§ Motion made, and Question proposed,That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chichester-Clark.]
§ 11.59 p.m.
§ Mr. Stephen Swingler (Newcastle-under-Lyme)I apologise, Mr. Speaker, for detaining you at this hour, but I am afraid that our procedure requires it. I do not apologise to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education, first, because I know that he has considerable stamina and, second, because it is his fault that we are here. But I still have a fond hope that he will repent and will decide to do a little better.
The only connection between this and the foregoing debate is that it so happens that the school on whose behalf I am pleading tonight is partly housed in premises which were built as sick quarters for the Navy. That is one of several peculiarities about the case Which I intend to put this morning.
The reason why I am here, and why the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education is here, is that a month or two ago he. in the Department, and I received from the Newcastle-under-Lyme Excepted District Education Committee the following resolution:
That the Ministry of Education be informed in the strongest possible terms of the unsatisfactory and in some respects dangerous condition of the premises which continues to be endured as a result of the delay in the replacement of the Friarswood County Primary School in Newcastle-under-Lyme".The main building of the Friarswood School in my constituency was constructed in 1833—but that is only the main building. There are two other parts of this so-called school. Over the road from the 1833 building is a parish hall, and several of the classes of the school have to he accommodated there. Next door to that are the sick quarters which were constructed for the Navy, and in part of those premises other classes of the school are accommodated. These buildings stand astride an extremely dangerous road, and I shall say a little more about that later. It is a road which the children have to cross frequently. Because of the peculiar 1139 spread of this school, the Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Education Committee is extremely and rightly anxious that it should be replaced in the very near future.This early 19th century main building has the usual disadvantages. I do not intend to dilate on them at great length. They are well known to be obsolete in these days. Here we have sombre, depressing classrooms. There are the usual high windows and high ceilings. The corridor passes through the classrooms. When the weather is fine, those who have to pass through can go outside, but in wet weather there is a to-ing and fro-ing through the classrooms. There is drab decor. There is a lack of facilities for display. The furnishings and decorations are awkward and old-fashioned and quite impossible for teachers who want to use contemporary techniques. Several of the classrooms are too small for the classes which have to be accommodated in them. They are extraordinarily and uncomfortably overcrowded.
There is no need to me to make very much of a case out of that, because it was in 1936 that the old Board of Education recognised that this school was obsolete—and in 1936 the predecessors of the hon. Member agreed that the school should be replaced. In fact, in 1938 work was started on a building to replace the Friarswood School of those days. The work commenced in 1938 and continued until January, 1940. Unfortunately, the intervention of the war brought the work to a stand-still and the school was never replaced. Had there been no Second World War the replacement would have been completed. The bricks and mortar were left there to decay, but the Friars-wood School continued.
As the war proceeded, that plan to replace the Friarswood School itself became obsolete and a new plan had to be made. A new plan was made and suggested to the Staffordshire Education Authority by the Committee of the Excepted District in Newcastle-under-Lyme. In the post-war years it was proposed that the Westlands Girls School should have a new secondary school building and that Friarswood School, as it is now, should move into the present buildings and premises of the Westlands Girls 1140 School when it had been adapted for junior accommodation. This is the plan which has been put up several times in recent years to the Ministry of Education through the Staffordshire Education Authority.
My case rests, in the first place, upon two points. The first is one which I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary will not contest, namely, the obsolete nature of the premises in which the present Friars-wood School is accommodated. The second is the promise made in 1936—twenty-seven years ago—that this school would be replaced.
There is a third important reason. As I have said, unfortunately the school premises stand astride an extremely dangerous road on which there is an increasing traffic density. One side of the school—the south side—is bounded by the A.53, the road from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Market Drayton. On the north side there is the road from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Nantwich. On the east side under the school wall is the railway line. On the west side is the A.525, which has now become a feeder road to the M.6 and on which everybody in the area knows there is a mounting volume of traffic.
Recently the authorities in Newcastle-under-Lyme have been taking a census on this road and they have related it to the necessity for the children to cross this road several times a day. In fact, this road is crossed by classes of the Friarswood School forty-nine times a day and four traffic wardens are pinned down at present in Newcastle-under-Lyme for the purpose of enabling children who are being educated in the parish hall and the other adjacent buildings to go to the only part where there is playing space, which is adjacent to the main building. This is one of the principal reasons why the local education committee takes the view that immediate and urgent action is required to replace the school.
When I raised this matter at Question Time on 14th February I received the answer to which I am by now quite accustomed. I was referred to the allegedly large school building programme that has been granted to Staffordshire by the Ministry. The Parliamentary Secretary referred to the fact that for the school building year 1141 in question the Staffordshire Education Authority was being granted a programme worth £1¼ million. What he did not mention was the fact disclosed in the back of HANSARD last week that the Staffordshire Education Authority had put forward proposals worth £.6¼ million.
