7.—(REQUIREMENTS FOR RECOM- MENDATION FOR REGISTRATION.) (Hansard, 27 April 1965)

§ Mrs. Hart
I beg to move, in page 4, line 15, to leave out from "prescribing" to the third "to" in line 16 and to insert "conditions".
Will it be convenient, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to take with this Amendment, Amendments Nos. 15 and 16?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Again, I have no objection. It is a matter for the House. The House agrees. So be it.

§ Mrs. Hart
It seems convenient, because all three Amendments are designed to clarify the same basic point. Subsection (1), with which we are now concerned, empowers the Secretary of State to make regulations prescribing the requirements to be fulfilled by an individual in order to qualify him for recommendation for registration. The words as they stand are requirements as to education, training and fitness to teach to be fulfilled by a person in order to qualify him to be recommended by the governing body of a college of education to the Council for registration. The three Amendments are designed to clarify the regulation-making power provided by the Clause.
I have already explained that whereas Clause 2 lays down the general duties and functions of the Council, this Clause is the one under which the Secretary of State may make regulations. The first Amendment, which involves using the word "conditions" instead of "requirements", follows on the similar change in Clause 2 to which the Committee has already agreed.
Taken together, the first and second Amendments modify and expand Clause 7. If they are accepted the subsection will read: … the Secretary of State may make regulations prescribing the conditions to be fulfilled by a person in order to qualify him for admission to a course of training to be a teacher or to be recommended by the governing body of a college of education to the Council for registration. In other words, we are making it clear that we are concerned with entry to the teaching profession at the point of entry for training and not only with entry to the teaching profession after completion of a course of education.
318 The doubts expressed about the Clause largely concern the difficulties involved in setting down in black and white matters concerning such points as fitness to teach. I quite agree, as I indicated in Committee, that there is a real difficulty here, in that we could not translate "fitness to teach" into black and white terms in regulations without making it clear that we would have to depend on the judgment of people. In other words, we would have to depend upon the principal of a college of education, who would have to be satisfied that a potential student would be a suitable student for training as a teacher, or upon the medical officer, who would have to decide that the student was fit, in physical terms, to enter a course of training to be a teacher.
We have tried to make it clear that references to the conditions that must be met before somebody can enter training to be a teacher, or enter the teaching profession, will have to be dependent not on satisfying the conditions set out in detail in writing, but on satisfying certain named authorities or officials of colleges of education.
It may be argued that even this is a rather difficult thing to indicate in a Bill. I would answer that in the 1965 Training Regulations, on page 4, the rules and conditions for the awarding of a professional certificate or a professional instrument, state that the candidate shall satisfy the principal of the college of education that his conduct has been satisfactory and that he shows promise of success as a teacher and shall satisfy the medical officer of the college of education in accordance with the directions given by the Scottish Council that he is medically fit to teach.
A named individual or authority must be satisfied that here is someone whose fitness to teach is without question rather than that this should be expressed in precise words. I think that it was correct that doubts should have been expressed and I have sympathy with those who expressed them. Here we avoid any doubt about what should be included in the Training Regulations. We have made the point which the noble Lady, the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. and learned Gentleman have tried to cover in a later Amendment. I hope that with this clarification and because they remove any possible doubt, the Amendments will 319 meet the points which were rightly raised during the Committee stage discussions.

§ Lady Tweedsmuir
I hope that my hon. Friends will agree that the Joint Under-Secretary of State has tried to meet the genuine concern expressed during the Committee stage discussions. In her explanation of Amendment No. 16, she sought to clarify the words "fitness to teach" to which I see has been added the word "generally"—whatever that may mean. I do not think that such a word is usually found in an Act of Parliament. We shall not move a manuscript Amendment to delete the word "generally", but I should have thought the hon. Lady might have persuaded her parliamentary draftsmen to leave out that word. She has seen the difficulty, which is very real, about the qualities necessary to define the words "fitness to teach" and so far as she can, the hon. Lady has sought to meet the points we raised. For that we are grateful. Busy though she may be, I should like to invite the hon. Lady, when she next has the parliamentary draftsmen sitting beside her, to restrain him from using words like "generally".