is what I firmly believe— the attention these children are receiving in special schools does them good and the children improve in mental standards and capabilities. This is greatly to the credit of those who teach them. It is also greatly to the credit of my right hon. Friend, who has produced the institutions in which these children are being taught.

Beyond the age of 15 the standard drops immediately. These boys and girls are thrown out into the world. Are they fit for it? Are they equipped to face the problems which will undoubtedly crop up? I do not think that they are.

We have a tremendous responsibility and my right hon. Friend must get down to asking authorities to follow through what happens to these children when they leave school at the age of 15. What do they do? Do they go into menial jobs, or labouring jobs, or do they hang around idle? I do not think that anybody knows.

Mr. W. Yates

If my hon. Friend visits detention centres, he will find that the first thing he is told by the warden or governor is that many of these children can neither read nor write and that the first thing the warden tries to do is to teach them to write.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins

I am obliged, but if my hon. Friend had waited for two seconds, I would have said that. This may well be what happens to those unfortunate children and they may turn out as petty criminals in borstals and remand homes.

Mr. Norman Dodds (Erith and Cray-ford)

And mental homes.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins

And mental homes, too.

One of our duties is to check up and find out what happens. This may not be true and I hope that it is not, but the figures I have already given of the improvement which happens between twelve and fifteen, when they are given special attention, leads me to be convinced that if they continued to get that special attention for another two or three years, we might save four or five or 10 per cent. of those who might go wrong. My right hon. Friend would be quite true to the tradition of the Tory philosophy of giving help to those who need help if he instituted special inquiries and special measures for helping those who needed it. He would be doing a great service not only to these poor, unfortunate people, but the country in general

3.38 p.m.

Mr. George Thomas (Cardiff, West)

The hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Soott-Hopkins) has earned the sympathy of the House by raising a subject which touches all of us. He rather underestimated the amount of good work which has been done for handicapped children by every Government since the war. In all kindness, I think that the hon. Member was a little mixed in his terms and that when he was referring to educationally backward children, he often meant handicapped children.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins

I was especially referring to the educationally subnormal, of which there is a special category. I was not referring to the maladjusted, handicapped, blind, or deaf, or so on, which are in separate categories. I was keeping to that narrow category of the educationally subnormal.

Mr. Thomas

I would have thought that both sides of the House agreed that the country has an obligation to do its utmost for those people. It is not only Tory philosophy to help those who need it. It is Christian philosophy. I do not mind the hon. Member giving himself and his party a pat on the back, but I want him to understand that the pat comes over here as well.

There is something about these Friday debates. As a rule, there is not much sting in them and the Minister must be very pleased with the course which the debate has taken today. Who would believe from this debate that there sits The most criticised Minister in the country? Who would believe from the course of the debate today that there sits the right hon. Gentleman who has succeeded in creating more indignation, more frustration and more low morale among the teaching profession than any other Minister—and there have been some gems before? The right hon. Gentleman takes the biscuit and he has spoken today as though all is now well and the battle is over and we can lick our wounds.

The Minister of Education was disowned at the party conference, and I believe that it was because of the recent storm in the teaching profession. I want to say how much I appreciated the tribute the hon. Gentleman the Member for Darlington (Mr. A. Bourne-Arton) paid to Sir Ronald Gould. Any general secretary of a trade union or a professional organisation is in a difficult position when a public battle is entered upon. The teaching profession as a whole has not turned its wrath on Sir Ronald. A little group did, encouraged irresponsibly by the B.B.C., I believe.

Mr. W. Yates

indicated dissent.

Mr. Thomas

If the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. W. Yates) knew what went on before the interview that preceded the television performance between these young teachers and the producers, he would realise that I am not speaking without very good reason.

The teaching profession has turned its wrath on the Minister, I believe rightly so. This is the first opportunity we have had in the House to discuss this issue, and there were three things on which the National Union of Teachers decided to come to terms with the Minister, to turn its back on the special conference decision and to seek a formula.

The first was that the local authorities, with the supposed agreement of the Minister, were prepared to enter negotiations for salary scales in July next year to come into operation in April, 1963. I realise that in so many words the Minister has never committed himself to that new agreement, but he has allowed the impression to get abroad that it was with his blessing that the local authorities were making this proposal.

