HC Deb 16 June 1967 vol 748 cc1020-30

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

4.3 p.m.

Mr. David Gibson-Watt (Hereford)

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the word "object" will not arise in the context of this short Adjournment debate which I am grateful to you for allowing me to have on the important question of primary education in Herefordshire. It might be in keeping with the tenor of an Adjournment debate, and as Herefordshire so seldom has an opportunity of voicing its problems in the House, to remind the House that only this year Hereford has suffered a very sad loss in the death of the Poet Laureate, Mr. John Masefield.

I welcome the fact that the hon. Lady the Minister of State, Education and Science, will be answering this debate. It is a happy coincidence that the chairman of the Primary Schools Committee in Herefordshire is also a lady. Perhaps we can expect some sympathy with the problems that I shall be speaking about.

When I first became Member for Hereford, in 1956, I had been vice-chairman of the Radnorshire Education Committee and came to Hereford with an intense interest to see the problems of reorganisation there which the local education authority faced. They were considerable. The reorganisation was complicated by two major factors: first, the size of the rural community; and, secondly, the rapid growth of the child population in the city itself. These two factors affected primary education as well as secondary reorganisation.

The size of the problem that the authority has had to face is, I believe, not sufficiently well understood by those in authority and, indeed, by those here in London responsible. In Hereford, we sometimes have the feeling that we are a long way from Whitehall and get pushed to the bottom of the priority list. I hope that the Minister of State will be able to prove to me that this is not so.

The Secretary of State may talk, as he does, of giving priority to poor schools in socially deprived areas. No one in their senses would disagree with that. But a primary school child in a country area is no less deprived because of the views he looks at from the window of a very old school because they happen to be some of the loveliest views in the loveliest part of the country. Nor are the problems of a country primary school teacher any less if the buildings and toilets are substandard.

The local education authority has all along been aware that the primary school children in the city and county must have their turn once secondary education was reorganised. The reason that they have not had their turn up to now is that the main task of the Hereford L.E.A. has been to complete the secondary education resulting from the 1944 Act. This has been completed, and it now hopes to be able to give rather more attention to the primary school part of education.

In speaking about the size of the problem with which the authority has been coping, it is interesting to note that, in 1947, the total number of children in schools run by the authority in the City of Hereford was 3,148. In 1967, 20 years later, the figure has risen to 8,958. In 20 years, the number has almost trebled. Hereford itself has grown very fast. The figure for the county districts outside the city was 13,106 in 1947 and is now just below 13,000.

The problem, therefore, is one of a declining rural school population and a greatly increased city school population. The authority submitted to the Secretary of State projects for inclusion in the 1968–69 programme on 25th October, 1966. There were 12 individual items in the list totalling an estimated value of £1,207,000. Of all these projects, only one was agreed to by the Secretary of State. This was at Tupsley St. Paul's voluntary-aided primary school, which will give 320 new places at a cost of just over £76,000.

If one takes this figure as a percentage of £1,207,000, it is only about 6¼ per cent. We feel that this is an impossibly inadequate contribution by the Department, yet, in answer to two Questions put by my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Sir Clive Bossom) and myself on 20th April, asking the Secretary of State to reconsider, the Minister of State said that she was satisfied that the authority had received a reasonable share of the available resources.

I wonder whether she will tell me today what she means by that answer. Is she saying that every authority in the country has not had more than 6¼ per cent. of what it asked for? Is she saying that with the Ministry of Education's knowledge of educational needs throughout the country it is utterly satisfied that it has been fair with Hereford? Is she at this moment satisfied with the answer that she gave to me and my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Leominster on 20th April? Is she still satisfied that the Hereford education authority has received a full share of the reasonable available resources? Is she satisfied now, because she was certainly satisfied in the answer that she gave me then.

I hope that she will have had time to have second thoughts on this project, because I must tell her that there is nobody in Hereford remotely connected with education who is satisfied with the position as it now stands—neither the education authority, nor the teachers, nor the parents, nor, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster, nor myself.

