HC Deb 07 February 1963 vol 671 cc778-804

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

9.5 p.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)

In my view, school ships should ideally be built and operated by a commission comprising representatives of the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Education. Tonight, however, I am presenting an alternative case, because I feel that it would be more attractive to the present Administration.

The proposition is that the Ministry of Education and the Scottish Education Department should approach a number of shipping companies to discuss the possibility of building, say, six 15,000-ton specially designed school ships. The second part of the proposition is that construction costs be borne by the shipowners on the guarantee of a 20-year charter from the Ministry of Education in similar terms to that given by the Ministry of Transport for troopships in former times.

In this debate, I am concentrating on one objective: to persuade the Minister to set up a heavyweight committee to discuss the topic and to report to him. Perhaps the following organisations should each be invited to send a representative to the committee: the Ministry of Education and the Scottish Education Department, the National Union of Teachers and the Educational Institute of Scotland, the Association of Chief Education Officers and the Association of Scottish Directors of Education, the appropriate authorities in Northern Ireland, headmasters' associations, certainly the shipping companies and the shipbuilders themselves, the education committee of the British Employers' Confederation and the education committee of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress.

Such a committee would discuss a project which in embryo has proved practical and workable. Pioneering has been done by the British India Steam Navigation Company, which converted the troopships "Dunera" and "Devonia". I should say in parenthesis that although I worked at sea on the "Dunera" for 13 months, I have no financial axe to grind in this topic and have no financial connection whatever with the company.

My first point is that the case for school ships stands or falls on academic considerations. To he feasible, the ships must operate at least 10½months in the year, which involves term-time voyaging and leave of absence from school. It is sufficient to reflect that senior representatives of 70 education authorities have travelled on the pioneer ship "Dunera", have expressed themselves as more than satisfied with the curriculum and have talked of the great potential value of the 13-day cruise, which is no mere holiday joyride since there is a balanced timetable in and out of classrooms related to the subject matter that pupils come across, on the voyage.

Writing on behalf of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education and her own Department, the hon. Lady the Member for Aberdeen, South (Lady Tweedsmuir), who is one of the Under-Secretaries of State for Scotland, wrote: The present experimental scheme has been well supported and there is no doubt that the cruises have definite educational value. That was what the hon. Lady said in her letter of 8th January.

My second point is that the letter goes on to say: We think, however, that it is, perhaps, still a little too early to say whether they are likely to prove a permanent feature and whether the demand for them is likely to increase to such an extent that additional shipping will be required. I agree that no balanced assessment can be made from the pupils' immediate reactions, often gushing and even tearful, on going down the gangway at the end of a voyage. But surely some valid judgment can now be made, in February, 1963, about those pupils who travelled as long ago as April, 1961. Twenty months later parents and teachers say that they have noticed an added curiosity and a zest for work among the young people who have been on the trip, which they believe can sensibly be traced to the experience of a ship school.

Incidentally, this argument does not apply simply to geography. It concerns other subjects, especially mathematics, as a result of seeing men in an adult world on bridge or in engine room or navigation classes doing a man's job and using algebra and trigonometry.

In a ship it is possible to have a framework of order which is not to be underestimated when one is taking 13-year-olds abroad. To my certain personal knowledge, over 13 months, out of about 10,000 boys and girls not a single pupil was late for the ship at 18 ports of call; nor was there any occasion for corporal punishment.

As we have time, I want to expand this point. Many people would suppose that the taking of a large number of pupils to foreign ports would involve, sooner or later, the certainty that some would go astray. This would be a good mathematical chance. These people imagine that those responsible in the ship would find themselves calling upon the services of Interpol in Hamburg or Lisbon to search for a youngster who failed to turn up. This does not happen. It is a workable and practicable scheme.

The next question that we must face is that of seasickness. It has to be admitted that it can be extremely uncomfortable for 24 hours. But this problem should be seen in the light of the educational experience to be derived by those who have not frequently been away from home before. We must also remember that pupils are far more resilient than parents, and if any sympathy is to be extended it should be to the teachers who go with the children rather than to the pupils themselves.

I should be less than honest if I did not refer to one snag. It is a question not so much of the interruption of the studies of those pupils who go in the ship—this is not greatly significant; it is rather the disruption of work of those who are left behind in half-filled or denuded classes, and those in other classes whose teachers have gone away. The answer seems to be to take whole classes, especially as the greatest value of any voyage is obtained by those pupils who spend months in their schools working up, with the voyage as a climax for their study, maximising the value derived from their preparatory work and the voyage itself by doing systematic follow-up work in the weeks after disembarkation.

Let as not view this subject entirely in isolation. It involves a period of months beforehand and at least weeks, if not months, after the voyage, especially for junior secondary modern pupils. Indirect Government finance will be required, at least for those whose parents' pockets are not deep enough, if classes are to be taken in their entirety. Eventually we might dream about every pupil having the chance of a voyage once in his or her school lifetime, perhaps on payment of £5 or £10 —paid, in my opinion, not by the pupils' parents but by the boys and girls them selves, thereby eliminating certain dangers that are apt to arise from a "something for nothing" attitude.

