HC Deb 16 June 1965 vol 714 cc848-60

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mrs. Harriet Slater.]

11.37 a.m.

Mr. John Cordle (Bournemouth, East and Christchurch)

Having done a hard day's night, and at least having reached the Adjournment, I want to agree with my right hon. Friend that we on this side of the House still have plenty of buoyancy. In my opinion, better schools for Hampshire will have a more profound effect upon the future of this nation than will the Government's half-baked Finance Bill, which will be both repealed and forgotten within the year.

Over the last 20 hours we have been discussing double taxation, Commonwealth trade, statutory water companies, local authorities, unit trusts, housing corporations, building societies, life assurances, and some of the close company Clauses.

I am determined to get in my word before the business of the House closes for Wednesday. The portion of Hampshire which it is my lot to represent is partially looked after by the Hampshire County Council—Christchurch—while the other part falls within the Borough Council of Bournemouth. The question of Hampshire schools—the subject of this debate—is not one which deals in any way with the academic life of the schools, but one which is primarily designed to bring to the notice of the Minister the serious difficulties and defects which handicap the Hampshire County Council schools, namely, the lack of adequate permanent new school buildings to meet the rapid growth of population in the county and, at the same time, to draw the attention of the House to the ever-growing problems of the uneconomic hutted classrooms which are still being erected, when the obvious need is for a non-temporary structure which will give all concerned continuing satisfaction.

Those who have seen our new schools in Hampshire will readily agree that they are outstanding in their appearance, as well as providing all the up-to-date facilities for educational life, both for the pupils and for the teachers. The furnishings are particularly attractive and great credit, in my view, is due to those concerned with this facet of decoration, giving the Hampshire modern schools a touch of tasteful decor little known in days gone by.

Hampshire has been blessed with a Chief Education Officer of the highest calibre, who is held in high esteem by those of us who have interested ourselves in education. I hope that his work and that of his excellent staff will be better helped by the early provision of more permanent buildings to facilitate the easier running of his Department. The council's concern about the inadequacy of the building programme continues to be acute. It has now reached the stage at which it is felt that a breakdown will occur unless action is taken to increase the amount of new building to match the rapidly increasing population in Hampshire.

Hampshire is a developing county. In the last four years, the population has increased by 100,000. A planned development, including the town development schemes of Basingstoke and Andover, indicates that this rate of progress will continue. The numbers of children in the county are also increasing. While the 10-year-olds now number 11,000, there are 17,000 one-year-olds. It is quite certain, therefore, that the pressure on school accommodation of all kinds is bound to continue. Christchurch is exceptional in this respect, because of the character of its residential population. The Christchurch schools are not at this moment under any exceptional pressure of population.

Hampshire's major building programme for 1965–68 is about £5 million. Following representations to the Department of Education and Science, it is understood that a supplementary allocation of capital of approximately £570,000 is to be made for the last two years–1966 to 1968—of this programme. Nevertheless, even this substantial building programme is insufficient to meet the need of permanent accommodation in the Hampshire schools without having recourse to the expedient of temporary hutted accommodation. The authority's own assessment of its needs over the same period is £11 million, which is the cost of projects submitted to the Department for approval.

This is why recourse has to be had to the provision of temporary accommodation, by way of prefabricated hutted classrooms. In the last financial year, 67 classrooms, providing about 2,500 places, were erected at a cost of £96,500, either because no permanent provision could be made at the schools concerned or because stop-gap provision had to be made until permanent accommodation could be provided in a later building programme. In the present financial year, about 84 classrooms will need to be provided, to give over 3,000 places at a cost of £145,000. The number of places to be provided this year is exactly double that required five years ago, in the financial year 1961–62. Today, there are 16,600 primary school children in 415 temporary classrooms and 10,260 secondary pupils in 426 temporary classrooms or, in all, 26,860 pupils out of a school population of 127,202. That is to say, about 21 per cent. of all pupils in Hampshire schools are accommodated in temporary classrooms.

