TEACHER TRAINING ALLOWANCE (MR. ALLETSON) (Hansard, 19 May 1969)

§ Mr. Joel Barnett (Heywood and Royton)
The case which I wish to put before the House is a very sad one. It is one which I have previously raised in correspondence with my hon. Friend the Minister of State, and I am sure that she will this evening give me a reply which will be satisfactory to my constituent, to the other people involved and to me.
Mr. Eric Alletson of Littleborough, in my constituency, is a technical teacher at Salford Technical College. There are other teachers in a similar position to him, although none have had the misfortune suffered by him.
In 1946 Mr. Alletson took a two-term course at Bolton Technical College. In 1965 he was granted an award of £50 a year by the Department of Education and Science under a Burnham Report of 1963. In 1968 a friend of his, a Mr. J. T. O'Reilly, who had had the same course as my constituent, applied for the same grant of £50 a year. This application was turned down, and Mr. O'Reilly was told that he was not entitled to the grant. "Ah," he then said, "that is ridiculous. My friend, Mr. Alletson, received the £50 a year and did the same course as I did." So the Department looked it up, found that my constituent was not entitled to the grant and withdrew the £50 award. I suppose that a man should not tell his best friend what is going on and who gave him his award, but nevertheless he did. My constituent 201 has had the £50 award withdrawn, and this will in due course affect his pension.
When I raised this with my hon. Friend some time ago she was her normal sympathetic, courteous self, but she said this was a matter for Burnham and not for her Department. I do not believe that we can leave it at that. Will my hon. Friend consider the reasons given for the withdrawal of the award?
The Department gave the award under the mistaken impression that Mr. Alletson had done a one-year course, whereas he had done only a two-term course. But the circumstances should be remembered. This happened just after the end of the war in 1946, and I would like to take a closer look at what happened about the two term-course.
The first course, course 1, was held at Bolton Technical College between February and July, after which the successful teachers left for teaching jobs. The second course, 2A, was held at Bolton from September, 1946 to Easter, 1947, and the third course, 2B, from early January to July, 1947.
The students of the second course were encouraged to leave at Easter, 1947, to enter the teaching profession a little earlier, but if they wished to do so they were allowed to stay on for the extra term to July, 1947. Some of the weaker students were instructed to stay for the extra term, extra grants being available. This facility was not extended to any of the students on the first or second courses. Thus, some students on the course 2A did a nominal year's training, particularly if they were weak, while those on the courses known as 1 and 2B were restricted to two terms of full-time training. All students were expected to do some guided study over the following twelve months and to attend a two week refresher course held in July, 1948, at Loostock Invalid Children's Home.
After July, 1947, only one course of teachers was taken into the training college annually for a course of one year's duration. It seems to me that these two-term crash courses were held on the instruction of the then Minister to get some technical teachers into the field quickly. Those are the circumstances that surrounded the so-called two-term courses. They were carried out, it seems 202 to me, in order to help the Ministry in a difficult period when there was a shortage of teachers.
The headmaster of Bolton Technical Teachers Training College in the period in question, 1936–1949, was a Mr. A. J. Jenkinson, M.A., now Principal of the College of Technology, Manchester Road, Bolton. Mr. O'Reilly, the unfortunate cause of my constituent losing his £50, presumably trying to make amends, recently visited Mr. Jenkinson to inquire about the course in 1946. Mr. Jenkinson confirmed what I have just said, that it was not a simple two-term course as it was followed by the 12-months' further external study and two weeks full-time when a certificate was granted. Mr. Jenkinson is prepared to testify to this.
A further anomaly is that there are still some teachers who did this course who are receiving the £50 award. I am told by Mr. Alletson that he knows of others who are still receiving it, although after what happened to him he is not prepared to give the names. He says he would not want to do to them what has been done to him. Neither do I. But I want my constituent to have his £50 per annum that he has had so harshly and unfairly withdrawn, and, equally, I would hope that it would be able to be given to the others who have not yet been able to get it. I hope that my hon. Friend will even enable Mr. O'Reilly to have his £50 award.
I understand that the numbers and cost involved are not very great. My information is that the total number of teachers on all those courses is not more than 240 and possibly only 180, of whom only 60–100 remain in the group affected by the ruling some 21 years later. To pay them all from the time of the inception of the award in 1945 would require a total sum of not more than £21,000 with maximum annual expenditure in the future of about £5,000. .
It is not enough for my hon. Friend to say that it is a matter that can be altered only by the Burnham Committee. She is ultimately responsible, and I would expect her to allow her undoubted sense of justice and fair play to overcome any technical arguments and give back the award to my constituents and the few others who would equally be entitled to it.