For the present, however, let us confine ourselves to saying that pupils who, in the opinion of their headmasters, could benefit, and whose classmates are going, should not be barred on purely financial grounds. It may be contended that if moneys from a general Exchequer grant were allocated proportionately to each authority to enable it to allow some pupils to go, the choice of school to benefit would be an invidious one for education authorities. It would be asked why should School A be able to send a whole class rather than School B. This is a real practical problem.

On the other hand, is not education already biased as between schools? In terms of West Lothian, there is no doubt that pupils who go to school at that magnificent new building provided by the West Lothian education authority at Broxburn, of which any country could be proud, are getting a significantly better education than those who go to school in some Victorian building, perhaps 120 years old, where the facilities are necessarily not so good.

In such a situation, the education authority might see fit to spend an earmarked grant on a scholarship course for pupils from its less fortunate schools. This raises the question of financial assistance from the Exchequer. Again I quote from the hon. Lady's letter written on 8th January: The two education departments will for their part be ready to give the company what guidance they can so far as their respective interests are concerned, but I am afraid we can hold out no prospect of financial assistance from the Exchequer. The powers granted under the Education Acts could not be used to give financial help for a purpose of this kind—let alone to commission vessels—and we must keep in mind that the education service already makes very heavy demands on the Exchequer. The letter goes on: The schoolship scheme is an imaginative venture of considerable importance, but we are bound to view it against the background of the priority requirements of the education service as a whole. To be frank, I think that herein lies a false hypothesis. I do not accept for a moment that this scheme should be viewed from the narrow educational priorities of 1963. This is a sort of assumption that is derived from what might be termed an unhealthy, Departmental compartmentalisation. If it were a straight choice between more land schools or ship schools, if there were one or the other, I would plump for land schools, but that seems not to be the choice. It would only be the choice if one could turn thousands of underemployed shipbuilding workers on the Tyne, the Mersey, the Clyde and in Northern Ireland, and sailors, into fully employed building workers overnight. This itself is an unrealistic assumption and I think we can leave that state of affairs out of the question.

The choice has to be made, not against what the hon. Lady in her letter called: the background of the priority requirements of the education service as a whole but against the background of the needs of Britain as a whole. The choice is whether we are content with the present parlous state of the shipping industry or whether—one must admit this, it is no use hiding it—keeping taxes perhaps a little higher than they otherwise might have been; grants are promised to education authorities to guarantee 20-year charters to shipping lines which are prepared to order, out of their own funds, ships here and now.

If we are talking about Treasury grants to help shipbuilding, it is legitimate to point out and to remind the House of what I would call the unpretty spectacle last December of the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) asking for more ships to be built in her constituency and the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams)—in a debate which my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) will remember—asking for a couple of frigates to be built in his constituency. That was not on defence grounds, but so that the citizens of his constituency could remain in full employment.

School ships would have precisely the same effect employmentwise. If the Treasury has money to spend on ships with the ultimate object of maintaining peace, it would be better invested in school ships than in obsolete frigates. Without hesitation I declare that "Dunera" and "Devonia", by taking 800 school children on trips to Leningrad on seven occasions, have contributed ten times the value of the return of money spent on warships.

A school ship is not an alternative to land travel. This we have never believed. It is different. It is an additional experience of the ocean which means so much to this island and which should be experienced once by each young person, if that is possible.

Perhaps one potential development is the use of a school ship, as Dr. Reith, the Director of Education in the City of Edinburgh would have it, as an introductory experience to foreign travel, to give confidence to 13- and 14-year-olds. If in future it is desirable for pupils to go abroad for a time to learn a language, they will have the greater confidence to do so if they have been on a school ship first.

It is not just a question of the priority requirements of the education service as a whole. Vital issues are clearly raised of the relationship of the future generation with Europeans, whether or not we eventually go into the Common Market. Important issues such as how we educate for Europe must not be left to the uncoordinated decisions of individual commercial companies at given points of time.

The letter of 8th January says: Since the ships which are used at present are owned and run by the British India Steam Navigation Company, any replacement of these vessels which may become necessary in time is essentially a matter for the owners to consider. Left to themselves, without guarantees, the owners will clearly not be able to be certain of charging fares appropriate to pupils and commensurate with running costs plus interest charges on the capital cost of the ship. Given guarantees in terms similar to those given by the Ministry of Transport in trooping days, a different complexion would be put on the matter of ship owners digging into their own resources and ordering new ships. It is one thing for the ship owners to convert old ships which have already paid their interest rates and their amortisation charges, but it is quite another proposition to charge fares related to completely new ships whose capital costs have to be met.

