HC Deb 25 July 1967 vol 751 cc562-71

4.2 a.m.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield (Nuneaton)

Since I do not want to make a habit of raising at this time of the morning even matters which vitally affect my constituency, I shall be brief. First, I thank my hon. Friend and the House for the opportunity afforded me to raise a matter which affects the interests of my constituency. I should like to express my personal thanks to the Minister of State, who, I know, has made great personal efforts to be here tonight to answer. I know that her being here has necessitated quite a large amount of reorganisation in her Department, and I want to pay my thanks to her.

I should like to set the scene by giving a rough description of what, I think, has been the general trend in Warwickshire over the past 10 years. Before we mention primary education I think we have to look at the kind of population developments and population movements which are occurring in the county, because what has happened over the past 10 years is that the balance of population has been gradually shifting to the north. The north of the county is a developing area, although the seat of the county council is in the south of the county, and although perhaps the city and county borough of Coventry tend to obscure what is going on in the north I should not like it to be thought that the north is an area which does not deserve as much attention as the south does.

As I was a Parliamentary candidate at Warwick and Leamington in the 1966 General Election I can claim the unique experience of knowing both what goes on in the south of the county and in the north of the county where my present constituency is situated. I think we in the north of Warwickshire tend to think of ourselves as the forgotten north, although, of course, this is where most Labour county councillors come from. Only two or three years ago in one of the by-elections in my constituency a certain national newspaper referred to it as a sleepy market town. I do not think that the borough and the urban district which I represent in this House are at all sleepy market areas. Apart from the fact that we are on two main trunk roads, the A.5 and the A.444—

Mr. Speaker

Order. I hope that the hon. Member will come to the topic that he has chosen for the debate.

Mr. Huckfield

If I can set the background, I think that my hon. Friend will find it very helpful. In addition, we are on the main rail connection to the north, and we have thriving engineering industries there.

I think that the point is most clearly brought home if we examine the population statistics as revealed in the 1966 census. As this census does not give accurate figures of the increase in the population of school age, we have to use the overall population figures as the most accurate indicator. We could, I suppose, subtract five or six years from the children's ages and thus get some indication of the child population that we had in 1961, but this would not give us any indication of the increase in the number of children who may have moved into the area in the meantime.

In 1961 Nuneaton had a population of 57,000. It now has a population of 61,000. In 1961 Bedworth had a population of 31,000. It now has a population of 36,000. This kind of population growth is considerably faster than that which has occurred in Warwick and Leamington in the south of the county, and it is these population figures which show that the constituency which I represent is probably one of the fastest growing parts of Warwickshire.

I am interested in the reason for this speed of growth, because the people now moving into my constituency are those most likely to be interested in primary education, facilities. There is what has been called by many people the executive class moving out from Birmingham and Coventry and using my constituency as a dormitory commuter area. We also have a large number of coal miners who have been transferred there from Scotland and the North-East. Apart from the fact that both these types are specifically interested in the development of primary education facilities, many of the miners were brought to my constituency almost solely on the basis that good primary education facilities would be provided.

I do not need to elaborate on the advantages of good primary education facilities. I think that the Plowden Report did that far better than I can do it, but what caught my eye about the Report was that it said that environment could be so important that it was worth spending double the amount that is spent in ordinary areas in areas which were in some ways environmentally deficient, because this could help to counteract those deficiencies. Indeed, some people tend to think, and some would argue strongly, that it is worth postponing raising the school-leaving age so that we can increase our primary education facilities. I cannot agree with that.

In the Borough of Nuneaton, which is an accepted district in the County of Warwick for education purposes, the spring 1967 figures show that we had 12 infant and 38 junior classes over the statutory maximum size, and we are still waiting to know exactly what is to happen to the promised Weddington primary school. More important, we would like to know what is to happen to the White-stones primary school. Both these have been mentioned in Estimates in the past, but they do not seem to have been translated into terms of a building programme. I think that these are relevant because they coincide with the areas in the Borough of Nuneaton in which we are experiencing the most rapid population growth.

I am also very interested in the Abbey Church of England School and the Chilvers Coton Church of England School. The latter in particular has one of the worst building deficiencies that we could expect to meet in a primary education. It must hold half its classes in the parish hall. School meals, assembly, physical education, dancing and ordinary classes are held there, and the school must share the facilities—benches, desks and so on—with members of the general public who also use the parish hall.

In the school building, one of the classrooms is separated from another by a mere hardboard partition. One can imagine what the children can overhear in the other classrooms. Most frightening is that the whole school fronts a very busy main road, and already one child has been run over. The school manages to exist only through the constant supervision of the members of the staff, to whom I pay tribute for so ably looking after the 120 children and preventing more road accidents. The school is not very well lighted or heated. The headmistress, Mrs. Simmons has no separate staff room. The playground and toilet facilities leave a great deal to be desired.

