FURTHER EDUCATION

HC Deb 28 November 1961 vol 650 cc383-94

10.20 p.m.

Dr. Barnett Stross (Stoke-on-Trent, Central)

I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Further Education (Local Education Authorities) Amending Regulations, 1961 (S.I. 1961, No. 1582), dated 15th August, 1961, a copy of which was laid before this House on 22nd August, in the last Session of Parliament, be annulled. Examination of the actual Statutory Instrument shows that the relative section—the one that should be looked at in the first place—is paragraph 3. This states: Regulation 10 of the existing regulations, relating to Approval of Courses, shall have effect with the substitution in sub-paragraph (b) of paragraph (2) for the words 'a National Diploma in Design' of the words 'a Diploma in Art and Design'. This means, therefore, that the purpose of this Instrument is to change over from the original N.D.D.—or National Diploma of Design—to a differently named diploma to be called a Diploma in Art and Design. This appears simple, but, in effect, it means that radical changes are to take place.

I understand that each student must complete a pre-diploma course of training of approximately one year before presenting himself. In addition, each student has to be remarkably well qualified academically. He must offer himself as being in possession of five 0 level passes in the G.C.E. or an equivalent academic distinction. He will be accepted with two Advanced levels and two Ordinary levels or, if he has no Ordinary levels, he will be accepted if he has three Advanced levels and can prove that he has done some general reading and had a general education. The diploma course itself is now three years instead of two. I understand that four areas of specialisation are envisaged, but that the principal and central theme, the theme which is obligatory to all students, will be the area of the fine arts—painting, sculpture and so on. The others will be graphic design, three-dimensional design and graphic design in textiles and fashion, so I understand. The essential feature which interests me at the moment is that the central theme, as it were, is fine art.

Throughout the House, I think, the general view will be that these changes envisaged represent a definite step forward, and the principle behind the Statutory Instrument should be welcomed. If I have some reservations, I have them because I wish to ask for certain assurances and, perhaps, further information from the Parliamentary Secretary than is available to me. Broadly, I have three questions to ask.

Having studied what documents I have been able to find in the matter, particularly, of course, the advice given to the Minister in the First Report of the National Advisory Council on Art education, I find that there may well be some students of outstanding artistic promise who may, unless each case is carefully examined on its own merits apart from academic distinction, be debarred either from taking the advanced course or from receiving the diploma because they have not been able to obtain the necessary academic qualifications.

The National Advisory Council in paragraph 8 of its Report has stressed this very point. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will say that he fully accepts that every student's claim shall be individually examined. After all, we know that some young people, however gifted in a certain direction they may be in the arts, may be academically unruly, to call it that, or academically unfit to sit for this sort of examination. Their gifts may, nevertheless, be great indeed. Perhaps, in days gone by, although Leonardo da Vinci could well have said, "I can offer you seven A level passes, if you want them, at a moment's notice," others like Van Gogh and Rembrandt would have felt a little embarrassed and unwilling to sit down and study to the same extent.

We are by this Statutory Instrument which changes the course and makes it more advanced raising the standard considerably because we are looking forward to having first-rate teachers and designers for industry trained to the highest possible standard. These are the two main purposes, but also a number of the people so trained will devote the whole of their life to the fine arts. This is what we hope will happen.

Our best teachers, and certainly the very best facilities, will be made available at these special art institutions, these art schools, which will have to have their standards raised both in the provision of facilities and in the quality of teaching. They must have their standards raised to be able to cope with this and to make it possible for students to qualify in this advanced diploma.

There will not be so many of these institutions. Inevitably, they will not all be able to be brought up within the foreseeable future to the standard to which the best must be brought up. Therefore, pressure will be brought upon those who wish to obtain the best possible teaching. Again, I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to say that irrespective of academic distinction, if there is special ability in the fine arts in a student, his case will be sympathetically considered.

Secondly, I believe that there are 120 to 130 schools of art in Britain. How many does the Parliamentary Secretary think will be able, with all the help that it is proposed to give them, to qualify to afford in full the facilities for training for an advanced diploma of this type? Will it be thirty or forty? My view is that it is not likely to be more for many years to come.