The question of design is also raised. A school ship designed from scratch would look more like an aircraft carrier than a passenger liner, and the educational benefit from a specially designed ship would he immeasurably greater than that from a converted ship. I will not go into details, but that is clearly so. Moreover, a specially designed school ship involving standardised patterns for sister-ships would bring down relative costs and would represent a potential export for British shipyards. It is ironic that, as a result of frequent calls at Hamburg, it may be the Germans on the Elbe and not the British on the Tyne or Clyde who will be building the world's first specially designed school ship, partly because so many influential Germans have come aboard, bringing their sons and daughters to carry out one of the chief functions of this experiment, which is that young people of one country should go into the homes of young people of another and that return hospitality should then be received.

The welcome in foreign ports highlights that pupils are impressed more by people they meet than by venerable monuments. It is easier for a shipping company to lay on educational visits without wasting time than it is for individual teachers staying at hostels or hotels. Friendships formed in Bergen and Oslo and other ports during an afternoon or afternoon and evening have resulted in Norwegians coming the following summer to stay with Scots in Edinburgh and the West. There are many examples of this and it is a desirable trend.

There is what I consider to be an Aunt Sally—hon. Members may think it has greater substance—which is that school ships on a large scale would contribute to balance of payments difficulties. Equally, they can be seen as a hidden form of commerce, raising the level of world trade. I wish to draw attention to the fact that when the "Devonia" visited Bathurst in Gambia with 400 British and 400 French pupils travelling together, partly for international understanding and partly to improve the language of one group or the other—I suspect that the French learnt more than the British —it is estimated that about £15,000 was spent, including port charges, the cost of the organised bus tours to plantations, and gift buying.

A series of visits could be a significant source of sterling to developing countries. Although £90,000 or £100,000 may lot seem very much when compared with the Estimates we have recently been discussing, to a place the size of Gambia it would be significantly important and would be a drop at least in the right bucket.

Again, this is an example of the danger of drawing conclusions in the environment of what I am referring to again as the Departmental compartmentalisation of thought. Officials of education departments declare themselves to be agnostic about such relevant considerations to school ships as a whole, even if they are not relevant to their particular Ministry, and I hope that the hon. Lady will take a broad general view and not just the narrow view of her own Department, because it would be sad if this were to be either accepted or rejected merely on a narrow basis when clearly this transcends several Ministries.

I have one final suggestion. Easily the most effective way of using school ships specially designed as such would be to take, possibly for two or three months, the whole term of a training college. The hon. Lady will know that recently there has been a great deal of discussion, not so much in Scotland, but in England, about the chronic shortage of training college places. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North has repeatedly referred to this. Would not it be possible to arrange for a group of about 400 students to go for two or three months either round Africa, or on the way to India via East Africa. and at the same time do their training college work? It may be argued that this would be ludicrously expensive, that it would be out of all proportion to any enrichment gained—and I am not hiding it from the House that it would be expensive—but it would not be relatively that much more expensive than the money paid out year in and year out on transporting troops to Aden. Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Many of us are extremely worried about another critical situation. We are worried about pupils going from school at the age of 17 or 18 to a training college, and then perhaps to a university, and on completion of their training college education going straight back perhaps to the school where they were educated. Many of us are concerned about a system whereby young people go from one side of the teacher's desk to the other. I do not think that they make quite as good teachers as they might have done if they had their eyes opened, not only by going abroad—because abroad may be to Europe—but going to foreign parts—France, Germany, and Italy are not foreign parts; they are very much the same as we are—to a different culture, and to a different way of life. If this were done, I think that we would get in quality of teacher a very much higher return than we get on money spent in many other ways.

I repeat that what I am pleading for is not that the hon. Lady should wave a magic wand and bring all this about immediately, but that she should set up a committee to discuss all these arguments. This cannot be done on the Floor of the House. It is extremely complicated, but I hope that I have said enough to convince hon. Gentlemen opposite that it is worth looking into. It may be that at the end of the day, for one reason or another, it will be considered impracticable, but it is worth while setting up a committee to look into this with great attention and sympathy.

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence (Dunbartonshire, East)

We are all greatly indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) for raising the question of school ships on this Adjournment debate. I had the honour and pleasure of accompanying him on the first experimental cruise of the "Dunera One of the things which impressed me was the reaction of the vast majority of the students who felt after that cruise that for the first time they knew their teacher. I think that that is very important.

Teachers who thought they knew the characters of children found that they had to make a new assessment. Many children realised that their teacher was a different sort of person than they had imagined. I recall that one youngster who did not like his teacher at the beginning of the voyage decided afterwards that his teacher was a great sport. A proper teach-pupil relationship is very important.

I can recall some amusing incidents, as I am sure can my hon. Friend. Unfortunately, the weather in the Bay was a bit "tough" and some of the children were ill. One bonny little girl of about 11 was quite ill, but had recovered by the time we arrived at Corunna. I said to her, "Never mind, it was worth it, wasn't it?" She replied, Yes, Sir, but I hope that we don't take the same road home." This little girl got over her sea sickness and was quite happy in the party which we took around Corunna.