Again and again my predecessor and his predecessor were told that a new site was being prepared on the nearby Caldwell estate, but that the Ministry could not do anything yet because it did not know what the Ministry of Transport would say about the road widening scheme. It was therefore reluctant to spend large sums of money. We have had exactly the same kind of answer for years and years, and my constituents are getting a bit fed up with it.

Meanwhile, the school building deteriorates, the accident risk gets higher and higher as the traffic increases, parents become more and more worried, and their nerves and those of the teachers become more and more strained, while nothing is done. I want to be able to tell my constituents—and I hope that my hon. Friend will tell me tonight—when something will be done, if not in capital expenditure terms in the shape of a brand new school building on the new site which has been prepared for a long time, then at least in current expenditure terms. It is one of the worst examples of primary school building in the Borough of Nuneaton.

I now turn to the urban district of Bedworth, the other part of my constituency. The situation there is rather different. Including the very ancient primary schools in the south of the constituency, there is a slight over-all surplus of primary school places. But it is achieved in a rather weird way, largely by the transporting of large numbers of children, especially from the new estate constructed on behalf of the National Coal Board for the reception of miners transferred from the North-East and Scotland by the Coal Industry Housing Association.

The school that was supposed to serve the estate is the Newdigate County Junior School in Anderton Road. A large number of miners received many glossy booklet promises from the National Coal Board, many of which have not materialised, in terms of wages, housing, social facilities, and transport. The fact that their children could no longer get into the school situated on the estate was just about the last straw.

The parents and relations of the 300 or 400 children feel that they are being discriminated against. The headmaster, Mr. Buckingham, is doing a very good job and is determined to maintain his standards and not put the extra class into the school hall as he has been asked to do. The efforts of the county council to shift some children from the nearby Leicester Road Primary School, which has as many as 53 children in some classes, to the Keresley Newland Primary School, have led to a slight improvement, but some parents on the estate are prepared to go to prison rather than let their children leave the estate for these other schools. The fact that their children cannot even get into the school which was virtually promised in the glossy booklets is the last straw.

In view of the environment, lack of facilities and overcrowding in this part of Bedworth, surely Plowden's emphasis on primary education making up for environmental deficiencies applies. There are mumblings about having to wait for another 150 Coal Board houses, but I wonder whether we will get them and still have no school extension. I should like an answer if not in capital terms, at least in current terms.

I hope that my hon. Friend will not claim that the matter is being held up by the difficulties in reorganising secondary education. The Nuneaton comprehensive scheme does not fit in with the proposal for the rest of the country, being a three-tier system as opposed to an all-in scheme, and it could be claimed that, while these difficulties exist nothing will be said about primary schools. But there have always been excuses about doing nothing about these schools.

They are both special cases—one with severe building deficiencies and the other with severe environmental deficiencies. If they do not merit the expenditure immediately, at least their conditions should be improved. I should like to be able to tell not only the parents of children at these two schools but all the parents in my constituency that things will improve. I hope that I can give them some better news as a result of the debate than they have had for many years.

4.19 a.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Shirley Williams)

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huck-field) first for his kind remarks about me and second for his keenness and vitality in raising this subject. His constituency is lucky to have a Member who can wax so eloquent at 4.15 in the morning. My hon. Friend mentioned the increase in population in Warwickshire but it is perhaps worth mentioning that Warwickshire is not among the counties with a very rapid rate of population increase, compared to a number of areas of which the House will be conscious and because the basic need for a roof over children's heads is reflected in the building programme, it is bound to have an effect on his county's share. He will be aware that, in the next five years, there will be about 1 million more children in the primary schools and that, therefore, much as we should like to replace inadequate schools, we have to give first priority to the children who would otherwise have no schools to go to. Whereas rather under a quarter of the major school building programme in the years 1960 to 1965 was new primary schools, something over 40 per cent. were new primary schools in the last two years, taking all together as an average.

I hope that my hon. Friend will accept my assurance that this Administration is not unaware of the great needs of primary education. He will recall that only the day before yesterday in this House it was announced that an additional £16 million was to be found to assist primary schools in the areas of socially handicapped environment to which he referred.

Turning to the questions which my hon. Friend raised, he mentioned that a number of schools in Nuneaton had oversized classes. That is not entirely uncommon, but the proportion of oversized classes nationally is declining steadily and we hope that the additions in teacher supply will begin to make an impact on Nuneaton as well.

I shall make clear the precise difference of responsibility between the Department of Education and Science and the local education authority for the rebuilding or replacement of primary schools. The order of priority and the list of projects is not a matter for the Department of Education and Science, but originally for the local education authority, and only from the list of projects provided by that authority can the Department decide which projects to approve, so some of my hon. Friend's remarks are perhaps a matter to discuss with the local education authority rather than the Department, because these are not our responsibilities, nor are they matters which I think the local education authority would wish to become our responsibility. The control of minor works projects, as distinct from overall allocation, which he mentioned, is a matter over which the local education authority has complete freedom.