It is self-evident that the stop-gap provision of temporary classrooms is not an economic way of providing school places, but there are also educational considerations, which I hope that the Minister of State will take fully into account. In all schools, the provision of temporary accommodation of this kind places a burden on the communal provision, such as that of kitchens, dining rooms, halls and staff rooms, as well as on cloakroom and sanitary accommodation. In many schools, where there is a disproportionate number of temporary places, this burden becomes intolerable for staff and pupils. In secondary schools particularly, there are other educational disadvantages arising from the lack of parallel provision of practical rooms, because it is normally uneconomic to provide them in temporary constructions.

Therefore, at some schools, advanced courses for pupils over statutory school age have to be restricted. At other schools, where such courses are fostered despite the pressure on accommodation, it is inevitable that this is done at the expense of the rest of the school. At least it can be said that, if additional permanent practical accommodation could be provided, the number, variety and size of the advanced courses would increase considerably.

The provision of temporary accommodation is by way of the minor works programme. In the last financial year, Hampshire spent £385,000 on minor works with a cost limit of up to £20,000 each. Of this sum, Hampshire County Council approved £165,000 on projects under £2,000 and the Department of Education and Science £220,000 on projects over £2,000. The ability of authorities to spend on projects under £2,000 without limit and without reference to the Department was withdrawn by the Government at the beginning of this financial year. The result was that, whereas Hampshire had approved £250,000 on the small minor works to be carried out this year and had expected that the total sum on minor works would be about £470,000—assuming that the Department gave the same allocation as in the previous year—in fact, the allocation by the Department for all minor works in the present financial year of £360,000 is £110,000 less than expected and £25,000 less than the actual expenditure last year.

It will be seen that an expenditure on temporary classrooms alone in this financial year is expected to be £145,000, which is quite disproportionate to the total allocation. From its own allocation for works under £2,000, Hampshire last year embarked upon a five-year programme to alleviate deficiencies in school premises which had been highlighted by the Ministry's 1962 Building Survey of Schools. At the beginning of last year, of all the 384 county and controlled primary schools in Hampshire, 32 were still without a source of hot water to pupils' cloakrooms and it was intended to make good this deficiency in two years.

There were 196 schools where the sanitation was mainly out of doors and it was planned to provide some internal sanitation for pupils and staff over a five-year programme. A total of 101 schools remained without any form of central heating and again it was proposed to remedy this deficiency in the smaller schools over five years. In the same period, it was hoped to provide staff rooms in 99 schools which had no accommodation for staff at all. These schools are village schools where, because of the nature of these deficiencies, the opportunity for improving them does not arise indirectly because of the provision of additional permanent accommodation following on increased numbers.

The figures show for themselves that the village schools have been neglected more than those of the towns. It is, therefore, the more regrettable that, whereas the county council authorised expenditure of £106,000 in the last financial year from its own minor works programme for making good these deficiencies at 96 schools as part of a planned programme over a number of years, they are obliged in this financial year to reduce expenditure on their village schools to about half. I hope that the Minister will take that very much into account in his reply.

In short, Hampshire expects this year to receive an addition to its school roll of 5,000 pupils, of whom 3,000 will be due to the increase in the birth rate and 2,000 to immigration from London and other parts of the country. Coincidentally, it will be necessary to place 3,000 children in temporary hutted accommodation this year, and the remaining 2,000 will need to be taken into schools, many of which lack the civilised amenities to which I have referred. In either event, conditions are unsatisfactory for pupils in Hampshire schools, and the number of children housed in hutted accommodation is steadily increasing.

The position as I have described it gives rise to very serious thought. If the problem remains untackled, the position will deteriorate still further. I earnestly hope that the Minister will give it his immediate attention and provide a favourable reply to what is a most urgent matter affecting many thousands of children in Hampshire.

11.51 a.m.

Mr. David Mitchell (Basingstoke)

I want to intervene only very briefly in this debate because we are all anxious to hear the Minister's reply. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. Cordle) has sketched in for us the very serious state o' affairs that is beginning to develop in the county. As Member for Basingstoke, a division that takes in the towns or Basingstoke and Andover, both of which are taking a large number of overspill people from the London area, I can say that we are very concerned, not only about the immediate position, but more particularly about the longer-term plan.