The children saw the monument to Sir John Moore. It was wonderful to see their reactions when they visited this place so precious in our history. Their interest was stimulated by the fact that they were in the Spanish town where Sir John Moore was buried. We visited Gibraltar and Lisbon and the zest for inquiry and learning exhibited by these children was surprising. One was able to join in discussion groups on the decks where the children talked about all kinds of things, I had an opportunity to talk to the students and to the ship's officers. I was taken on to the bridge and shown the navigation instruments. The importance of algebra and trigonometry to proper navigation was brought home to the children and many of them appreciated for the first time the important part which algebra and trigonometry play in everyday happenings.

My hon. Friend said that school ships would serve a better purpose than frigates, destroyers or warships. The traditional function of the British Navy, at least in peacetime, is to go round the world showing the flag. We now have a very small Navy. We do not go round the world showing the flag now, at least not to the extent that we used to do.

If ever there was a wonderful advertisement—if not for Great Britain, at least for Scotland—it was the morning when we berthed in Corunna. The quay was packed. They knew that this school ship was coming from Glasgow. There was a bagpipe band to greet us. When the children went ashore—bonnie Scottish children—it was a pleasure to be there. This was really showing the flag.

Mr. E. G. Willis (Edinburgh, East)

It was showing the tartan.

Mr. Bence

That may be so. This served a better purpose perhaps than if the Navy had put in.

Mr. Dalyell

I hope that my hon. Friend will not encourage the hideous myth that the Spaniards invented the bagpipes.

Mr. Bence

We were met on the quay by Basques playing Basque pipes. It is not for me to say whether that was more hideous than the Scottish bagpipe. I do not want to enter into any such controversy with my hon. Friend. It was thrilling both on arrival and departure to see the quay packed with Spanish people and the Basque band. It was exciting to see the admiration shown by the people of Corunna for 800 wonderful children from Renfrewshire, the West Lothians, Dunbartonshire, and a/1 over Scotland.

If we think in terms of building ships to give employment, it would be far batter in this age to build school ships because they employ the finishing trades. This helps shipbuilding employers to keep their building teams together—that is, to keep their finishing trades together. If we are to think in terms of warships, hospital ships or school ships, school ships will create far more balanced employment in shipyards than warships.

I do not for one moment advocate building things merely to give people work. I believe in building things only if they are socially desirable and useful. To dig holes and fill them up again just for the sake of working is nonsense. I would not do it and I cannot accept it as a social philosophy. It is far better to use the resources of the Clyde, the Tyne, the Mersey, Burrow, or Northern Ireland to build ships which will be an advertisement to Britain. It would be far better to build school ships to sail to Leningrad, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other places, because from this activity other commercial enterprises would spring. It would encourage people in the places visited to visit the country from which the children emanated.

I am sure that many of those people in Lisbon and Corunna who met our children from Scotland were encouraged themselves to visit Scotland. If these trips by school children are encouraged they will stimulate visits to our shores by foreign children. Many of us remember the au pair system between the wars. Children came here from France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain on exchange visits with our children. This could happen on a large scale with the development of school ships. It is a worthwhile enterprise.

My hon. Friend said that the ships would have to be employed for at least ten and a half months of the year. I agree that we probably need an inquiry to study the economics of the matter. To run a ship for this purpose for ten and a half months a year might be very expensive, and it may take many years before we create a climate of acceptance of this as part of general education. But, of course, a ship could be converted in such a way that it could be used also for family holidays. There are great possibilities. Another use could be for teacher training.

I have not thought a great deal about this, but I agree with my hon. Friend that the general tendency in our country, and probably in most countries, is for a boy or girl, having started school at the age of about 5, to go straight through to university. I have always thought that process to be undesirable. When my children left the sixth form I advised them to go to work before going on to further education. They went to work in factories and were all the better for it.

For children and young people to remain in the hothouse of education from infancy to adulthood without contact with the outside world is undesirable. I knew a young student who went to University College, Oxford, in 1946. Later, I asked him what he thought was the greatest benefit he had in going up to Oxford during that period. He told me that he and his fellow students of 18 or 19 years old felt that they were very lucky because the other students were young men and women who had served in the war and had experiences outside school life. They had maturity, and this had helped the younger students considerably. He felt that this education had been enhanced by his having had around him mature people with experience outside the intellectual and academic world.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian is quite young and must remember that it often takes thirty-five years for an idea to permeate our parliamentary system. I hope that my hon. Friend will see the day when his school ships became a reality.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. William Small (Glasgow, Scotstoun)

In lending my support to the endeavours of my hon. Friend the Member far West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) I recall that the first time I met him was at an Aberdeen Scottish Labour Party conference, seven or eight years ago. He was an even younger man then. We were living in the same hotel and it occurred to me at the time that he was a rather starry-eyed idealist. Since then I have seen his efforts, I see him today as an hon. Member of the House, and, having known him in this way, I do not want anyone to dismiss his idea of dual shipbuilding out of hand as being not a practical proposition, for it could offer much to the community, particularly our children.

I realise that my lion. Friend's proposition would require some critical examination, but I am satisfied, since we spend a good deal of money in other ways—and I have in mind the care and prevention of delinquency—that for children to live in a ship, a self-contained community, for ten days or a fortnight would itself introduce some discipline and help to mould their character.

