HC Deb 07 December 1966 vol 737 cc1529-40

Motion made, and Question proposed,That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fitch.]

11.33 p.m.

Dr. M. P. Winstanley (Cheadle)

May I begin by apologising for having an appalling cold, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, which I mention merely to explain any inaudibility and also to make it clear that doctors are just as delighted to talk about their own ailments as anybody else.

The opportunity of raising matters on the Adjournment is surely evidence, whatever some may say, that hon. Members still possess valuable powers which they can use on behalf of their constituents. I am grateful for this opportunity to draw attention to the educational problems in my area. I am sure that the Minister of State, Department of Education and Science, will agree with me—indeed, I doubt whether any hon. Members would disagree—when I say that the whole future of this country depends very much upon the knowledge and the skill of its people. I think we would also agree that this in its turn depends on the efficiency of our educational system.

The Minister of State may care to know that I am in complete accord with him in believing that the future pattern of education in this country should be along the comprehensive lines and that that type of education will provide the widest possible opportunities to the maximum number of children to develop their varied potentialities to the full. I hope, further, that the Minister will also agree if I say that these fine plans would come to naught if there were serious deficiencies in the field of primary education. I am aware that there are primary school problems everywhere in the country, and I do not seek to belittle the problems in other places or to ask for special treatment in my own particular area. But I believe that there are special factors in the area of the Cheshire County education authority which require special consideration and which are not common to other areas.

Of all county education authority areas, the Cheshire county area has had the largest percentage population growth since the war. This has been brought about largely by a massive influx of young couples, with the inevitable consequence that great pressure has been brought to bear on primary education. The figures make this clear. In 1947, the total primary school population in the county area of Cheshire was 63,518. By the beginning of this year it was 101,970, and it is expected by 1970 to reach 122,000, a growth of from 63,000 in 1947 to an expected 122,000 in 1970.

If we look at the size of admission age groups to the county's primary schools, we see the same pattern repeated. These have risen from 8,376 in 1946 to 15,885 this year, and it is believed that they will approach 19,000 by 1970. This takes no account of those who are expected to attend private schools.

It should not be assumed that parents who send their children to private primary schools would not necessarily prefer to send them to State schools if places were readily available. I can illustrate this by referring to the area in which I live, the village of Bowdon, in which there are two State primary schools holding approximately 500 children, and they are both full. In the same district there are three excellent private primary schools which accommodate approximately 600 children.

My inquiries suggest that many parents would prefer State education for their children, but they are unwilling to use their own children as battering rams to push the authorities into providing a new school. I need not describe to the Minister what would happen if 600 additional children presented themselves at the two State schools, which are already full. No doubt a new school would ultimately appear, but not in time for the children concerned. I mention this merely to show that this problem, which is already great, is potentially even greater than it now appears.

I am aware that many schools have been built to cope with the increase which has already occurred and that a major programme has been conducted. It is in many ways an admirable programme and I do not criticise it, but I think it is agreed that 66 further new primary schools will be required in the county's area by 1970 to accommodate the additional numbers and to deal with the backlog. I am aware that plans for these 66 new schools which are required by 1970 are already well advanced, but experience has shown that there are inevitably delays in the completion of planned schools.

Many delays have taken place throughout the county in general and in the area of my constituency of Cheadle in particular. These delays, which are not necessarily avoidable, produce an emergency situation which is extremely difficult to deal with. Indeed, the county has been forced to adopt what Dr. Kellett, the county's director of education, referred to recently as a series of undesirable expedients.

These expedients, for coping with the additional numbers who cannot be accommodated in their own schools and when the new school has not yet arrived, are of a number of types: over-large classes, classes held in the school hall or dining room, sometimes in the hall with two classes divided merely by a row of coats and sometimes in the dining room, at the cost, as happened at one school in my constituency, of having to request parents to take their children home for school meals because of difficulties in reorganising the furniture which had been provided in connection with the meals, and finally an expedient which is equally undesirable, transporting a set of children, whatever is the number superfluous to the existing accommodation, by coach or bus to and from rented accommodation elsewhere.

How undesirable these expedients have proved to be in my constituency has been amply demonstrated to me by the amount of correspondence which I have received. This huge file which I have here consists of letters from parents who are concerned about the problems in the primary schools. They are not the duplicated type of letter that one receives from pressure groups, but personal letters from parents, dealing with the personal problems of their children.