A secondary question must be: what will happen to the other schools that cannot satisfy the Minister of the required standard? What is proposed to be done for them? The Parliamentary Secretary may answer in the words of Circular 16/10, sent out by his right hon. Friend on 21st November last year to local authorities, explaining the regulations and what he intended to do. I quote only the last two or three lines from paragraph 8 of the Circular: The Minister welcomes the Council's observations on the place of the art school in the community and the emphasis which the Council puts on the development of part-time vocational and non-vocational work; he believes that this is a field of work in which all schools of art and art departments of colleges of further education have a useful part to play. If that means anything, it should mean that the Minister will accept every art school, including those schools which cannot qualify or may not qualify for many years as being instruments of culture and of real use to the community, giving inspiration and fulfilment to people of all ages, probably mostly part-time, as a true instrument of education and not ignore or neglect these schools.

My third and last point is to speak about provisions. We will be faced with the fact that new building will be necessary, and it will have to fall into two types: accommodation for training and residential accommodation for the students. If there are to be only twenty, thirty or forty such schools in Great Britain, students who wish to take the courses will have to travel to them. If the distance is too great they will have to be in residence. I know that the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary have taken advice from the Council and that residential accommodation is to be made available.

We have completed today a debate on capital investment. This proposal also will require capital investment by way of building. Can we have an assurance that it will not be deferred or whittled down? It would be a great pity if that were to happen when we are planning to educate and train the best of our gifted young people in design for factories and for industry generally. It is most lucrative for any country to turn out designers of the high quality we here envisage.

I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will say something about the finance that will be provided, whether it will be much, and when it will begin to be made available. If he can satisfy us on these two simple points we shall be glad to withdraw the Prayer and wish him the best of luck in going forward with this scheme.

10.31 p.m.

Mr. James Boyden (Bishop Auckland)

In supporting my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross), I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to throw some light on two effects of these Regulations. As my hon. Friend has said, one of the regulations will shut down a considerable number of courses and the recommendation of the First Report of the National Advisory Council on Art Education is that if the numbers attending a course are less than twelve the course should be shut down. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether he will be very lenient for a time in the rural and scattered areas where it is difficult for students to travel and they are more likely to go into residence.

I ask him to take note of paragraph 43 of the Coldstream Report which recommends that the Minister should apply his requirements sympathetically in borderline cases so long as there is a prospect of an early increase of the student roll to a satisfactory level. He should be tolerant of a course which is going well even if the numbers are below those specified and should give these districts a chance to organise themselves and pull up.

One of the difficulties of this age is the concentration on big towns. I represent a scattered area where education is extraordinarily difficult for young people living in the Dales. A train has ceased to run and students have been deprived of evening classes because they cannot get home. I ask that special attention should be given for the time being at any rate to the rural areas.

As to that part of the regulations designed to encourage the study of art on a part-time basis for the benefit of the community as a whole, the Coldstream Report says that adequate facilities should be provided for part-time courses. Where there is a centre which the Minister has to close down ultimately because the numbers attending the diploma course are inadequate, the good will in that area should be channelled and used to encourage part-time courses. I was rather disappointed that in these new arrangements there is no reference to architecture. One of the weaknesses in the artistic atmosphere of this country is the lack of popular appreciation of architecture and the lack of teaching on the subject in our schools. Though I feel that it is out of order, I hope that that point will be noted.

10.35 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey (Sunderland, North)

It seems to me that the Parliamentary Secretary is about to give a sympathetic reply, and so I will not hold my usual reserve position of speaking after him.

I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) and Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden) upon raising this subject, and I wish the diploma well. We hope that the diploma will establish itself.

One of my hon. Friends has just spoken about the undesirability of concentration. We cannot avoid some measure of concentration here because we are hoping that the diploma will be comparable with a university qualification. We want the diploma to be recognised; we want it to be of high standard.

We are here, however, dealing with an extraordinarily difficult sphere of education, and I hope that every effort will be made to do what we can to encourage and make enthusiastic the teaching staff who will be responsible for teaching those who take the diploma. I can think of no more difficult subject than the teaching of art. I accept the general approach of the Coldstream Report, that there should be a concentration upon fine arts. I do not complain of the proposal that 15 per cent. of the teaching time should be devoted to the history of art. We want some measure of academic approach to art, but at the same time we must all the while appreciate that this is a subject which depends very largely on individual initiative and inspiration, and we must seek out these exceptionally talented people and ensure that they have their opportunity. That is why we have to depend very largely on the teaching staff.