All children are not equal in a monetary sense and some are aware that their clothes are not as nice as others, that one child's father has a car while another has not, or that one has a television set and the other has not. After a few days in the sort of self-contained community on board ship the children would look at these material things in a different way and such a voyage might even lead to them taking a greater interest in their education.

I support this idea of my hon. Friend, despite the fact that he kept me up night after night at a Labour Party conference talking about similar things. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend getting the success that he has so far achieved.

9.48 p.m.

Mr. E. G. Willis (Edinburgh, East)

I, too, wish to associate myself with the suggestion put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell). Like my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small) I passed through a period of indoctrination at various conferences, but had I not had that experience I should have been attracted to the conception of school ships as proposed by the hon. Member for West Lothian.

There are too few really imaginative ideas current today and anyone who contributes with idealistic conceptions—and this one is capable of being achieved—is doing a first-class job. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on the success he has so far had with his idea. If he will pardon my saying so, he has been exceedingly fortunate in having been able to get as far as this with his idea in the few years he has been struggling for it.

It is good for children to be brought into contact with the sea. I was brought into contact with it, and spent a number of years playing about with it. This is a national characteristic. Contact with the sea brings one into touch with something very permanent, enduring and fundamental to nature. It brings a sense of vastness and of power. Nothing can be so frightening as the sea at times, nor is there anything so vast. This contact gives human beings a much sounder sense of reality, and a realisation of the things that matter. The more civilised we get, the more we tend to lose that contact—not with a great deal of benefit.

I am in favour of children visiting other countries. It broadens the mind and gives a meaning to things of which one has only read in books. When a child sees that what he has been reading about and learning really matters in the world and that he is just not wasting his time, his interest becomes that much greater. He will profit for the rest of his life from being brought into contact with the world, and relating what he sees to what he is being told and is learning. A child benefits in quite a number of other ways, too, particularly as he gets older.

I do not know the experience of other hon. Members, but one of our biggest problems in Edinburgh today is to know what to do with young children to prevent their tremendous destruction of all kind of things in the town—telephone kiosks, lamp standards, new buildings. Tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage are done every year in Edinburgh because, as a community, we do not know how properly to direct their energy into beneficial channels. That is a tremendous and a world-wide problem—

Mr. John Brewis (Galloway)

They would sink the ship.

Mr. Willis

I do not think so.

I think of the homes of some of these children, and of the well-worth-while efforts made by teachers in crowded classrooms. The teaching profession tries to do what it can, but the plain truth is that we as citizens have not done very much about it, otherwise the problem would not exist. If the children were given an experience of this kind, not simply for 10 days but for a longer period, we should be giving them something in which they could interest themselves and on which they could expend their energies and direct their attention.

Mr. Bence

My hon. Friend is a sailor of many year's standing. Could he tell us whether there is any truth in the saying, "Send your boy to sea. If there is anything in him, the sea will fetch it out."

Mr. Willis

It probably will fetch it out.

I do not think that this proposal would offer a complete solution to the problem I have just mentioned, but I am sure that it would help, and for that reason I think that it is good. As to cost, I am always amazed at the scrupulous care with which we examine the cost of things of this character and then, on the other hand, without hardly a thought vote millions of pounds for all sorts of things.

Mr. Bence

We often do not know what we are voting for.

Mr. Willis

Yes, we do not know half the time. In recent years we have had so many examples of £10 million, £20 million, £50 million, and even £100 million—

Mr. Bence

Poured down the drain.

Mr. Willis

I would not say that it was money entirely wasted because it has given men a great deal of scientific training and experience, but I feel that there is something wrong with society when we have to crib, cabin, and confine and ex amine meticulously to ensure that we do not spend too much on some things whilst on the other hand we spend vast sums with hardly any examination at all. This vast expenditure seems to a great number of people rather dubious at times.

Society is becoming more affluent. This is not thanks to the Government, although they always claim credit for it. It is due to the scientists who place in our hands every day increasing power to produce goods and to use the world's resources to add to the comforts and enjoyment of man. This has nothing to do with the Government, because the same thing happens in Russia as happens in Britain. We are becoming so affluent now that we ought to encourage these ideas and not be too mean about them. We should be bold and imaginative.

Why not build a school ship, or two school ships, and see what the result will be? Let us use them on a wider scale. Let us try to make provision for the poorer children to enjoy them, because they would probably benefit most from this experience. If we did this we should be doing good not only to the children but to ourselves. We should be doing things of which we could be justly proud as a nation and things which would make the rest of the world respect us and look up to us. I hope that the noble Lady the Under-Secretary of State will be encouraging and will not stick too closely to the brief handed out to her. Let her show that she is attracted to the idea.

Mr. Bence

And show feminine courage.

Mr. Willis

Let the noble Lady do more than turn the idea down in an elegant manner. I hope that she will tell my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian that some of his ideas might be brought a little nearer to fruition as a result of this debate.

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

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

10.0 p.m.

