HC Deb 11 December 1964 vol 703 cc1971-7
The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Michael Stewart)

With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement.

The Government have now had an opportunity of considering the recommendations of the Committee on Higher Education, presided over by Lord Robbins, on the future of the teacher training colleges in England and Wales. They have taken account of the views expressed on this matter by the various interested bodies since the Report's publication a year ago.

The main recommendations of Lord Robbins' Committee on this matter were that the training colleges should be enabled to provide for suitable students a four-year course leading to a university degree as well as a professional qualification and that the colleges should be given independent governing bodies and be federated in "Schools of Education" of the universities through which the colleges would be administered and financed by means of an earmarked grant made by the University Grants Committee.

There has been widespread agreement with the Robbins proposals for closer academic links between the training colleges and the universities, including the grant of degrees. For their part the Government share the view that wider opportunities should be provided for suitable training college students to obtain a degree together with a professional teaching qualification by means of a four-year course. They would think it appropriate that the relationship between the universities and training colleges already existing should be further extended in the academic sphere through the development of the present institutes of education. They are glad to know that most universities have expressed their readiness to consider making degrees available to suitable students, subject to appropriate arrangements for the safeguard of standards, and they hope the the universities will now proceed to work out with the colleges the form which such courses should take and the nature of the degrees to be awarded.

There has been far less agreement over the Robbins Committee's proposals for the administration and finance of the training colleges. The Government, after considering the advice given them by the University Grants Committee, have concluded that the academic and the administrative and financial aspects are separable, and that fundamental changes should not be made in the administrative and financial structure of the teacher training system, particularly at a time when the colleges are engaged in a very large and rapid expansion, and when the problems of teacher supply are especially difficult.

They have, therefore, decided that for the present the colleges should continue to be administered by the existing maintaining bodies under the present system of overall supervision. They intend, however, to secure that the present arrangements for the internal government of colleges arc reviewed forthwith by all those concerned in the light of the Robbins Committee's recommendations on this subject. The Government also agree wth the Committee that the training colleges could appropriately be renamed "Colleges of Education."

Mr. Hogg

The right hon. Gentleman has made an important statement upon which my hon. Friends and I would wish to ponder before reaching a final conclusion.

But, first, will the right hon. Gentleman take note of the view held on this side that, while Friday is not a day from which statements should be excluded, and there are many respectable precedents, including the one to which we have just listened, for making them, it is not, in our view, a particularly appropriate day for a statement of long-term policy of this kind?

We should wish a statement of this importance to be made before a fuller House, one in which greater consultation could be held with hon. Members on either side interested in the subject. Will the Secretary of State bear in mind also that it is a little inconvenient, especially on a Friday, for the Opposition to he given notice as late as ten o'clock of the fact that a statement is to be made?

Turning to the substance of the statement, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us exactly how much consultation he has had before coming to his conclusions? He said that he had consulted the University Grants Committee, which, obviously, was appropriate. Has he consulted the teacher training colleges themselves, the staff and the responsible bodies? Has he consulted the teachers' trade unions?

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the conclusion to which he has come is a controversial one, that it will disappoint many hopes held by the teacher training colleges that they would acquire the academic freedom appropriate to university bodies, and that this was the expressed view of the teaching profession in so far as it was primarily concerned with teacher training colleges. Has he consulted them before delivering this blow to their hopes?

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, for instance, that the separability of the academic side of the teacher training colleges from the financial and administrative arrangements was precisely the premise which they would have been most inclined to challenge?

Having made those observations and asked those questions, I must, in all honesty, tell the right hon. Gentleman that, although I should have made the consultations, and I never made up my mind, I think that I should myself have come to the same conclusion as he, and I owe it to the right hon. Gentleman to say so quite frankly.

Mr. Stewart

I am much obliged to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his conluding remark.

As the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said, there are many respectable precedents for making most important statements on a Friday. I note what he has said, and one would not wish to overburden Friday with statements, but, as we have both said, there are plenty of precedents. As regard giving notice of a statement, the right hon. and learned Gentleman will know that the giving to the Opposition of a copy of a statement has, for many years, been done on the basis that they receive it about a quarter of an hour before it is to be made.

I am aware that, if a statement is to made on an ordinary day, longer notice is usually given of the mere fact that a statement is to be made, but I should find it a little difficult if I were asked to proceed on the assumption, which might be thought impolite, that right hon. Gentlemen would not be here on Fridays, and, if I may say so, on this Friday, having regard to the subsequent business, I had, perhaps unwisely, assumed that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would in any case be here.