Secondly, the teachers are not to be treated in isolation. I know that the National Union of Teachers—of which I have been a member for 30 years—takes a very serious view of itself being singled out. When I read the Gracious Speech I was deeply disturbed, as was my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King), at the thought that the Minister, after all, was going to deal with teachers in isolation. Am I right in assuming from the Minister's speech this afternoon that the Measure which is foreshadowed in the Gracious Speech will be one which will simply be in harmony with what is to be done with all other public servants? I believe I saw the Minister shake his head and I therefore ask him; does he mean that this Measure will mean different treatment for teachers than other public servants? The right hon. Gentleman can help himself if he will clear this matter up.

Sir D. Eccles

I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman realises that the methods of negotiating salaries for public servants differ enormously from one group of public servants to another. For example, in the Health Service the Minister of Health has the same power of veto which I have over the Burnham Committee. There are other public services—firemen, for instance—where there is no such arrangement. It is not possible to get a uniform settlement or modification of all these methods of negotiation. I had hoped that I had explained—and if I did not do so adequately today, I shall go on doing so—that it is to the benefit of the teachers that we change Section 89.

Mr. Thomas

The teachers will hear that very serious statement with dismay.

Sir D. Eccles

indicated dissent.

Mr. Thomas

Well, it may be that the Minister knows them better than I do on this question, but I know that they have been reiterating that they had from the Minister an assurance that teachers would not be singled out for different treatment. It sounds to me, from his last statement, that that is not true. We only have to wait and we shall see.

However, I hope the Minister realises that it is no good paying tribute to the teaching profession about the nobility of their calling. I am a teacher by calling, and I know that teachers do not look for tributes, although they acknowledge them when they are given. What they expect from this House is honourable dealing, a recognition that when they negotiate an agreement it ought to be honoured by this House, that this is not the first economic crisis which we have had since the setting up of the Burnham Committee, that other severe crises have been survived and other Governments have continued to recognise the authority of the Burnham Committee. I leave that point because—

Mr. Bourne-Arton

The hon. Gentleman is on shaky ground.

Mr. Thomas

I am not on shaky ground at all. I should have thought that it does not lie in the mouth of any hon. Member opposite to take credit for what has been happening in the teaching profession recently.

It was something from outside the teaching profession which caused this disintegration and this bitterness between teacher and teacher. I have never known anything like it in the quarter of a century that I have been an officer of the National Union of Teachers in some form or another. I have never known such bitterness as has been engendered in recent days. It is a most depressing experience because the teaching profession is a constructive one and it is not accustomed to what has been happening to it.

I hope the Minister will realise that he now has a tremendous responsibility. He has taken the step of widening the Burnham Committee by including the National Association of Schoolmasters. He has done that very suddenly. He has, of course, done it when the National Union of Teachers was at its weakest. I believe that by including the N.A.H.T., the association of headmasters, he may be inviting a request from the National Federation of Class Teachers also to serve on the Burnham Committee. This is a business which can go on and on. There has always been the danger of extending it. Now the N.A.S. is coming inside. I earnestly hope, since we must accept realities and facts, that both they and my friends on the National Union of Teachers— indeed, I know they will—will be willing to work constructively for the good of the profession.

I must refer to the Minister's general attitude on education. I want to refer to the Albemarle Report, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham (Mr. Hunter). Today in the Sketch—I do not often quote—I found a most initeresting and challenging leading article saying, "Youth pays again." It is a story of broken faith by the Minister who, after all, told us on 15th December, 1960, that he had authorised youth service building programmes to the value of £3 million for starting in 1960–62 and £4 million in 1962–63. He committed himself to start projects worth £3 million in two years ; 21 months of the two years have gone by and work has started only on £600,000 worth. We find that in the next three months we shall have to be starting works at twenty-five times the speed normally contemplated, and we are not likely to do it.

The Albemarle Report is threatened by the capital investment programme of the Government, by the public invest- ment report which was issued recently, where we are told that expenditure is to be cut on swimming pools and the like for youth work.

This is a short-sighted policy. It matches the attitude of the Government on the minor works programme under which local authorities like that in Cornwall, to which the hon. Member for Cornwall, North referred, will find it hard to modernise the sanitation of village schools because it cannot be done for less than £2,000 and for anything over £2,000 they have to go cap in hand to the right hon. Gentleman, who tells them to wait until the Chancellor takes a more moderate view.

Our young people, teen-agers in particular, are having a bad deal from this Government. It is significant that it is harder for a youngster to get into university in 1961 than it was in 1931. The right hon. Gentleman himself has told us that there is good material coming out of our grammar schools, but young people are knocking in vain at the doors of the universities because, now that the "bulge" has reached that stage, adequate provision has not been made. We cannot measure how much talent the nation is losing from these youngsters who ought to be in the university and who are not there.