At the moment, in my constituency there are four primary schools from which children have to be transported each day to and from rented accommodation—from High Lane they are taken to temporary classrooms in a laundry in Disley; from Peacefield School they are taken to the Grove Sunday School, from Thorne Grove, Cheadle Hulme, to Brunt- wood, and from Queens Road, Cheadle Hulme, they are taken to Bradshaw Hall. Other schools have had to adopt other expedients which are no less undesirable.

I want to consider two of these schools as examples of the ill effects of the procedures. The High Lane problem started some time ago. The parents organised themselves and conducted a careful investigation into the whole problem. They made urgent approaches to the county to do something else, and they also protested direct to the Minister. They felt, from their head count of children coming along, that this was not merely a temporary problem for a matter of weeks, but was likely to be a continuing problem, and so it has proved, because the problem has continued for about two years.

It is true that at High Lane we are in sight of having the new school, although whether when it finally arrives it will prove adequate for the additional numbers which will have arrived then is not clear, but it will clearly relieve the problem. The fact remains, however, that what was originally introduced as a temporary expedient has proved to be a lot more than temporary for the children involved.

I do not think that I need underline the undesirability of these procedures. It is clearly damaging to a child's education for it, with others, to be separated from the parent school and the various activities going on there.

Let me now come to the second example, which is the more recent one, Peacefield School. Once again the parents' action group organised rapidly, and it got this arrangement of the transfer of pupils by bus to temporary accommodation in the Grove Sunday School postponed, but it had to go ahead this term. The Sunday School is in a not unattractive building, but there is no outside play space, and therefore the children are confined indoors all the time. Secondly, it is un-gated, and opens directly on to a main road, and again it has this common undesirable factor of separating the children from the main body of the school.

In both those cases the problem could have been overcome had the county been able to erect demountable classrooms or portable classrooms on the sites of the existing schools. This would preserve the integrity of the school as a whole, keep the children there, keep them in the same atmosphere, and avoid the whole problem, but the county, unfortunately, was not able to do this, mainly because of a lack of funds for minor capital building purposes.

It has been made clear to me by the director of education that the county's grant, or at least what it asked for as a grant for minor building works, was cut by the Ministry by £190,000. I am aware that cuts have to be made, and I make no complaint about this because some cuts may be necessary, but I ask the Minister to look at the sort of things which have had to be foregone because of this cut. The Director of Education, writing to me, says that this money"— that is, the amount of the cut— would have been used this year to provide other essential accommodation, e.g. further demountable classrooms, and for a programme of the most urgent improvement projects. These would have included improvements to lavatories—their connection to water-borne sewage, and the building of inside lavatories and so on. It is true that in the Cheshire County area there are still 28 primary schools which have pail closets. The fact remains that the county would have liked to obtain demountable classrooms, had it had the money. I was told only last week by the Director of Education that it had received an additional sum of £6.000 from the Ministry, and that this was being immediately used for demountable classrooms which would be used in my constituency. I am most grateful for that. It will solve the problem for one or two schools. But the important point is that this is a problem which, as sure as night follows day, will recur not once but over and over again, where we have the problem of a rapidly expanding authority.

I ask the Minister of State to consider whether, in view of the special circumstances, he could give Cheshire County assistance to enable it to obtain a stock of portable or demountable classrooms, so that these can be rushed to whichever area has this problem at any time. It may be that it will sometimes be in my constituency, not infrequently it will be in others, but it is a general problem throughout Cheshire as a whole.

Unfortunately, the effect of this recurring problem on the county authority has shown clearly that it cannot cope; it has not the resources to do anything about it. But the effect has been to poison relationships in education, so that parents have become resentful. They have been inclined to blame the education authority, and next the Ministry, and they have been unable to understand why these difficulties should occur not once but over and over again, when, as has been clearly explained to them by experts in their own parents' associations, that, at a very small cost, a stock of portable demountable classrooms could have solved the whole problem. It would be disastrous if relationships continued to be poisoned in this way, and might prejudice future desirable developments in education throughout the whole area. Only a small amount of money is involved, and I ask the Minister to consider what I have said very carefully in order to see whether or not he can give us some special assistance to meet what is a special problem.

11.47 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Edward Redhead)

I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Cheadle (Dr. Winstanley) has chosen as the subject for this debate the education situation in an area of Cheshire which, I agree, very neatly illustrates not only some of the most acute problems facing education authorities but also the enterprising way in which the authorities are tackling them.