I will not dispute my hon. Friend's judgment about Chilvercoton Church of England School. He referred to complications over the site and these complications, as he correctly said, have delayed replacement of the school. This again is not a matter which is subject to the Department's control, but is for the authority to settle with the other Ministry concerned. If the local authority wishes to put forward a replacement scheme, we should be pleased to consider it and we recognise some of the difficulties the school has to contend with.

My hon. Friend mentioned the dangers of children crossing the main road from Chilvercoton School and the tragic case of a child who suffered an accident while crossing that road. Again I suggest that my hon. Friend might like to take up with the local education authority the question of a school crossing patrol until such time as the school can be replaced. A school crossing patrol or alternative arrangements with the police are matters which lie within the discretion of the local education authority. Only last year my right hon. Friend sent out a circular to local authorities pointing out that road traffic hazards would be regarded as a good reason for providing free transport for school children within the normal statutory limits. In short, an authority can provide transport under the statutory minimum limits if there are reasons connected with road traffic hazards which might affect children.

Turning to the other specific case mentioned by my hon. Friend, I recognise how strongly he feels about it and the strength of feeling among parents on the estate. But I think that he is being a little hard on the National Coal Board when he says that the promises about primary education were not kept. Until January, 1966, all the children on the estate as it was built up went to school outside it, most being accommodated at the Leicester Road Schools, Bedworth, nearly two miles away. In January, 1966, a new school, the Newdigate Junior School, was completed. It was originally planned as a two-form entry junior school with accommodation for 320 children. It was subsequently enlarged to the extent of three temporary classrooms to give provision for 440 children.

It was believed that that would be sufficient to meet the need within the existing housing on the estate, 550 houses being planned up to that time. But it emerged that the estate was rather more willing to have large families than the average for estates of this kind. So I plead guilty. The local education authority and to some extent the Department under-estimated the number of children for whom school accommodation would be required. So there were 125 more children than had been planned for at the Newdigate School, and they have to attend the Leicester Road Schools, Bedworth, about two miles away. All these children are offered free transport. None has to walk more than 200 yards. The longest it takes any child to get to school is 25 minutes starting at 8.35 a.m. from the most distant part of the estate. The children at the Leicester Road Schools are almost all back home before the children at the local estate junior school have got home, because the Leicester Roads Schools end school half an hour earlier than the estate school. In consequence, there is no question of children attending the Leicester Road Schools having excessively long school days.

I appreciate that the parents would rather have further expansion of the school on the estate. But, as my hon. Friend frankly and honestly pointed out, there is the difficulty that within a radius of two miles of the centre of the estate there are more places in schools, some of them fairly new schools, than there are children to fill them. For example, in the last few months there was accommodation for 1,676 children within a radius of two miles of the centre of the estate and there were 1,469 children on the roll, which meant a surplus of 207 places.

Much as we would wish it to be the case that every school should be a convenient neighbourhood school for the parents of the area, I am afraid that it is quite impossible and would be very unfair to authorities which are more hard pressed to make such generous provision. Since we have a surplus of 207 places within this fairly reasonable travelling distance we cannot at the moment agree to programme an additional school for the estate. This has been recognised by the local education authority, which put forward a scheme for an infants school for the estate in 1967–68 but has not made a subsequent bid in either the 1968–69 or the 1969–70 programme.

We should be very willing to consider again the possibility of programming an infants school for the estate should there be indications that the estate will now build up to the originally programmed size of 700 houses, but work that was intended to be started on the additional houses has not yet been started. My hon. Friend implied that this might be due to an absence of demand for houses on the estate from the miners for whom it was intended, but there is another reason, namely, that there is a serious sewage disposal problem on the site which has not yet been resolved.

To sum up, with regard to the Chilvers Coton school, I have given one of the reasons which has stood in the way of a replacement school being programmed, but I assure my hon. Friend that we should be very willing to consider it for an early building programme should the authority be able to put it forward soon for one of the next building programme exercises.

Second, as regards the estate school, while I cannot promise my hon. Friend that we can at the moment consider an expansion, we shall certainly do so if there is any indication of emerging further basic need. I mention again that, before January, 1966, none of the children on the estate were educated upon it, and now the great bulk of them are.

While I recognise the strength of feeling among the parents, I assure them that the schools to which their children are now going are very good schools, for the most part, and that the travelling time involved for young children is really moderate by the standards which, for example, rural education authorities are only too familiar with in bringing village children to a school which can have a sufficient catchment area to make adequate education possible.