I have not any very strong views about the forms that art takes from period to period. However, last year I was in Paris for a few weeks pursuing modern art. Paris has an enormous advantage here, in that there is a spirit about it that enables artistic enterprise to flourish. I should like more of that at home. We certainly have very fine art collections here, I hope that the diploma and the greater recognition that we give it will help.

Apart from that, I should like to emphasise the point that both of my hon. Friends have made about buildings. I know the difficulties of the Parliamentary Secretary at the moment. We merely wish to help him, and I am sure that he is anxious to be helped. I think that we should, again, accept the concept of the Coldstream Report, that the art school should be a local centre of cultural activity. This means, apart from the diploma course, that we want part-time activities and a public interest in the arts encouraged through art colleges.

I know that the Parliamentary Secretary will be anxious to winkle money out of the Treasury if he can. I hope he will not relax his efforts to see that this purpose, against the Coldstream Report, is supported, and that he will do so whenever he has an opportunity. This is the essence of the quality of living. This is the way to tackle the problem, to see that we have in, say, Sunderland an art school which not only is giving those who are exceptionally talented and those who are artistic an opportunity to pursue their talents but is also a focal point of cultural and artistic endeavour.

I and my hon. Friends welcome these Regulations and wish the diploma well.

10.39 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Kenneth Thompson)

I am sure that the whole House is grateful to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) for taking the opportunity to bring up what is, in fact, a very important aspect of our affairs which may very easily become overlooked in the great rush of other important matters which occupy so much of our time and thought.

I should like, on behalf of the House, to thank the Coldstream Committee and also the Summerson Advisory Council for the work that they have done so far in making it possible for us to reach the stage of tabling these Regulations. If our art education is to reach the standards that we all desire, it is essential that it should reach a coherent high level, understood by all and recognised as an objective towards which all interested in art education can work, and that is what the Summerson Council now proposes to help us to do.

These Regulations are very simple and do nothing more than change the name of the diploma towards which the students will work, but the House may like to be brought up to date with the background to that change. The Advisory Council recommends the establishment of this new art diploma system to replace the present system. All being well, it is hoped that the courses for the new diploma will start in 1963, leading three years later to the first awards of the diploma in art and design, as described in the Regulations. Some students will continue to work out the courses that they are following for the existing diploma, but it is necessary at this stage to introduce an approval condition for courses leading to the new diploma.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central described with great precision the kind of courses that will be followed by those who seek to qualify for this diploma, and I will not repeat them. But I think I ought to answer the specific questions which he raised, and particularly that one which, I know, he regards as most important and which is as near to controversy as anything is in this matter—the question of what is to be the accepted academic level that a student must achieve before he or she can be admitted to this course in art and design.

This is a difficult matter. Quite clearly, if we are to enrol students and train them to a point at which they will take a diploma which, we hope, will be a degree equivalent and will carry with it all that that means in recognition for qualified teacher status, recognition for entry into further stages of perhaps professional training and so on, there must be some recognisable and accepted academic standard that those students must be able to achieve.

I do not know whether everyone would go with the hon. Member in describing a student with five O-levels as "academically remarkably well qualified." I should have thought that that was a reasonably modest standard to ask of a student to pursue a degree equivalent course in almost any art or science, but I do not want to quarrel with the description of five O-levels as being academically remarkably well qualified. Happily, of course, increasing numbers of our students are reaching that level.

Dr. Stross

I cannot help but remember that one of the most delightful painters still living in this country—he paints very beautifully and will not mind my mentioning his name—is Lowry, whose work we all like very much. However, I wonder what he would say about five O-levels before he was allowed to go to a decent school to learn how to paint.

Mr. Thompson

The Parliamentary Secretary himself is not going to make any ambitious claims about his own academic standard, particularly when related to O-levels. I will come to the specific point of a Goya or Lowry in a moment. I think that hon. Members will agree that we ought to write into the Regulations an acceptable academic standard.

We then come to the question of what is to happen to those who have these other strange qualities which are not so easily definable, which are not so easily capable of precise description, and which are not so easily recognisable in an interview or examination room. Here is a major difficulty recognised by the Coldstream Council and by the Summerson Advisory Council and by my right hon. Friend. We must have a process by which it is possible for the door to be kept open for such students, and we propose to provide a system of exceptions from the five O-levels rule so that by whatever proces of reasoning and consideration the colleges themselves think appropriate, the student who has this magic can be admitted into the colleges.