The County of Cheshire is one of the most rapidly growing regions in Britain. This is strikingly illustrated by the fact that the primary school population increased by nearly 12,000 between 1960 and 1965. This represents an increase of 14 per cent. compared with 1.7 per cent. for England and Wales over the same period. The vigour with which the Cheshire authority has tackled the problem created by this increase is shown by the fact that the provision of new primary school places in Cheshire has more than kept pace with the increase—from 1960 to 1965—almost 22,000 new places were provided, thus enabling very substantial improvements to be effected, as well as providing for the increased population. As a result, at the present time nearly half of all the primary school population in Cheshire is accommodated in post-war schools. That is a very good figure, comparatively.

This is not to imply that the Cheshire authority is in any way complacent—I say this in fairness to the authority—about the progress it has made in tackling its problems. The authority would be the first to point out that it has sought to do even more. As the hon. Member rightly said, it has not on any occasion secured all that it has sought in the way of approvals. That is a common experience. Successive Governments have been unable, because of the pressure on limited, although rising, resources fully to meet authorities' requests for capital programmes. The figures show the progress which the authority has made with the resources available.

The hon. Member referred to "cuts" in the minor works allocations. This term leads to a misconception. He means, I think, that the authority has not received all that it has asked for, but it would be wrong to think that there has been a steady reduction, year by year, in the allocations to the authority. In fact, the initial allocations for county minor works in Cheshire have risen each year since 1963–64. The 1965–66 figure of £350.000 was augmented by £225,000, a substantial addition in recognition of the special problems.

A further demonstration of my Department's recognition of these problems can be seen in two additional allocations—not only the £6,000 to which the hon. Member referred, but also £65,000 agreed since the 1966–67 allocation of £370,000—

Dr. Winstanley

The right hon. Gentleman must accept that I included that in my calculation, that the reduction from what the authority had asked for was £190,000.

Mr. Redhead

There has not been a reduction in the allocation, but a steady and substantial increase. Although it has not been possible in recent years to allocate minor works resources as large as Cheshire and other authorities would have wished, Cheshire's special difficulties have been recognised in the rising allocation. The rapid growth in Cheshire is not uniformly distributed. In some areas, the increase in population greatly exceeds the county average. There are new towns and overspill areas where the speed of housing development has created acute problems in the supply of new school places.

In areas of rapid private development, there is even greater difficulty in phasing the provision of new schools with the increase in housing. Although local authorities watch closely plans for new private estates to obtain reliable information about the rates of house construction, it is not always possible to arrange for the building of new schools, which take longer than houses, to coincide with the completions of houses. Private developers are bound to relate the pace of their building to the state of the market, the supply of labour and the availability of capital. When the families will move into the new houses is difficult to forecast.

Generally, the new dormitory areas of the large cities present some of the greatest difficulties in providing adequate educational facilities at the right time, and we ought not to minimise those difficulties. When an education authority knows that a new housing development is going ahead faster than expected and that the families will move in before the provision of permanent school places, it has several choices. It can make the maximum use of space in existing schools, including those not accessible except by transport, or extend their accommodation by hiring buildings like church halls as annexes or by putting up quickly-erected new classrooms.

All these methods have their drawbacks, but, properly used, they enable authorities to provide reasonable educational facilities for the interim period, or until the local "bulge" in the school population, which can be of short duration in an area of new housing, has passed through the primary schools.

The Cheshire division is an example of an area in which these problems arise particularly acutely. New houses have gone up all over the division and are still going up. The most extensive developments are at Marple and Bramhall and in Cheadle itself.

The methods used by the Cheshire authority to meet the situation are on the general lines which I have mentioned. The hon. Member referred to some of them and, without denying that the solutions adopted have some drawbacks, I think that the L.E.A. has been able to ensure that the temporary arrangements are educationally acceptable and cause the minimum inconvenience to children, parents and the teaching staff.

The most appropriate method of meeting temporary accommodation problems naturally varies with the circumstances. The temporary shortage of places at Marple High Lane County Primary School was met by the use of spare classrooms at Disley, about two miles away. Bus transport was provided by the authority in this instance. I emphasise that that was a temporary expedient, pending the completion of a new primary school which will be ready for use from the first day of the new term in January, 1967.