§ The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Shirley Williams)
It has been said of my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Barnett) that if he cannot argue the birds off the trees he will try to charm them off. I am sorry that this particular bird is not able to come off the particular tree on which she is sitting at the moment.
I will explain in some detail the reasons for the difficulty that I find myself in. When my hon. Friend first wrote to me about the case I respected immediately the sense of injustice that he felt so strongly about it, and to some extent I shared that sense of injustice. I will try to set out the difficulty in which I found myself so that he will understand it, and even if he does not share my conclusions perhaps he will sympathise with the situation in which I found myself.
My hon. Friend has put forward the case and in this has shown his concern for his constituent and other constituents in the same position. Perhaps I could begin by saying that the title of the Adjournment debate is a little misleading in that what we are talking about this evening is not grant from the Department of Education and Science, for which I would be responsible, but an addition to salary for certain kinds of training and qualification which is decided on by the Burnham Committee.
It was in 1965 that the Burnham Further Education Committee made its first decision to make incentive payments of £50 per annum as addition to salary of assistant lecturers in establishments of further education. I quote the grounds on which they said they might be paid: The satisfactory completion of a one-year full-time course or full-time sandwich course on initial training under regulations of the Department of Education and Science at Technical Colleges of Education. In 1967 the Burnham Further Education Committee again considered the situation and later extended the field of entitlement to which the £50 could be paid. They indicated that an equivalent course under the Training of Teachers Regulations equivalent to a one-year course in a technical teachers training college or full-term sandwich courses could be accepted as a ground on which the £50 addition might be paid.
204 The concept of equivalence is an important one in respect of teachers' salaries and depends on being able to establish an equivalent course or a course completed for a long period of time which could be shown to be equivalent to a full-time one-year course in the particular case which we are discussing tonight.
As my hon. Friend rightly said, the genesis of the scheme was the emergency training scheme for teachers in both schools and further education colleges to which he referred. It is true that the Bolton College of Education in January, 1946, started two courses both of which lasted two terms. The only correction I would make is that the first started in January, 1946, and lasted until July and the second started in February, 1946, and lasted until August. My hon. Friend was also correct that these two courses carried a further period of supervision both followed by a third residential course. Therefore, it might be said that in real effect they were rather more than two terms.
Subsequent to these two courses a number of courses lasted for three terms, especially for those students who had not themselves had exceptional initial qualifications. By 1949 the three-term course had virtually overtaken the two term maximum as a basis of qualification for people moving into further education colleges.
My hon. Friend spoke about the number of people involved. The best information we have in the Department shows us that 320 people in all were involved, and that of those about 94 were restricted to the two term courses. They were neither able to opt for a third term, nor did they subsequently take further training of various sorts. Even of those 94 a number have been removed to other courses where the £50 no longer applies. Therefore, my hon. Friend is right in his estimation of between 50 and 100, though I suspect that the figure is closer to 50 as to those teachers who would fall within the special cases to which the Adjournment debate refers.
I should like to mention two important facts. The first is to reiterate that the Burnham Committee throughout its study of these particular teachers has made it clear that the £50 addition is 205 payable only for a one year course or for a course equivalent to a one year course.
My hon. Friend logically asked whether this course might not be so considered, but in 1952 the Burnham Further Education Committee considered exactly this case. It reached the conclusion that the particular case with which we are now dealing namely the six months course followed by supervised teaching and by a short residential course was simply not accepted on the ground of equivalence.
Mr. Alletson was employed by the Salford Education Authority at the time about which we are speaking. In 1965 this education authority properly raised the question of whether it might pay the £50 addition to my hon. Friend's constituent. It was told that indeed it might. I make it clear that it was told by my own Department that this was the case. It said that he might be paid on Scale C which, following the 1965 decision of the Burnham Committee, was the scale which carried with it the £50 addition. This implied that the teacher in question had a one-year training course.
I now have to make a confession on behalf of my Department, though I personally was not there at the time. It is that the decision in Mr. Alletson's case was made on two mistaken assumptions. The first was that he had taken a one-year course. The Department simply checked the certificate from the Bolton College without discovering that he was one of the small number who had taken the short course. The second was that the Department of Education and Science was not qualified to lay down the law to the local authority because matters of teachers' salaries are primarily for the local authorities and not for my Department.
However, quite properly, Salford paid Mr. Alletson the £50 addition. It had gone through the correct procedures, and it was right to do as it did. It was only when Mr. O'Reilly, who is a friend of Mr. Alletson, was pursuing the case of many other teachers in the same position and raised the question of whether the £50 addition might not be paid to others who had taken similar courses, that the Department was able to investigate the position and to define it as being a sum which had been incorrectly paid to Mr. Alletson in this case.
206 The situation is clearly based upon the decision of the Burnham Committee that Mr. Alletson was not properly paid, because his course was not equivalent to a one-year course. This covers the other teachers who took the short course at Bolton and elsewhere in those early years of the Emergency Training Scheme.
I am sorry for the situation in which Mr. Alletson finds himself, and my Department would certainly take a sympathetic view as regards his past additional salary because it is fully recognised that Mr. Alletson is in no way to blame for the situation. Though this is primarily a matter for the local authority—in his case, Salford—were Salford to seek our advice, we would make it as sympathetic as possible in view of the fact that the original mistake was ours and not that of the authority. Nor was it Mr. Alletson's—