Mr. William Ross (Kilmarnock)

No one can complain that we have taken a little longer than is usual for an Adjournment debate on this subject of school ships. I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) not only on having earned an Adjournment, but on having selected a day on which he has had a bonus in time. I hope that he will be even more fortunate in the reply he receives from the noble Lady the Under-Secretary of State.

I give the noble Lady an invitation. The Lord Advocate is not here, neither is the Solicitor-General. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is probably not in the country. The Secretary of State for Scotland is probably snowbound somewhere around Argyll. Why does not she tear up that set of printed notes and let herself go? She has had plenty of advice. She has had it from—I shall not call him a sailor—an engine-room artificer of the Royal Navy, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis). She has had the advice of a couple of engineers—

Mr. Willis

This is most insulting to the very honourable branch of engine-room artificer. Does my hon. Friend suggest that they are neither seamen nor engineers?

Mr. Ross

I am sorry. Before "engineer" insert "other". I should have said "two other engineers ". In addition, of course, the noble Lady has had the benefit of the enthusiasm and the idea which my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian has certainly spread about Scotland for quite a long time.

It is more than just an idea. Kilmarnock is within Ayrshire, and the Ayrshire education authority has twice commissioned this ship for these trips, and it is to do it again. In this one authority, we have had experience over three years. I assure the hon. Lady that my life is not made easier by the fact that my daughter is at a school the headmaster of which thought that it would be unwise to interrupt the curriculum by allowing too many of them to go on the ship. I need not tell the noble Lady of the comments I receive, as though it had been my personal responsibility in not allowing her to go.

The educational value of this scheme has already been stressed. But it is more than that. Those children in Ayrshire, for the whole year before they go, save up, some of them taking small jobs, and they pay their own way.

It is time we recognised one of the saddening features of Scottish education. We have a very proud past, but we tend to cling to faded glories and forget that the world is changing and moving on, but we do not always move with it. If there has been one cause for criticism of Scottish education over the years, it has been the failure to experiment. Here is a chance.

Let us not worry about the cost. Today, we have had Supplementary Estimates for £59 million, without a whisper from anybody. The noble Lady is at the Dispatch Box for the first time today. The Minister of Education for England was asking for another £13 million. I shall put down a Motion of censure on the Scottish Education Department for spending too little. What are they afraid of? This is an imaginative venture. It has caught the public's imagination.

The Scottish Office is lagging behind Scottish public opinion and the opinion of parents, who are being pressed by their children about this matter. Nothing could be more educational or of more lasting benefit to education itself than for the children to get out of the classroom. This is part of education. It would benefit the children greatly if they could get out of the classroom and to travel on a ship, as one group did this summer, through the Kiel Canal to Stockholm, on to Leningrad, back to Copenhagen and then back to Scotland at a cost of £36, which the children paid themselves, with their teachers and with lecturers from Moray House.

Surely the noble Lady appreciates—and I say this as a teacher—that by this method children can have a new and interesting approach to history, geography, arithmetic—and to life and the world. This is not something which should be dismissed with arguments about £. s. d. We should consider its value in connection with the rounded characters, new ideas, new hobbies and new interests which might spring from this experience.

To my mind, every child in Scotland should have the benefit of this at least once in his lifetime. Why do not we break out and have a go at this in Scotland? The "Dunera" is a household name in Ayrshire, Dumfries, Dunbarton, and certainly in West Lothian. We talk about scrapping and building ships. Why not add to this—scrap and build and build and educate? This would be a benefit, incidentally, to the shipyards, but the really important thing is the children, their education and the lasting benefit to the nation.

My hon. Friend has asked for a committee to go into this matter. If the educational benefits which we have already appreciated in Ayrshire have arisen from makeshift ships, think of the real benefits, the additional controlled discipline and formal education which would come from a purpose-built ship. Indeed, as my hon. Friend rightly said, we should think of the benefits which would accrue to this country if other nations ordered the ships from us as a result of our pioneering. This cannot be discounted.

Surely my hon. Friend was very modest in his request that we should have a committee to look into this and that educationists, ship architects, and so on, should get together to find out what can be done. The Scottish Education Department could go into the matter of the full use of the ship and consider alternative uses for it when it was not used for educational purposes to ensure that it was an economic proposition.

The last thing that I want the noble Lady to say, as she has said before, is that the Education Department will give guidance but not cash. If that is all she proposes to say, I hope that she does not rise to speak at all. Here the noble Lady has a chance. I wonder how John Buchan would have approached this. I wonder whether the noble Lady, as John Buchan's daughter-in-law, will be as adventurous as I am sure he would have been.

I do not say that the noble Lady should go overboard with enthusiasm, but let her accept my hon. Friend's modest proposal. If she does so, she will be only falling in line with the views of thousands of people in Scotland and she certainly will show that Scotland is determined to experiment and again to lead.

10.10 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Lady Tweedsmuir)

We are all very much indebted to the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) for raising an important and exciting subject—the ship school scheme. He has done it with his usual enthusiasm and, as was said by one lion. Member, has brought a great deal of imagination to a subject which he has made very much his own. As the hon. Member could not, unfortunately, have his Adjournment debate before, we are glad that he had the luck to have a little more time and that he was so ably supported by his colleagues on the benches opposite.

