EDUCATION (SHROPSHIRE) (Hansard, 1 March 1963)

§ Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin)
At the end of rather a long week of travelling to and from Shropshire—I think that I have done 600 miles—I do not want to run out on this problem. Perhaps we should have helicopters running a service between here and the Midlands.
One of the tasks which befall every Member of this House is from time to time to investigate situations which arise in his constituency where there might appear to be some misunderstanding in the general administration, and today I wish to deal with the education position in my constituency. The tone of my speech is in no sense critical of those responsible for the education service in Shropshire, and I hope that what I have to say will perhaps improve, in certain respects, certain administrative developments. I know that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is very interested in this problem, because we have discussed it.
Shropshire's education programme has been quite outstanding over the last ten or twenty years, and there is not one person in the county who lays any criticism. Indeed, perhaps one of the greatest secretaries for education that Shropshire has ever had has been Mr. Martin Wilson. The mark he has left on education in the county will go down in its history. He has been honoured for his services, and I commend his work.
Mr. Wilson has always been very helpful to me when I have wanted to visit schools, and we go round together or he sends one of his officers with me. 1687 He has been aided by a valuable education committee of long standing. One of the greatest driving forces for education in Shropshire has been the chairman of the County Council, Sir Offley Wakeman. He has devoted more time to public service in Shropshire than I have been in this world.
How does this problem arise? It is one which is of interest to every parent in Shropshire. I want to speak today of a widowed mother and her two children. I do not want to mention her name more than once because she was diffident about this debate taking place. She now has another application before the education committee for a grant, but she decided that this debate should take place in the general interest of education in Shropshire and not on the particular subject as far as she is concerned.
Nevertheless, her case does help us to see the problem. She lives in her marvellous home at the school house at Ellerdine, one of the loveliest parts of our county. There she works as a teacher. She has spent almost her entire life in teaching. However, I am referring to her not as a teacher but as a mother and a widow.
Her eldest son was born in 1952. When she was deciding where he should be educated, like most mothers she thought of the philosophy of Conservative education policy that every parent in this country should have the right to decide what education his child should have. She took advice from the local education authority about where she should send her eldest son, Roger John Anthony Price, because she had noted that the Shropshire education programme allowed children of primary school age and over to go to a new form of schooling at Millichope in Warwickshire. She also noted that parents from the village in which she lived obtained grants for their children to attend these county schools.
Nevertheless, she sent her son to the independent Wolverhampton Royal School to get on and make the best of the education that he could obtain there. She hoped and thought that there would be an opportunity for her to receive some form of grant to maintain her son at that school, for she also had a small girl to educate. Very reasonably, the education authority said with regret that 1688 it was not its business to maintain Shropshire children in an area outside the control of the county, and Wolverhampton is outside the county area. On 16th May, she was told officially that there would be no grants for children to attend independent schools outside the county.
However, she made a rather interesting discovery. She thought that what had seemed to be a fairly fair and open decision would be applied to everybody, but she found that at the school which her boy attended there were other children who were maintained. What was more interesting was that the lady whose children who were at the Wolverhampton Royal School came from Shropshire and the lady herself was a county council employee. Mrs. Price made further inquiries and wrote to me.
In order that the debate should not cause any upset or difference between us, I wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) in whose constituency the second lady lives, and he said that he would always remain my ally and that he saw no reason why I should not mention his constituent. The lady herself kindly wrote to me and said that I could use her name when I discussed the case of Mrs. Price and that the only difference between her and Mrs. Price was that she was a county midwife and district nurse and was therefore on call all the time and that Mrs. Price had two children whereas she had three.
It was not long before inquiries at the education department were resumed to see how it was that Mrs. Price could not receive even a maintenance grant for her children while another person in the county was able to obtain very good and substantial grants for her children. The answers were not very satisfactory, because on each occasion letters came back to say that they were still not prepared to make grants to these children attending this independent school. Mrs. Price therefore decided that the best thing she could do was to put in an official application—not just write in to ask how her application was getting on, but make an official application in writing to the education authority in Shropshire, and ask that her services be taken into account and whether, in view of the present situation in respect of the other lady's children at Wolverhampton 1689 Royal, she would be allowed to receive the grant.