§ Mr. Barnett
Do I understand my hon. Friend to say that if Salford is prepared to pay Mr. Alletson £50 a year because a mistake has been made she will look sympathetically on it?

§ Mrs. Williams
We are now discussing the retrospective salary that he has been paid for several years. I understand that he might be near the point of retirement. Under the regulations, the Salford Authority would be able to reclaim the payment wrongly made to him. I am talking about this sum of money for which Mr. Alletson has no responsibility but for which my Department bears some responsibility. With regard to the sum from this time forward—and it may cover only a short period—I am afraid that my Department is bound by the position in Burnham.
There are only two suggestions that I can make. The first is that Mr. Alletson should approach his own professional organisation, which has the right to raise the matter on Burnham bearing in mind that Burnham has not considered it since 1952 for this group of teachers and that it is fully represented on the Staff Side of the Burnham Further Education Committee.
Secondly, I would suggest that Mr. Alletson discusses with the authority the position with regard to pension entitlement. We recognise that from his point of view, since he is probably shortly to retire, this is a matter of great concern to him, and it is one on which the 207 Salford education authority might wish to seek our advice.
Primarily, however, the matter is one for Burnham. I suggest that Mr. Alletson takes it up with his professional association, and I hope that Burnham will then have a chance to consider what is an anomalous situation for a small group of teachers.

§ Mr. Barnett
Is my hon. Friend prepared to say that she would think it right that Burnham should reconsider it sympathetically in view of the small number 208 involved and the anomalies which have been created?

§ Mrs. Williams
The Department of Education and Science has a very small representation on Burnham, amounting to two members out of a great many. I hope that those two members will be aware of the difficulties which have arisen in this case and which might arise in similar cases.