I should like, first, to acknowledge the courtesy of the hon. Member in having sent me notice of the matters which he wished to raise, thus enabling me to give a good deal of consideration to them. 1 am attracted, of course, by the persuasive invitation of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), but I ask him to wait a bit and then I will see whether I can respond to him.

The hon. Member for West Lothian has made a great many points, but I do not think that I can deal with all of them. We could have a fascinating discussion, for example, about whether sea sickness was, as the hon. Member described it, an educational experience. That is some- thing which I would rather challenge. It would, perhaps, be best if I addressed myself to the two main points raised by the hon. Member: first, that the Government should take the initiative now in going in for ship schools in a big way; and, secondly, that as a first move, we should set up a committee to examine the whole matter and to report.

Before doing so, I should like to say a brief word about the work of the British India Steam Navigation Company and to say how much we acknowledge its pioneering work, first with the "Dunera" and more recently with the "Devonia". I was particularly interested to hear the hon. Member for Kilmarnock say that his local authority had made use of these arrangements twice and would probably do so on a third occasion.

The hon. Member for West Lothian, referred to the letter which I sent him on 8th January on my behalf and that of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education. I stand by what I said in that letter when I described the present arrangements for school voyages in the two ships as an imaginative venture of considerable importance ". As my colleague the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Brooman-White) said a year ago, the scheme is an excellent example of private enterprise working in the public interest ".—[OFFICAL REPORT, 24th January, 1962; Vol. 652, c. 182.] In Scotland, we have always taken a close interest in the ship school scheme. After a slow start, education authorities were quick to take advantage of it. Since April, 1961, when the "Dunera" made her first school voyage, no less than 32 of the 35 Scottish authorities have taken part by sending pupils on the cruises. In England also, the scheme has been a great success. The total number of pupils who have so far taken part is about 40,000, of whom I am glad to say that as many as 8,000 have come from Scotland.

The lion. Member for West Lothian would probably like me to pay tribute to the man who in large measure originally inspired the idea of ship schools—Mr. John Kinloch, at one time a headmaster in Renfrewshire and now living in Dunbartonshire. It was his determination over a great many years which brought results.

Hon. Members opposite would wish me also to pay tribute to the hon. Member for West Lothian himself, because, as deputy director of studies aboard the "Dunera", he has helped to get this scheme off to a good start. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small) thought that the scheme was valuable in building character. With that I certainly agree. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) spoke, in particular, of the value of voyages at sea. With that I also agree—sailing being one of my hobbies, if I ever get the time. The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) regaled us with some of his experiences with children, which we all very much enjoyed. We are, therefore, all agreed on the merits of the scheme.

The hon. Member's two main points were: first, that the Education Departments should discuss with the shipping interests the possibility of building six 15,000-ton specially designed ship schools, under a guarantee of a twenty-year charter by the Government; and, secondly, that a "heavyweight committee" should examine these ideas. He rested his main argument on the educational value of school voyages. He said that the case stands or falls "on academic considerations".

But he also brought in a great many other arguments, concerning shipping and shipbuilding capacity, employment, the balance of payments, and the export trade, and he reinforced his position by a close analysis of the educational benefits of the present experimental arrangements and sought to argue that it is much better for the peace of the world to build ship schools than warships.

The hon. Member probably knows that I have always been strongly convinced of the value of travel. That is why it is with very real regret that I have to tell him straight away that however good the present scheme of educational cruises I cannot agree to his suggestions, for two main reasons: first, we consider that the initiative for ship school schemes should remain where it is now, with private companies, which have shown that they can carry it out with successful results; and, secondly—although many hon. Members thought that we should not consider this matter—there is the ever- present problem of finance in the context of education as a whole.

If we were to do as he suggests the Government would be assuming an open-ended commitment. If the scheme were to develop as he proposed with such energy the contingent liability under the suggested guarantee and the additional grants to education authorities would have to be charged on the funds available for the education service as a whole.

I believe that it was the hon. Member himself who said, "After all, there is something similar in the charter arrangements for troopships, for which the Government make a long-term commitment involving specific liabilities. "In a sense, no doubt, the charter arrangements for troopships offer an analogy, but I put it to him that what he has suggested for ship schools does not afford quite an exact analogy. It would take me beyond my responsibility to go into any detail on the chartering of troopships, or the ways in which we could use them, but we must remember that the Government's responsibilities for seeing that troops can be moved about when required are clear and direct, and what the hon. Member is asking us to do is to assume a similarly clear and direct responsibility for school voyages. This is a very different thing, and as I have said, we do not consider that the provision of ship schools should at the moment be added to our total commitments.

I agree that in considering an issue of this kind it is perfectly proper to take into account all the arguments of a general kind which the hon. Member has developed. But, as he himself said, the case stands or falls by the educational considerations. With that I agree. That is why I said in my letter of 8th January to the hon. Member that the matter must be viewed against the background of the priority needs in education.