There was some slight delay in getting a reply, but eventually it came back that the county would not pay a maintenance grant to a child who went to an independent school outside the county. At this juncture the county councillor wrote to the education committee to ask what were the circumstances in this case. At the same time I wrote directly to the clerk of the Shropshire County Council and said, I should be so grateful if I could please have a copy of the minutes referring to Mrs. Price's application and to its official rejection by the education committee". Neither the county councillor nor myself, nor anybody else, has been able to obtain any minutes or any record of the rejection of this application. That is despite the fact that Mrs. Price's father received a formal letter from the county education officer in which he said, A final and formal decision has been taken in regard to her application. I understand that what happens when matters like these are examined—whether a grant should be given—is that they are dealt with by the chairman of the education committee and the chairman of the grants committee, and that that is called the committee of chairmen of education. I cannot find—and I think that I should have been able to find—any official record of the actions which they take. It was very good of the clerk to the county council to write to me unofficially trying to explain matters to me before the debate took place, but nowhere can I find any record being kept of these decisions being made. I suggest to my hon. Friend that where public money is used, or a decision is taken not to use it, and where official applications are made in respect of local government money, supported by money from the House, some record should be submitted to the major committee for its monthly meeting. I do not know what other authorities do, but I hope that as a result of the debate matters concerning grants will be examined a little more carefully by the Clerk of the County Council of Shropshire.
It is rather a sad story. I put a Question in the House about it in November, when I asked why Mrs. Price had not obtained her maintenance grant. The Minister replied that there were no 1690 sufficient grounds for giving this grant because the child was not of a secondary school age.
That seemed an extraordinary reply for the Minister to make, remembering that there have been five official replies saying that the grant could not be given for children to enter an independent school. It does not even apply in the case of the other lady whom I have mentioned, from a neighbouring constituency—Mrs. Tuck. Alas for the education authority, her children were under secondary school age. I am at a loss to understand the reason for the refusal to award this widowed mother a maintenance grant for her son. She realises what will happen, and, having spent money out of her savings, she hopes to get a grant from the county council during the course of next year.
But this sort of education problem is not the only one that exists in the county. I must draw the Minister's attention to the fact that there is a great gap between those who draw grants and receive help and those who are just outside the area of education from this authority's point of view. The question of children who are mentally handicapped is not for my hon. Friend's Department; it slips out of his into the Ministry of Health. I do not know what happens at county level in this respect. But the education of everybody, whether mentally handicapped or not, is vitally important in the county. For five years children have been kept in quite unsuitable conditions, from the educational point of view, in Wellington. For the last two or three years I have asked when the county is going to make a better effort on behalf of mentally handicapped children. There has been a great deal of discussion in Parliament and in the newspapers about what can be done with handicapped children, and Shropshire will also have to consider the matter.
I cannot disguise from the Minister the fact that a large deputation of people came to my office from the Wrekin Teachers' Association. I was surprised when the Minister of Education yesterday said that he was willing to discuss with the Burnham Committee the question of salary scales, over which there has been some dispute. This is no' quite fair. Two Ministry representatives sit with the Burnham Committee, as observers. Am I to understand that 1691 during the whole seven months' discussion neither of these observers pointed out to the Burnham Committee the fact that the salary scales that it was arranging would not be approved by the Minister, because he did not like the emphasis being placed on the lower salary scales.
I repeat what I said in 1961. If the Government are dissatisfied with the system under which the Burnham Committee works, there are two things that they can do. They can either appoint a completely independent inquiry to examine the status of our teaching profession in society, or, if that is not possible, they can appoint a Royal Commission.
I am grateful to have been able to put before my hon. Friend, in the few moments that have been available to me this afternoon, these three problems, which involve the future of our children and of our country. Our country needs to keep its brains here. We need the best we can get. In this small island we cannot afford to neglect any talent whatever, whether it be in Shropshire or any other county.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Christopher Chataway)
It would be optimistic of me to imagine that, in the few minutes available to me today, I could do justice to the three problems which my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. W. Yates) has raised. In fact, I believe that it is a constituency problem upon which he would wish me to dwell, although in his closing remarks my hon. Friend referred to Burnham and to the position of mentally handicapped children.
I do not intend to be drawn this afternoon into any controversy with him on the subject of teachers' salaries and the Burnham negotiations. As he will probably know, there is today a meeting of the Burnham Committee, and I do not believe that it would help in arriving at the satisfactory outcome which we all desire for me to discuss the matter with him this afternoon. I would, however, point out to my hon. Friend that the assessors from the Ministry do not sit on the Burnham Committee in order to give the Committee my right hon. Friend's views. They are not there to 1692 give either their views or his views; they are there as assessors.
On the subject of mentally handicapped children, I believe that my hon. Friend's remarks may have been prompted by some dissatisfaction in his constituency with a training centre which has been under some difficulties in the recent cold weather. As my hon. Friend will appreciate, the handicapped children who attend training centres are the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health. My hon. Friend suggested that this was an unsatisfactory arrangement. if I took his point correctly.