This is not the first time that we have had to push the claims of education in Herefordshire with the Ministry of Education. Some years ago, under a different Administration, I fought a long battle with the then Minister to secure the continuance and expansion of the teacher training college at Hereford. It is to the credit of the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd), that eventually, against all the odds, we won the battle. I am hoping that having deployed the arguments for primary school building today the present Minister may be equally wise and change his mind. The hon. Lady may well say that it would have been impossible this year to include the whole of the £1¼ million in the building programme. I know enough about the subject to agree.

In support of my general argument I will put forward the most urgent projects as the authority sees them. The scope of the debate is limited to primary education, but, in passing, I would say that the three-form entry secondary school at Tupsley and the fourth form entry premises at the Bluecot voluntary secondary school were very high on the list of priorities. I hope that the Minister will not forget these, particularly as the new comprehensive system, which the Government are forcing down the throat of the Herefordshire education authority, will definitely be delayed by the refusal to include these projects.

These are secondary school matters and I wish to keep to the primary school problems. The first primary school is the second instalment of the Trinity C.P. School at Hereford. It is situated on the City Council's Moorpark Farm Estate and is intended to serve that estate which will have about 300 dwellings, together with a further estate with 100 houses on the nearby Red Barn Farm. Most children on these estates live half a mile or less from Trinity C.P. School and they live a mile or more from the Lord Scudamore schools to which some children in this area will have to go.

Last week I had two mothers come to see me who had their elder children at Trinity C.P. School and they now find that their second children cannot be accommodated there and will have to go to the Lord Scudamore schools.

This will, in the words of the Director of Education, make the Lord Scudamore schools … revert to the state of overcrowding which existed four or five years ago. Additional hutting would encroach still further on substandard playground areas while cloakroom and toilet provision will be severely overstrained. In addition, these Scudamore schools are located in an area of the city in which, because of road works, traffic congestion will get worse this year. The L.E.A. wish to draw attention to this added danger which would have been avoided had the Trinity project been included.

I know that the Minister has further details of these schools, and I say that this is one of the most important that he has refused in this programme.

The list put forward by the Hereford L.E.A. included an important primary school at Ocle Pychard, where it has the site; the new C.P. School at Kingston; the new Primary School at Ross-on-Wye; the new voluntary controlled school at Clehonger; the final instalment of St. Marys, Lugwardine; the replacement school at Pembridge; the new school promised at Hereford, St. Francis Xaviers; and the three-class instalment of the primary school at Leominster.

All these are urgently needed, but I wish to concentrate primarily on the problems of Credenhill V.C. School. Credenhill lies just outside the City of Hereford, in the Leominster constituency, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster has had correspondence with the Secretary of State on this subject, and also with the Minister of Defence. The Credenhill area is famous for the R.A.F. station, which already has 220 children of primary school age. Many R.A.F. families return there from overseas, and this year a further 180 children from R.A.F. parents will reach the age of 5.

The object of the new primary school at Credenhill was and is to replace the three existing schools at Credenhill, Kentchester and Stretton Sugwas with a new one-form entry school for 280 infant and junior children. Again, I will not go into the details of what is proposed; the Minister knows them well. I make this final plea.

I can imagine the difficulties and the problems of priorities which she and her colleagues at the Department of Education face. We are not being greedy in Hereford, or. I hope, unreasonable, but we feel sometimes that our problems are not sufficiently understood by her. As I have said, we have fought in the past and today, within the limits of our ability, we are fighting again.

I want the world to know, the educational world, that the Herefordshire L.E.A. is composed of men and women who have given a lifetime to education. They and the teachers ask only that we should get a fair ration, and I do not believe that the ration which the Minister has at present dealt out to us is either adequate or fair.

I stand before you today, Mr. Speaker, like Oliver Twist, asking the Minister for more. I am not ashamed to do so, because the Hereford education authority needs more.

4.16 p.m.

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

I should like, first, to congratulate the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt) on raising this subject. He and his hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Sir Clive Bossom) for a considerable time have been campaigning very forcefully on the education front for Herefordshire. The hon. Gentleman expressed himself with understanding of and sympathy for the problems of the nation as a whole and the difficulty of establishing priorities.