I know that it is customary for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education to say that education authorities always put forward more than they need or could possibly cope with. Even the Minister said the other day that some education authorities would be embarrassed if they were granted everything they proposed. Nevertheless, the Minister recently admitted that although in the last five years 36 schools in Staffordshire which had been declared obsolete and totally condemned had been replaced, there still remained 122 schools which bad been declared obsolete and condemned by his Department. Only four of those schools are due to be replaced in the next programme.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Christopher Chataway)I speak from memory, but did my right hon. Friend in fact say that those schools were obsolete and condemned. or was it a question of the year in which they were built?
Mr. SwingierI asked the right hon. Gentleman to say how many schools condemned or obsolete in Staffordshire were due to be replaced in the school building programme. I have simply been referring 10 the right hon. Gentleman's reply, in which he said that in the last five years in Staffordshire 36 schools classed as obsolete had been replaced. Although four are to be replaced in the 1963–64 programme, that will still leave 122 schools classified as either condemned or obsolete in the records of his Department among which must, of course, be the Friarswood School to which I am referring. I am trying to indicate that we are making progress at a snail's pace because there are over 120 condemned or obsolete schools in Staffordshire now of the type of the Friarswood School in Newcastle-under-Lyme.
I grant that the school building programme in Newcastle-under-Lyme in recent years has been stepped up. I am glad to represent a constituency in which 1142 there is a lively consciousness of the need for educational opportunities. It is for this reason that there is this kind of pressure on me to demand the replacement of the Friarswood Primary School.
But lest the Parliamentary Secretary should produce the argument that the Minister must not put any more into the school building programme because that would over-strain our resources, he should remember that in Newcastle-under-Lyme at the moment we have 5 per cent. unemployment. In the neighbouring Stoke-on-Trent there are 6,000 people unemployed. In the whole of the north Staffordshire. Stoke-on-Trent and surrounding districts there are nearly 10,000 unemployed workers. Now is the time for the Minister of Education to get on with the job of reviewing obsolete schools and replacing them. He should step up the building programme this way to provide jobs for the workless in these areas.
Despite the adverse circumstances I have described, it is truly amazing to see what has been achieved by the teachers and children at Friarswood School over the past twenty-seven years. One cannot but admire the fortitude and audacity of those who, despite these difficulties and sombre circumstances, have carried on and have produced some really excellent scholastic results. I say to the Parliamentary Secretary that it is about time that these children, their parents and teachers really had a decent break. We know the exceptional demands from the new housing estates for new schools in new areas, but it is not tolerable that these Dickensian conditions should be continued. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will see that reconsideration is given to this situation.
I notice that the Minister said to one of my hon. Friends last week that a certain part of the money for the school building programme next year has been held back for special contingencies. The money is not yet completely allocated. Therefore, in view of the completely obsolete conditions under which these children and teachers are having to operate, and the dangers that exist in having a school physically spread in this way across an important traffic route, where the traffic is increasing, I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider the situation and to respond to the request 1143 of the Newcastle-under-Lyme Education Authority that this should be regarded as a No. 1 priority in the next building programme.
§ 12.17 a.m.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Christopher Chataway)The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler) began courteously with some apologies for the lateness of the hour. Although, reasonably, he did not extend those apologies as far as myself, I may say that I do not regret the fact that he has succeeded in raising this matter at this time because I know the strength of feeling in his constituency about the conditions which exist at this school.
Perhaps I may first say a word about the proposals that we have received. The Staffordshire Education Authority included in its submissions for each of the five major building programmes from 1960–61 to 1964–65, but not before, a proposal to provide a new building, three-form entry, for 450 pupils, for Westlands Girls' Secondary School, at an estimated cost of about £180,000. The existing Westlands premises would then be used to replace the Friarswood County Junior School. In each of the programmes, however, other more urgent projects for Newcastle-under-Lyme were included. The Westlands proposal was pressed for 1964–65 mainly on the strength of the desirability of replacing Friarswood.
The secondary school premises were erected in 1936 and, although a larger and up-to-date building will be needed in due course, the case for giving that priority on its own merits for 1964–65 was not really demonstrated. The proposed new secondary school building would be for 450 girls. Numbers in the school are at present only 407 compared with 513 a year ago, since when a new secondary school has opened at Sea-bridge on the Clayton Estate. Clearly, setting aside the fact that it would achieve a double purpose, a project costing £180,000 is an expensive one for the replacement of a junior school which, if simply rebuilt at three-form entry size, would cost slightly under half as much. But I do not make much of that point because the authority, understandably, sees its plan as the most 1144 economical one since it considers that the Westlands premises could not be satisfactorily brought up to present-day standards as a secondary school but would adapt satisfactorily for primary purposes. However, as the hon. Member will appreciate, the very substantial extra cost involved is a consideration for us which would not exist were the proposal simply to replace an elderly and obsolete primary school.