I would not be so optimistic as to suppose that there will never be a door slammed in a worthy face—it is a little difficult to see how that could possibly be avoided—but I am sure that the colleges themselves will regard it as part of their duty to see that where there is talent, and perhaps latent genius, waiting to get in and be developed, it will not be a mere piece of machinery that will stand in the way. I hope that with that assurance the hon. Member will feel that the point is taken and that, so far as it can be given precision, there will be a way for those students to find their places in the colleges.

Perhaps I should add a word about the end of the course. It is not suggested that there will be some central examination that the students leaving the colleges should pass, but clearly there must be an examination if we are to have a recognised standard at the other end of a course. The colleges will make their own examination arrangements, under supervision of the Advisory Council, and will be required to appoint external assessors; so that we may rest satisfied about the processes for ensuring that the examinations at the end are about right.

The hon. Member wanted to know what will happen in the process of picking out the schools which are to be the colleges which will offer these courses, and what will happen to those schools which are not brought into this designation. I have no idea—and the Summerson Council itself has no precise idea—of the number of colleges equipped and qualified to offer courses of this level. I do not think that I would help the House by making a guess. What has already happened is that the colleges have received a circular from the Advisory Council, and those circulars are due to be returned to the Summerson Council and to my right hon. Friend—a copy each—by 31st December. Then will start the business of inspecting, testing and examining the courses of the colleges; and looking at the strength of student enrolments to see whether they reach a suitable number—and here I will take up the point made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden)—so that the Summerson Council, in cooperation with my Department, may draw up a plan representing a coming together in suitable and convenient centres of students who will make up courses strong enough numerically to achieve the standards we desire.

The result of this procedure will be the designation of the colleges which will offer these courses. I have no idea what the number will be. Then there will be the remainder, and I do not know what that number will be. What we want to be sure of is that the resources of these other schools—at present most of them offering a course leading to the National Diploma in Art and Design, which is the existing diploma—are not wasted. Indeed, we want to see that the spare capacity—if I may use the phrase—thrown up by this change in the system is used to the greatest possible advantage.

There is clearly an overwhelming demand for the setting of better standards of design and taste, and of judgment of what is good and what is bad. I go a long way with the hon. Member in thinking it a pity that we do not do something more to bring these same standards to bear in our judgment of what is good and what is bad architecturally—but that is a long story, and I suspect that I would almost certainly incur your disfavour, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if I pursued it. But we want the colleges that do not achieve designation to strengthen their full and part-time vocational and non-vocational courses so that over the years they will serve the best possible standards of art education.

There will be cases where students will find themselves some distance inconveniently away from the courses that they want to pursue. I should have thought that this was strictly a local authority matter. A local education authority has, of course, a duty to perform in seeing that it makes possible the pursuit of learning, including this kind of learning. In those cases where difficulties are faced which are beyond the resources of the individual student, then the local authority should devise means of coming to his aid.

I do not think that it will be the fault of the Ministry if courses are not reasonably convenient to the overwhelming majority of students. Some of the students who will pursue courses at the designated colleges leading to the new National Diploma will, of course, be a long way from home, just as ordinary university students are a long way from home.

And here I come to the third of the hon. Gentleman's questions. It will be necessary for them to live away either in lodgings or in halls of residence. There is going to be a fairly considerable building programme involved in making sure that the designated colleges are of a kind and equipped to a level that will enable them to provide these courses.

My right hon. Friend has assured the House on previous occasions that we want to see that the capital investment programme allows us to make the necessary provision for these courses. I am not able to say at the moment what the need will be in terms of money, nor can I say whether all the money that is going to be asked for will be immediately available. This is one more example of the question of priorities within priorities that will haunt our lives and pursue us down all these avenues of desirable achievements. We shall do our best to see that the money is there for this purpose. We may have to put halls of residence into a lower order of priority than the lecture halls and other teaching facilities that are essential to the courses. We shall try to get this right as well in due course.

It seems to me that the proposals now going forward offer us a chance to get our art education on to a very high level indeed and to provide avenues of advancement for those who have the necessary basic talent. I very much hope that the House will feel that we are on the right lines and that there is no need for us to accept the hon. Gentleman's invitation to pray against the Regulations.

Dr. Stross

If the House will permit me, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.