Before coming to consider the wider questions, I shall refer only to the point which he made about the programming of the Tupsley School in the 1968–69 programme. It was in line with the average which has been programmed for Hereford for primary schools over the past five years. I have been into this and found that the average figure for primary schools has been approximately £77,000 to £78,000. The cost of the Tupsley primary replacement was £76,478, which does not mark any sharp decrease in the amount for primary schools in programme for Herefordshire over a number of years.

The hon. Member very fairly asked me whether other authorities had had as little as 6¼ per cent. of what they asked for conceded to them in the approved building programme. I am sure that he will know as well as I do that the answer is that a number of authorities have had very considerably larger proportions of the sums for which they asked. The difficulty, as he will appreciate, is that Herefordshire is a county in which the population has grown only slightly—I am referring to the combined population of the city and county—and has therefore had little claim on basic need. Because he understands these things well, the hon. Gentleman will know that in the last two or three years basic need has taken a rising share in building programmes, simply because we are now encountering the effects of the very sharp increase in the birth rate in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

As the hon. Gentleman said—and I merely underline this—the number of primary school children in Hereford has risen from 12,441 in 1963 to 13,311, provisional, for 1967, and the total number of school children in Hereford has risen from 20,457 in 1963 to 21,802, provisional, in 1967. That is a rate of increase which is far below that for most of the counties. For instance, I have managed to get hold of a list of the expansion in Midland authorities over the last five years announced up to mid-1964, the highest level being Warwickshire with 14.3 per cent., going through Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire (Kesteven), Lincolnshire (Lindsey), Northants, Worcestershire, Rutland and so on. All these have had substantially greater increases—some more than double—than that which has taken place in Herefordshire.

Only three Midland counties have lower figures than Herefordshire for a rate of increase in population. This means frankly, that the sheer proportion of the building programme which has to go to roofs over heads, a point which my right hon. Friend has made on very many occasions, is bound to affect Herefordshire unfavourably, compared to counties with a large increase in population.

There is another factor, which is that the pattern of Herefordshire schools is one of many Midlands and West Country counties. It is one in which there are very many voluntary schools, erected many years ago. Herefordshire, more than most counties, has a legacy of small and old country schools, some of them with one or two classrooms which, I would accept from the hon. Member, are no longer recognised as fully adequate for the highest standards of modern education.

Understandably, therefore, Herefordshire feels, and has felt for a number of years, that the county should be given a fairer crack of the whip in the replacement of these old schools. When it comes to replacement projects, and there are, alas, too small a number of them, because of the sheer pressure of basic need. We have felt that the worst schools, in terms of buildings, of surroundings and of the environment in which the children have to be taught, must have the top priority, regardless of the county they are in.

The elaboration of the concept of educational priority areas in the Plowden Report is one which has had some effect on our choice of improvement programmes, and has meant that we are bound to programme first those improvements and replacements in schools which are notably worse off, socially, environmentally, and educationally, than some Herefordshire schools.

Having said that, I would like to turn to some of the specific points raised by the hon. Gentleman. First the proposed school replacement at Credenhill. The present position, and I accept what the hon. Gentleman has said about the rising demand among R.A.F. children, is that the Credenhill group of schools, including Kenchester and Stretton Sugwas, has a total number of children amounting to 239 in all three schools, yet has a capacity of 340. This is not for a moment to say that the schools are at the highest standard. They are not, particularly Credenhill.

Nevertheless at present, between the schools, which are within 1½ to two miles of one another, there is a deficit of children compared to the number of places available. I am not trying to mislead the hon. Member by taking a deficit in one school and using it to cover an overall surplus of children in one of the schools. This is true of all three schools. In consequence, as he will know, when it made its submissions for the 1968–69 building programme, which was repeated with the exception of the Tupsley school, which was programmed, in the 1969–70 building programme, Herefordshire education authority gave high priority to the replacement of the Ocle Pychard group of schools, as compared to the Credenhill group of schools.

The reasons for that were sound and they included the fact that a replacement of the Ode Pychard primary school—although again the capacity of the existing schools was well above the demand upon them—should be given the highest priority, because this would replace five small village schools, whereas Credenhill would replace three. The schools are in a larger radius, that is to say the distances to be covered by children were greater, in some cases amounting to as much as three miles, between the unsatisfactory small rural schools and the school at Ocle Pychard. Consequently we consulted the authority, and we understood that this remained its highest priority, after the Trinity school extension, to which I will come in a moment.