The plain truth is that today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mr. Slater) reminded us earlier this week, local authorities which are willing to pay grants to students who have two A level passes and who are well qualified to go to university have to withhold the grants because the youngsters cannot find the places. I understand that Bangor University has had 1,800 applications for 800 vacancies next year.

If this sort of thing is repeated throughout the country, there will be bitterness among our youth. It will help the Minister's recruiting plans for the two-year or three-year teacher training course, but it is not fair to young people. It is not fair to those who have the gift and ability to go on to university to say to them that they may take the non-graduate course and enter the teaching profession. I advise any youngster with ability to go for his degree at once because in this world qualifications are so important. We are far from fulfilling the ideal of equality of opportunity. We are failing the very people upon whom and upon whose ability the country will depend.

In order to allow at least one more speaker to take part, I move to my conclusion by saying this. The aim of education remains constant throughout all the changing years. It is to help the individual to grow, to help him find a right relationship between himself and God and between himself and his neighbour. We cannot fulfil the proper aim of education in the present condition of over-size classes and inadequate buildings for a very large number of our children. The Minister of Education must show a great sense of urgency in tackling the problem before us.

It is not a platitude to say that our future is in our schools. Our future depends now not on the playing fields of Eton but on the playing fields of Cardiff, Sheffield and Manchester. It is for these areas that I say we must have a new and better deal until every young person is assured of a chance to go right through to the university and use his talents and have them developed to the utmost.

3.53 p.m.

Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin)

I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) in a debate on education. He will remember that we discussed the public schools last June. He is right when he says that our future depends upon the education of our children. We either mortgage the future of our nation or we invest it. If the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) was right in what he said about a serious lack of mathematicians in this country, how in heaven's name are we to compete in a technical world?

I make no apology to the House for referring to the Gracious Speech in full and talking about matters which I regard as of importance to the House, to the country and to my constituency. My job here is to represent my constituency, and not to conform to the desires of the Front Benches on either side of the House.

For that reason, I was very glad to be able to hear the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman), who drew the attention of the Government to the absence of mention of certain legislation in the Gracious Speech. We go to our constituencies in the long Summer Recess to learn a little about what our people are thinking, and how in the long term the proposals in the Gracious Speech will affect their lives, whether it be building, education or some major international problem. It is for that reason that I am particularly anxious, in every debate like this when I have the opportunity to speak, to discuss those matters which I think warrant the attention of the Government as they will affect my constituency.

The first problem dealt with today is education. On this score, the Minister can congratulate himself, and, certainly, when I am able to go round The Wrekin, I am not blind. I can see new schools going up, and I am very grateful for the work which is to be and is being done regarding the Catholic school. I notice that next month a college for further education is to be opened at Bennetts Bank, Wellington, but nevertheless I am not in all respects satisfied with some of the primary schools. I know that the Government are now to devote a great deal of time to two problems which have been brought to our attention today—the primary schools and the crisis at university level. If there is one thing to mar our future, it will be the frustration in people of that age when we are now under such tremendous moral pressure, not only in the way in which we live but also from our enemies outside.

I was very impressed with what was said by the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) about the Gracious Speech. He, like other hon. Members, went along to the other place, and I agree with him. I do not believe that that ceremony in another place is just for us as part of the Establishment. I beg the Government, and I am glad to see the Leader of the House present, to be quite certain that the ceremony that takes place there is televised or filmed year by year so that the message of order and justice and freedom and liberty can be transferred to people in this country and indeed to every person in the world who believes in this Parliamentary institution and all for which we stand.

I see that the clock is approaching 4 p.m., and I know that the Minister would probably like to rise at that hour. [Interruption.] Not so? Then I can go on with an easier mind. The real problem which almost all of us must have had to deal with and are worried about concerns the deputations which we have had from the teachers themselves. I find it very extraordinary when senior education officials and members of the teaching profession come to see me on two occasions in my constituency and say that they believe that the Minister of Education was deliberately about to wreck the Burnham Committee, and that he was, in fact, likely to impose salaries decided by him and his Ministry. That was the import of what was said by those who came to see me, and I told the Minister and the Prime Minister in writing that, if that was the intention of the Minister, he would never get the proposition through this House, because it would be entirely contrary to Conservative principles and all that this party stands for.

I understand that now—and no doubt the Minister will intervene if I am wrong —he is to consult all those who deal with education in this country and provide a new system for the Burnham Committee. I am sorry that he cannot find the time as well to appoint a Royal Commission to examine the whole state of the teaching profession as it is in society today, and I suggest that he should have a look at that when he is dealing with the question of the Burnham Committee—

It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed upon Monday next.