One of the factors in the expanded town development in this area is that the number of school children, and the birth rate, are both very much higher than the planners originally expected. We have in Hampshire a natural increase of 1,000 a year and we have immigration into the county of 4,000 a year. With that sort of background, it is very disturbing to hear that only half the programme needed for 1967–68 has been approved by the Minister, and that the major-minor improvements have been slashed from £110,000 to only £60,000

Such savage cuts can only damage the educational programme, and I hope that the Minister will restore them, and considerably increase the allocation next year. If the school-leaving age is to be raised in 1970, 7,000 new places will be needed in Hampshire, and that means 10 new secondary schools. What does the Minister intend to do? It is no use his waiting until 1970 before making up his mind to allocate the money for the necessary buildings.

11.53 a.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. R. E. Prentice)

I sometimes think that a special medal should be awarded to those who speak in Adjournment debates after an all-night sitting such as this and, indeed, to you, Sir, for occupying the Chair at this hour.

The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. Cordle) has raised very clearly and fairly a matter of great seriousness to this county, and he was supported by the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Mitchell). The only difference I have with them is that the hon. Member for Basingstoke said that a serious situation is beginning to arise. The serious situation has existed for many years, and has been getting worse for many years. It is the fact that for a very long time this country has failed to invest in education, and in educational building, in particular, the resources needed to keep abreast with growing problems and to improve a bad situation.

If I wanted to make party points, I would remind hon. Members that it was their party that was in power during the crucial years when the problem was neglected. The school building survey—which was produced under the former Government, but which they chose not to publish and which we have since published—showed a state of school building throughout the country which meant that, stated in terms of 1963 prices, over £1,300 million needed to be spent to bring our schools up to a reasonable standard.

Therefore, when the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch says, as he is entitled to say, that he is concerned about schools in Hampshire that have outside toilets, no hot water supply, no school hall, no staff room, and so on, I can only say with regret that these conditions exist throughout the country, and that the backlog of work is tremendous. It would be a tremendous backlog of work even if the school population remained static, but it is growing rapidly. As the hon. Member said, the previous forecasts were wrong. We have more than 7 million children in the schools now and we look forward to having more than 9½ million in 10 years time. Therefore, a tremendous increase in investment is needed to enable us to stay in the same place, let alone improve the bad conditions in so many schools.

In Hampshire, the position is worse than average in that the population is growing more quickly than average. It has doubled since the end of the war. It was 63,979 in 1947, the present figure is 127,638, and it rises by over 4,000 a year. The hon. Gentleman said that it increased by 5,000 each year. That is the order of increase that is to be expected, not only from the natural increase occurring everywhere, but from the growth of the commuter areas, the growth of the L.C.C. overspill areas at Andover and Basingstoke, the rapid growth of the suburbs of Southampton and Portsmouth across the borough boundaries, and many other factors. This is a situation similar to that faced in counties like Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire and others, and it means that those counties, including Hampshire, have been getting rather a larger share of scarce resources for school building than most other counties and county boroughs in the country.

That has the fortunate result—and I say this in no way to diminish the seriousness of the situation—that a larger proportion of children in Hampshire get their schooling in modern post-war buildings than is the case in the country as a whole. If one compares the situation of Hampshire children with that of children in many northern counties, one finds a very much larger proportion of Hampshire children are in modern schools, with all the benefits that provides.

On the other hand, it makes even more frustrating the contrast between those new schools and the old schools and village schools that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. It also means that so much of the resources in Hampshire have to go to the provision of new "roofs over heads" that only a trickle is left for improvements. It also means that a large number of children are in the temporary classrooms to which reference has been made. I believe that about 800 temporary classrooms are at present in use in the county.

I am glad to say that we have recently been able to approve an increase in the allocations made by the former Government for the period between now and 1968. The hon. Member said that he understood that an increase had been made, and that is true. The information was conveyed to the county some weeks ago, and the official letter giving the details was sent out on 11th June.

The increase will add to the 1966–67 programme five primary school projects in Farnborough, Havant, New Alnesford, Totton and Yateley amounting to a total value of £331,262, and will add to the 1967–68 programme a major extension to the Wakeford County Secondary School valued at £221,559. The county will thus have had allocated in the current year, a sum of £1,790,000, and next year, £2,375,000. For 1967–68 only part of the allocation has been made so far—perhaps half—but we say that even if the total allocation remains the same as for these two coming years the county has so far had an allocation of £1,620,000.

