HC Deb 19 January 1967 vol 739 cc636-7
25. Mr. Brooks

asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he will consider publishing regular detailed progress reports of the steps being taken by each local education authority to introduce comprehensive secondary education.

Mr. Crosland

I am afraid that the process of preparing and implementing schemes of reorganisation does not lend itself to this kind of regular analysis.

Mr. Brooks

Would not my right hon. Friend agree that with local government reorganisation fairly imminent it is especially important that local education authorities, particularly in neighbouring areas of a conurbation, should have very full details of the schemes now being implemented by their neighbours?

Mr. Crosland

I certainly agree with that proposition, which, I would have thought, was as much a matter for local co-operation as for national action on my part. All I was saying was that with 162 authorities, all of them at different stages of preparation or implementation, it would be very difficult to give, say, monthly detailed reports of exactly what stage they had reached.