I accept that the statement is controversial. Nevertheless, the House will realise that whatever decision we arrived at in this matter would have been controversial. If there is a strong view on one side which will be critical of the decision which I have announced, local authorities, on the other hand, would have been equally strongly critical of a statement made in another sense. I did have consultations. I received deputations from the teachers in training colleges and departments of education, and from representatives of the directors of institutes. I consulted representatives of the local authorities. I think that we took into account all the opinions which were relevant in this matter.

I accept that our decision must cause disappointment in some quarters, but I believe that a great many people will, on reflection, share the view towards which the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself inclined, that this is, on balance, the right decision.

Mr. Dalyell

May I say bluntly to my right hon. Friend that I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) that the explanation of not giving notice was not good enough. Many people, for good and various reasons, go North on a Friday, and I feel that the House should have been entitled to know two or three days beforehand of the making of a statement of such long-term significance.

That matter apart, is my right hon. Friend aware that many of us will welcome the substance of the statement which he has made and, in particular, the change in nomenclature to colleges of education which has worked extremely well in Scotland. There is, however, one point on which I should like explanation. My right hon. Friend referred to appropriate arrangements for the safeguarding of standards. Specifically, are five 0 levels to be treated as adequate qualification for entry to training college, or is the demand to be for a higher standard than this?

Mr. Stewart

I cannot give a precise answer on the last point which my hon. Friend makes. That must be a matter for the authorities of the training colleges themselves.

I cannot add to what I have said about Friday statements. I know that there are arguments against them, but they cannot be entirely ruled out.

Mr. Lubbock

Will the Secretary of State note that we on this bench concur in the views which have been expressed about Friday statements and do not accept the argument that the precedents entitle a Minister to come here and make a statement of such major importance on a Friday?

I have two questions. First, the working out of the form which the new four-year courses will take is, obviously, a matter of considerable complexity, but could the Secretary of State say something about the timing? Does he expect these courses to begin, for example, in the autumn of 1965?

Secondly, as regards the standard of entry to the four-year course, I appreciate that he could not say anything to his hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) about the future standard of entry to the training colleges as such, but, in connection with the four-year course, I should have thought it appropriate that the standard of entry should march with those of the universities themselves, and I should be glad if the right hon. Gentleman would confirm this.

Mr. Stewart

I should have thought that that was generally appropriate, but it is exactly the kind of question on which the universities and the colleges will, no doubt, have to consult. I think it doubtful that arrangements will be in hand quite as early as the hon. Gentleman suggested, but I should not absolutely rule it out.

Mr. Merlyn Rees

Given the division between the administrative arrangements and the educational arrangements in the new colleges of education, can my right hon. Friend briefly explain what is meant by independence for the governing bodies of the new colleges?

Mr. Stewart

This is a question of the relationship between a local education authority and an educational institution which, as I think my hon. Friend will agree, ought to have a proper measure of independence in academic matters. In view of the general nature of the decision which I have announced, I think it particularly important that local authorities should give attention to this.

Mr. Chataway

Will the right hon. Gentleman give the House an assurance that he will not again try to slip in on a Friday decisions on highly controversial questions, because he will know that many hon. Members on both sides of the House cannot be here and that many of those hon. Members would have been interested in the statement?

Also, will he not agree that it is slightly disingenuous to pretend, as his statement implies, that the academic freedom that the Robbins Committee suggested for the teacher training colleges can be given while rejecting the administrative arrangements proposed by the Committee?

Is it not a fact that under the arrangements that he proposes the teacher training colleges, whatever they are called, will not have the academic freedom that the Committee suggested, and if that is his decision, would it not have been better frankly to have said that the Government had rejected the Robbins' proposal and to have argued the case from there?

Mr. Stewart

I repeat what I said about Friday statements. I agree that there is a case against them. I do not at all accept the implications of the phrase "slip in a statement on Friday". As far as I personally am concerned, I should have been very glad to have had this statement, with its controversial implications, made on a day when more hon. Members were here. There is no question here of trying to avoid any controversy that might arise from this statement.

Nor can I accept the hon. Gentleman's use of the word "disingenuous". I think that the content of my statement was perfectly clear, that the colleges will remain under their present organisation, but that does not preclude—and this, I think, was the important thing in the Robbins' recommendations—their developing the academic standards and particularly the opportunity of students to take a degree with which the Robbins recommendations were particularly concerned.

Several Hon. Members

rose—

Mr. Speaker

Order. We must now get on to other business.