The hon. Member thought that this was a narrow view. He called it by a word which beats all words used in Government Departments — "compartmentalisation" —but it is surely the job of Governments to get their priorities right. The fact is that the demands which the education service makes on the Exchequer increase all the time, and quite rightly. When ideas involving new expenditure are advanced we must always ask ourselves the question: if more money were ours to dispense would, or should, this be the first charge upon it? This is the acid test.

I do not intend to debate the economics of education. We can all of us think of a long list of items, great and small, in the schools and in further education that we should like to see undertaken. We all have very special schemes of our own. The education authorities—and the Government, for that matter—have to try to keep a reasonable balance in deciding on new expenditure on these things which are put forward, whenever we have a chance of doing so.

Despite the hon. Member's view that the case he has made stands or falls on academic considerations, I recognise, just as he does, that there are other very important factors. The hon. Member has brought out many different arguments, including especially the need to keep the shipyards occupied. This, of course, gives us all a great deal of concern. It is a matter in which many of us have taken much interest over a long period. I quite agree that orders would help our shipyards. On the other hand, I think that the hon. Member would agree that building specially designed ship schools would not in itself solve the long term problems of the ship building industry, which, unfortunately, we cannot debate tonight.

The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East, laid great stress on the importance of showing the flag. Of course I agree with all that. I agree that one gets experience in travelling overseas in association with others of the same school which one could not get in any other way. The hon. Member for West Lothian also brought out the question whether we could not have a scheme occasionally for putting teachers in training on a particular voyage. He felt —I am sure that he is right on this—that that would give teachers a very much wider experience than they have when possibly they go to a school in the area in which they were trained.

Yet even if we had a scheme of school ships of this nature on a very large scale I think that in our present state of teacher shortage there would be a good many organisational difficulties in taking them away. It would surely put a rather heavy burden on the lecturing staffs of colleges of education if they had to try at the same time to run courses on ships and in the colleges. I think that it is clear that the main training must be done in the ordinary classroom.

The hon. Member has urged that we should at least have a heavyweight committee to examine the proposal and to report. I am sure it would give a very thorough report on the scope of educational voyages and on the value of present arrangements for cruises, but the central issue, the crux of it all—we must face it—is finance.

Were the Government to appoint such a committee it would be really quite misleading, because it would create the impression that we and the education authorities were in a position, subject to an assessment of the education considerations, to carry through at an early date the far-reaching scheme put forward by the hon. Member. Although it is certainly a temptation, with no other Minister with financial responsibility present, I do not really feel that I can respond to the persuasive invitation of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock, because I really would not like to imply that, by appointing a committee we would he prepared to finance action on any findings which it might put forward.

It is worth recalling that the British India Steam Navigation Company has a steering committee, as it is called, of very distinguished people in education to advise it on the arrangements it now makes for school voyages. I should have thought that, in the light of experience so far, this committee is in a good position to advise the company about the likely shape of future demands for school cruises as well as on the practical arrangements. I think that a study by that committee would be more relevant than one by a committee formed by the Government, since it has practical experience of the job.

As the hon. Member for West Lothian already knows from my letter of 8th January, the Education Departments are ready to give the company any advice they can about the likely demand from the schools and, therefore, in order that we can keep our own assessments up to date—I agree that they are not yet in any precise form—we will, of course, keep in touch with the directors of education to find out about views on these matters in their own areas.

But, as I said at the beginning, education authorities generally have given the present scheme a good measure of support. Some at least are prepared to give financial assistance, as they are entitled to do, to help parents with the payments of fares. I admit that in some areas there has been difficulty, as the hon. Gentleman said, in letting pupils and teachers away from school in term time because of the dislocation that can result—especially at a time of teacher shortage in Scotland. But the authorities know that taking part in a school voyage in term time can be accepted as equivalent to school attendance under the statutory provisions.

I wish that I could have given more encouragement to the hon. Member. I am really not in a position to answer the hon. Member for Kilmarnock about what John Buchan would have done in similar circumstances because, happily, in his novels he did not have the restraint of the Treasury behind him. But the Government are responsible for the finances of the country, and, with the thousand and one things we want to do in education, however good this scheme may be, my colleagues and I are bound to look at the needs of education as a whole.

10.28 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey (Sunderland, North)

I am obliged to the hon. Lady for leaving me two minutes in which to intervene in a Scottish debate. I intervene because the importance of this subject transcends even the importance of Scotland. This is a matter in which English children are just as interested.

I was much impressed by the debate. The hon. Lady gave us a little solace. But she let the cat out of the bag by indicating that the Treasury was to blame. When we talk of priorities we must do so in terms of resources. What we are concerned with here is that the shipbuilding and steel industries are facing heavy redundancy while society as a whole is bearing considerable expense in dealing with unemployment.

No more profitable use could be made of some of our shipyards than the building of such ships as these. We would be glad to compete for such a job on the Wear. The importance of a committee such as that suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) is that it would determine the educational priorities. We can determine the priorities of our resources.

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.