The hon. Gentleman has accurately described the premises in which the Friarswood School is at present, and I do not deny that those premises are in many respects obsolete and unsatisfactory. He referred to the traffic dangers which would certainly exist were four traffic wardens not employed within 50 yards of the school to control the crossings.
This term, there are 405 pupils in the Friarswood School, which is a substantial reduction compared with, say, three years ago, when the numbers were 448. Here, perhaps, one may refer to the position in 1936. The hon. Gentleman suggested, as he did the other day at Question time, that the children at this school are worse off than were the children of the previous generation in 1936. I do not for a moment say that one wishes to see still in use school premises which were to have been replaced in 1936, but the hon. Gentleman must take into account, when making that comparison, that, although there are 403 pupils in the school today, the school in 1936, then occupying fewer annexes than now, had a population of no fewer than 550 juniors and infants.
There is no record that the authority revived the replacement proposal until 1959 when asking for the Westlands project, then with a relatively low priority, to be included in its 1960–62 building programme. I do not offer this as a criticism of the priorities chosen by the local education authority because, of course, the realities of the post-war building situation probably prevented it, on understandable grounds, from making an earlier submission.
Although the school buildings give ground for much criticism, I must tell the hon. Gentleman that there are a number of primary schools in various parts of the country which can fairly compete in in urgency with Friarswood.
1145 The projects submitted by the Staffordshire authority to be considered for the 1964–65 major building programme were not given any overall order of priority, although in discussion between the Ministry's and the authority's officials some priorities did emerge. It was known that Newcastle-under-Lyme excepted district attached importance to the Westlands project, but it was clear also that there would be a pressing need for a new infants' school at Roe Lane to complement the junior school which is programmed for 1963–64. The authority's proposals included many projects which were needed to provide additional school places in areas where the population was growing fast, and the new programme, totalling, as the hon. Gentleman said, just over.£1¼ million, has had to be devoted entirely to projects in this category.
As the 1958 White Paper explained, the Government's school building policy for this five-year period, up to and including 1964–65, after including the considerable provision necessary each year for areas such as this of growing population and new housing, is to give priority to projects for the reorganisation of all-age schools and thereafter to the improvement or replacement of deficient existing secondary school accommodation. The hon. Member has not really challenged that set of priorities. It means, however, that only a very few projects for the replacement of primary schools amongst the worst existing have been able to find places in these programmes.
The share of the public investment programme that can be allocated to school building has, of course, limits set to it and Ministers have always tried to see that building programmes included the most urgent projects. having regard to the White Paper priorities.
§ Mr. SwinglerI hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will bear in mind this point. Earlier, he criticised the Newcastle-under-Lyme Committee's proposal because it included the replacement of a secondary school. This, however, is in accordance with the priorities. The Newcastle-under-Lyme Committee's proposal is precisely to provide a new secondary school for the girls in the West-lands district of Newcastle-under-Lyme and to replace the obsolete Friarswood 1146 primary school by putting it into an existing secondary school. Surely, that is exactly in accordance with the priorities that the Minister wants.
§ Mr. ChatawayCertainly, I do not mean to critcise in any way the proposal that has been put forward by the authority in this instance, All I say is that judged on its own merits, the secondary school does not rate a very high priority for replacement. I concede that it would be desirable to replace the primary school.
The point I was making was that if one is considering the desirability of replacing the primary school, clearly from our point of view the fact that its replacement is to cost about twice the sum that a straight replacement would cost is a factor that we have to take into account. I hope that the hon. Member had taken that point without thinking that I was criticising the fashion in which the authority has decided to proceed with the replacement of these schools, because it makes a great deal of sense.
Newcastle-under-Lyme has benefited from the policy outlined in the 1958 White Paper. The hon. Member's advocacy of his constituency's educational needs may be regarded as having had some effect on the size of its building programmes, but the priorities laid down in that White Paper have given to Newcastle-under-Lyme in the five programmes as a whole nine projects totalling, in announced value, E930,000. Three of the four projects to which the hon, Member made special reference in the debate in March, 1961, have since been programmed.
Everyone will be glad to see the Friars-wood Junior School rehoused as soon as possible. No one will be more pleased than my right hon. Friend when this school can be replaced. He agrees entirely with the—
§ The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Monday evening, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
§ Adjourned at twenty-nine minutes past Twelve o'clock.