The hon. Member said, as he was entitled to say, that this is only a fraction of the bids put in by the county authorities of what they consider is needed. This, of course, is, unhappily, a common feature of what is happening everywhere and of what has happened everywhere for several years. The bids put in to the Department, or formerly to the Ministry of Education, by the local education authorities over a number of years have been allowed only to the extent of about one-third of what the authorities have asked for. This is a state of affairs which the nation should try to improve. It is not fair, however, to talk in terms of cuts, because "cuts" is not an accurate description of the difference between what a county would like to do in a year and what the Department is able to grant.

Most of these sums will, of necessity, be devoted to providing new places for the child population, but some of the work will amount to replacements. Of the primary school projects in this period, three will involve the replacement of old schools by new buildings, which represents a minor measure of improvement to an unsatisfactory situation, although it is far too little in relation to the need. That is the position everywhere, but, at least, it is some improvement.

As to minor works, the allocation is made every year and for the current year the county has been allocated £360,000. That is a good deal larger than the allocation for last year. I realise that that is not the whole story, but last year's allocation was only £220,000. As the House will know, the Government had this year to decide, while they were increasing the minor works programme, which they increased over the country as a whole from £18 million to £21 million, to bring under stricter control and to include within the allocation for each authority all the minor works including the very small ones, the under-£2,000 jobs, which previously had been off ration.

As I have had to explain at greater length in other debates, however, although those small works were off-ration locally, they were not off-ration nationally. The Department had to make allowance for them before it could make the allocations to authorities. Because enterprising authorities such as Hampshire were making such a large use of this what might be called mini-minor concession, the whole national programme was becoming distorted. More was being spent on jobs of under £2,000 than on those between £2,000 and £20,000. The only sensible thing to do was to bring the situation under a more efficient system of control, but I am glad to say that in doing this we were able to increase the total minor works allocation for the country.

That meant that certain authorities like Hampshire, if one considers what they were spending on mini-minor works, will spend rather less this year but that other authorities will spend more. It is natural that those spending less will protest about the change. Nevertheless, it was the only thing to be done in this situation. I have explained this and found it acceptable in general terms to the County Councils Association, the A.E.C. and other bodies.

Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles (Winchester)

An aspect of these minor works which I should like to underline, and on which I should like to know whether the hon. Gentleman agrees with me, is that these minor works do something to relieve the frustration of the teachers and staff of these small schools and that if there may be said to be a silver lining to this rather dark cloud which has been painted today about the Hampshire schools, it is the extraordinary devotion of the teachers and staff, who are doing their utmost under these difficult conditions.

Mr. Prentice

I accept that absolutely, That is why it is important to get as good an allocation for minor works as possible. That, however, is not an argument against the stricter control of mini-minor works within the programme, but is a reason for having as large a minor works programme as we can manage. As I have said, the minor works programme throughout the country will be £21 million this year as against £18 million last year, and one would like to see it improved even further.

As to future programmes, the Government are looking at public expenditure as a whole in relation to their economic plan. This is a review of the whole field of public expenditure, which will determine the amount to be allocated for school building between now and 1970. The share that Hampshire or any of the 160 other authorities gets will depend upon the national total and how we have to allocate within it. Certainly, the country as a whole should be doing more about these matters. This depends upon our getting the right rate of economic growth and giving the right priority now and in the future to education.

I am conscious of the needs of Hampshire. I had the pleasure of visiting there a few weeks ago and in the company of Alderman Quilley, Chairman of the Education Committee and many of his colleagues I met the Chief Education Officer, and I agree with the estimate of him which the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch has given. They quite rightly drew my attention to the local problems. It is part of the national problem.

It is a fact that over many years the nation—again, the major responsibility rests with hon. Members opposite—has not done enough for educational development. This year, the total school building programme is about £100 million compared with just over £80 million last year. That improvement is due partly to decisions of the last Government and partly to minor additions that we have made subsequently, but, certainly, we all want to see a growing school-building programme so that we can really make an inroad into the kind of problems which have been mentioned in this debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at six minutes past Twelve o'clock.