In consequence, in looking at the 1969–70 building programme, we would wish to respect the authority's own priorities and if we can programme something for Herefordshire, we would if we were capable of programming only one of these two schools, be more likely to programme Ocle Pychard than to programme Credenhill. This is not to recognise that, as new housing advances in Credenhill, there may be a case on basic need. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Leominster (Sir Clive Bossom) has pointed out, on more than one occasion, the need for additional building in the Credenhill area. But I think it is fair to say that the authority has not advanced any case on grounds of additional basic need. On the contrary, the Credenhill replacement which it has suggested will provide rather fewer places than the present three schools which it is intended to replace. If the authority wishes to bring forward evidence of basic need arising from new housing in the area, we shall be very willing to consider it as seriously as we can.

I turn to the subject of the Trinity expansion—the proposal by the authority for a two-form entry junior school with 320 places and an additional 120 in temporary accommodation. The hon. Gentleman will know that the Ministry has to find that a very strong case has been made out for a replacement in a situation in which the capacity is well ahead of the number of places required. In the present case, Trinity County Primary School has 466 children attending it for a listed official capacity of 320 places. It is, therefore, perfectly fair for the hon. Gentleman to say that this is a seriously overcrowded school. Indeed it is.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, it is a new school and, consequently, is very popular with parents. But, as he also fairly said, at one mile distance, there is the Lord Scudamore County Primary Schools which at present have a listed capacity of 955 places and an attendance in January, 1967—the figure may be slightly higher now, but not much—of 564 children. There are, therefore, 391 spare places within these schools.

We cannot really accept that, because parents of an area would rather send their children a very short distance to school—this is human and understandable and obviously a wish which we would like to meet—we should expand the school when there are places going in a perfectly adequate school one mile away as distinct from giving higher priority to areas where the nearest alternative school may be two, three or more miles away. This is even true in Ocle Pychard where the alternative school is three miles away.

Therefore, we suggest to the authority that it might reconsider whether there is a case for zoning these schools in such a way that the capacity at the Lord Scudamore schools—which have an excellent and devoted staff—can be properly used before the authority makes out its argument for a further expansion of the Trinity School. We recognise that Lord Scudamore is in an older part of Hereford and that it is not among new buildings, but it is certainly not a school which we would regard as being in any way seriously substandard or offering poor educational opportunities to children going there. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman will understand if I say that it is our view that the case for Ocle Pychard is stronger than that for Trinity, despite the fact that the authority gave a higher priority to Trinity.

I turn to two last points. One of these concerns the minor works programme over which the authority has complete control. Although the hon. Gentleman fairly said that the total building programmes for Hereford have been smaller in the last year than in some earlier years, it is also fair for me to point out that since 1965–66 the minor building programme has been very nearly double what it was in the years 1961 to 1964–65, taken as an average. In the last three years, Herefordshire has had £90,000, £80,000 and £90,000 respec- tively in minor works programmes—each programme being the equivalent of rather more than one for one-form entry primary school. We have every reason to believe that we will be able to sustain and even possibly improve the level of the minor works programme for the county. Next year the national minor works programme will be 10 per cent. greater than it is this year.

The other point which I should like to make and which the hon. Gentleman may wish to make to the authority is that Herefordshire has a high proportion of voluntary-aided primary schools—more than is usually the case even in rural counties. We would very sympathetically consider any minor works improvement proposals for aided schools. It is fair to say that the proportion which has gone to Herefordshire in this respect has been less than would normally be the case, granted the number of voluntary primary schools in the county. I make this point so that the hon. Gentleman can pass it on to those concerned and suggest to them that they might wish to reconsider whether there is a case for minor improvements in some of their schools.

I hope that I have answered, although not to the hon. Member's full satisfaction, some of the points which he has raised. I have attempted at least to show why we have taken the attitude that we have towards Herefordshire. I hope that the hon. Member will accept from me that this is through no desire to be unfair to Herefordshire, but is largely due to the fact that we do not have any control over the sudden and substantial rise in the birthrate.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at half-past Four o'clock.