At another school in Marple, Peace-field, a Sunday School hall has had to be used, as an annexe, but it is worth emphasising that this is the only instance where premises not specifically adapted for secular educational purposes are in use in the Cheadle Parliamentary division. Her Majesty's inspectors have reported favourably on the conditions in the hall and I acknowledge that this has been a temporary expedient pending the completion of another new school, which I hope will be completed by December, 1967.

The hon. Gentleman referred to other cases where similar temporary expedients have been adopted. In many cases the authority has met the situation by the use of demountable classrooms. Modern demountable classrooms are of a high standard. Indeed, in many older schools where such classrooms have been added they provide the best teaching spaces in the school. Nevertheless, authorities, rightly in my view, do not use them indiscriminately. Apart from the physical obstacles sometimes encountered, such as lack of space or of the necessary services, authorities may have to allow for the cost of erection and subsequently of dismantling and transporting to a new site, and this may not be justified for the short time that the temporary accommodation is required.

Although the Cheshire L.E.A. already makes extensive use of demountable, prefabricated classroom units, in some cases other solutions are more appropriate and economic. The authority is now proposing to carry out extensive trials with mobile temporary classrooms. These classrooms, of which a number of satisfactory models are now on the market, differ from the demountables in being transportable as a whole unit or a small number of units from one site to another. They are, therefore, much more quickly available than the most rapidly assembled demountable classrooms and cost a good deal less to install. The first of these are already in use in Cheshire and their application will be extended. In particular, the authority decided some weeks ago to install mobile classrooms at Bramhall, Pownall Green School, to augment the existing accommodation for infants.

It would be wrong of me to give the impression that, even in the rapidly growing dormitory areas such as Cheadle, there has to be extensive recourse to temporary expedients which, as I have said, no matter how well thought out, must be inferior to new schools of longer lasting construction.

In the Cheadle constituency, 30 new primary major projects, providing a total of 7,800 places, have been programmed since 1959–60. I doubt whether many other areas comparable in size in the country can match this. As a result, of the 43 primary schools in the constituency at present, 27—that is, nearly two-thirds—are of post-war construction. What is more, 11 more are either under construction or will shortly start building.

Dr. Winstanley

Although we can expect some delay in the building of these schools, is the hon. Gentleman aware that in respect of the two examples he gave, of High Lane and Peacefield, the county would have used demountable classrooms if they had had them? It was because the authority did not have any that they were not used. Is he aware, therefore, that it would be helpful if these methods were available in case the situation demands their use?

Mr. Redhead

I hope that the local education authority will use its enhanced minor works provision to try to meet the situation in this case in the manner it has adopted. I do not want to be unresponsive to the hon. Gentleman's appeal and certainly I shall consider most sympathetically the references he has made. But, in fairness, I must say that Cheshire and Cheadle in particular have not been treated unfairly by reference to the general experience, given the limitation of resources, although rapidly rising resources, in this regard which has confronted us with the problem of backlog and the explosion of the school population that is occurring throughout the country.

A massive programme of construction has been undertaken which has led to the provision of a first class educational environment for the large majority of the children and projects now in process of execution will enable improved conditions to be made available to many more.

As in Cheshire as a whole, so also in Cheadle, the major and minor building programmes have not only kept pace with increased demand, but also enabled many improvements to be made. In Cheadle primary schools, 63 per cent. of the children are now accommodated in post-war schools, a higher proportion than in the country as a whole. This compares with a national average for England and Wales of only 45 per cent. In the light of these figures it is difficult to substantiate any suggestion that the children in the Cheadle constituency or, for that matter, in Cheshire as a whole have been unfairly treated.

I add that neither the local education authority, to which I pay tribute for its energetic efforts to meet a bitterly difficult situation, nor my right hon. Friend nor I are complacent about the situation, which is by no means peculiar to Cheshire or to Cheadle. But the facts speak for themselves. They speak of an area of new houses, good homes and new schools —a rapidly increasing number of new schools—in which children have better educational opportunities than in many other parts of the country.

In saying that, I beg the hon. Member not to imagine that I am being complacent about this. I am not. I recognise the difficulties and I hope that, in the not too distant future, we shall be able to tackle the difficulties not only in Cheshire but in many other parts of the country which represent even worse situations as a result of the backlog of neglect which is the inheritance of the Government in education.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at two minutes past Twelve o'clock.