§ Mr. W. Yates
Yes.

§ Mr. Chataway
My hon. Friend is saying to the House that mentally handicapped children, whether in special schools or in training centres, ought to be the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. There is obviously room for debate here—more room than is available to us this afternoon—but I would point out to my hon. Friend that the suggestion that the responsibility for these centres should be transferred to local education authorities and to the Ministry was considered and rejected by the Royal Commission on the law relating to mental illness and mental deficiency which led to the Mental Health Act, 1959. That Act. of course, followed the Royal Commission's recommendations on this point. I do not feel, therefore, that there would be much professional support for reopening this issue so soon after the passing of the Act.
I pass now to the problems of my hon. Friend's constituent. Perhaps I should first make clear the statutory position. This is a decision which lies squarely within the authority's discretion. Local education authorities have the power but not the duty to assist towards boarding fees in independent schools. Regulations made under Section 81 of the 1944 Act do not impose any obligation on an authority to give assistance. Local education authorities do, however, give some help and guidance in this matter. A Working Party set up by the then Minister reported in 1960 on this question of assistance with the cost of boarding education. The Secretary for Education for Shropshire was a member of that working party, and in paragraph 8 of its Report it said: In ail our considerations we had children of secondary school age chiefly in mind. We 1693 accept the commonly held view that children of primary school age should as far as possible live in a home environment and attend day schools … We consider that these children should be assisted to attend boarding schools only in exceptional circumstances. The Report went on to suggest categories of cases in which applications for assistance can most readily be entertained. One of these was cases in which home circumstances are seriously prejudicial to the normal development of the child. But by implication throughout the Report it was made clear that they were primarily concerned with secondary school children and took the view that wherever possible children of primary school age should attend day school and be kept at home.
When this Report was published the Minister noted its recommendations to authorities and ceased to require them to obtain his approval to their arrangements for assisting with the payments of those pupils at non-maintained schools. I think that my hon. Friend will see that the action that the authority has taken in the two cases to which he has drawn the attention of the House appears to follow closely the advice given in that Report. I understand that Mrs. Price has very recently made a further application regarding her 10-year-old son for a boarding place at Newport Grammar School which is maintained, with remission of fees, or a grant towards a place at the Royal Wolverhampton School for September of this year. The result of the secondary school selection test for which the boy would be eligible will not be known until the summer and Mrs. Price has been told that the authority will consider her application then. Any remission of boarding fees at a maintained school would be in accordance with the authority's scale.
My hon. Friend has rehearsed the history of Mrs. Price's correspondence with the authority and his account of these dealings corresponds fairly closely with the details that I have been given. Nothing in the 'history of that correspondence leads me to the conclusion that the authority has behaved in any way unreasonably. My hon. Friend drew particular attention to the case of Mrs. Tuck and I was glad to hear him say that he had secured that lady's approval to his mentioning her case. I understand that Mrs. Price has also referred 1694 to this case in her correspondence with the authority.
As my hon. Friend admitted, Mrs. Tuck is a district nurse and midwife. She lives alone, she is out all day and she is on call every night. In 1954 she applied to the authority for assistance towards boarding fees at Wolverhampton for her eldest child, a girl then aged 8. After long consideration it was decided by the education committee, in October, 1955, to treat this as an exceptional case and to give the assistance. It does not seem to me strange that the authority should have seen a very real difference between the case of Mrs. Tuck who was absent from home because of the nature of her duties, and that of Mrs. Price, who lived with her parents and was not subject to the same disabilities.
I wish in conclusion to refer briefly to the procedural point raised by my hon. Friend. I understand that in 1954 the authority decided, as a matter of policy, that applications for assistance with the cost of boarding for primary school children at independent schools should be sympathetically considered where parents were abroad and unable to provide for the education of their children in any other way. The authority then laid down the broad lines of policy upon which such cases as this should be decided. It is therefore the practice of the authority to delegate to the two chairmen to whom my hon. Friend referred the power to decide individual cases. In this instance the decision was a negative one on a matter completely within the discretion of the authority and it does not appear that the authority has acted unreasonably. I do not believe I should be justified in going behind that decision into the internal workings of the authority which is clearly a matter for the county council and the education committee.

§ Mr. W. Yates
One point was that, although delegated power was given to them, there should be a record made of that decision, and surely that decision must be presented to the full education committee?

§ Mr. Chataway
It is not for me, and I do not believe my right hon. Friend would consider it one of his functions, to dictate to a local education committee 1695 the exact manner in which its business is to be conducted. The way in which its internal workings are ordered is a matter for the authority.