HC Deb 18 March 1970 vol 798 cc567-78

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

11.48 p.m.

Mr. Neil Marten (Banbury)

I am very grateful to have the opportunity to raise the case of Mrs. Green, a schoolteacher in my constituency in a very charming small country village near the Cotswolds called Ascott-under-Wychwood. She is not unique in this case because there are other teachers in the country in the same boat. One or two of my hon. Friends present tonight would like to say a word about that, so I shall be very brief.

Mrs. Green started teaching in 1933 and continued until 1939. During the war she had to leave teaching because she had to look after her own children, her husband having gone to war service. She returned to it in 1947, and is still teaching at the primary school at Ascott-under-Wychwood, so she has been teaching 29 years by my calculations. She is 54.

Mrs. Green is an extremely good teacher. She is very well loved by all the children who have been through her school and who are still there, and she is highly respected by the parents in the village. She has acquired a wisdom in handling children which only comes from long experience and understanding of their problems. But, alas, she is not a qualified teacher, and Circular 15/68 of August, 1968, says that she must be sacked on 31st August this year. All the people in the village, the school governors, the local education authority, which is the Oxfordshire County Council, want her to stay on. The only person who says that she may not stay on is the Secretary of State for Education and Science.

On the electoral roll there are in this village 285 people. I have here a petition, which the Minister has seen, signed by 212 people in that village. In addition, I have had many letters, and I can sum it up by saying that practically the whole village wants her to stay on. In reply to a Question on 5th March, when I asked the Minister whether he would review this situation, I received the flat answer "No", and the surprising comment, that this teacher would have the opportunity of taking a course for mature students. I remind the House that she is 54 and it does not make sense to ask a woman of 54 to go on a course.

I want her to stay on and continue to teach, and several of my hon. Friends have exactly the same problem in their own constituencies. Page 1 of the circular to which I referred describes how the decision, that unqualified teachers should go, was taken. A working party, representative of local authorities and teachers' associations examined this matter and reported to the Secretary of State, who accepted their report. It was the employers—the local authorities—and the employees—the teachers—who together arranged this; but the parents—the customers—who are concerned most of all with the children, were not represented. This decision was taken in the interests of the teachers and the teaching profession rather than in the interests of the children.

I agree that in the long run children will benefit by a wholly qualified profession, but this has been a mistake by the working party and the Minister; perhaps they did not see the implications of what they were doing. There are certain precedents for what I want. Dentists, veterinary surgeons, architects, National Health Service medical auxiliaries and professions supplementary to medicine, such as chiropody, and so on, had, I believe, exactly the same problem when they wanted to move to a fully qualified profession. In all those professions the people who have been practising for a certain period were allowed to continue to be employed. I do not see why that should not be so with teachers. If the local education authority wants unqualified teachers to stay on, if the teachers have served an adequate length of time and have the ability, they should be given qualified status. A possible way around this might be for local universities to give them an honorary degree.

The county council wrote to the Minister on 3rd July, 1969, asking that Mrs. Green be granted qualified teacher status in accordance with paragraph 12 (b) of the circular. The reply was: Mrs. Green does not hold a school certificate or the equivalent qualification. She cannot be considered for qualified teacher status under paragraph 12 of this circular. Nowhere does the circular mention that she must have school certificate or the equivalent to be recognised as a qualified teacher after a lengthy period of service. We could close the shop to unqualified teachers who are new entrants to the profession, so that in the end all teachers are qualified, but to throw all the wisdom and experience of these teachers on the scrap heap on a given day is the height of folly and is educationally unsound.

Mr. Keith Speed (Meriden)

Is my hon. Friend aware there is a much wider problem than the particular lady concerned? In my own constituency it concerns Mr. Luby and others, and this problem extends throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Marten

I am grateful for that intervention. I am familiar with the case of Mr. Luby as he has discussed it with me and, as my hon. Friend says, the matter involves many people throughout the United Kingdom.

The hon. Lady who is to reply has a fine reputation for caring for children. The whole House recognises the great work she has done in this sphere both inside and outside the House. I ask her to extend her sympathy and knowledge to other spheres and to think about the children such as those in Ascott-under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire and elsewhere who want their Mrs. Greens to stay on as teachers in their schools. The hon. Lady is sensible enough to recognise the point and I hope she will persuade the Minister to take appropriate action, because it is the children who matter much more than the teachers. I believe the Minister has the power to take action on this matter under the circular but, if he has not, he should in the name of common sense take action to put right this unhappy situation.

11.57 p.m.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles (Winchester)

I should like to mention the case of a constituent who is a teacher of handicapped children, and who has 22 years' experience in this vital work. She is now doing a diploma course at a training centre, but she has been informed by the Ministry that she must have at least five years' post diploma experience before she can achieve qualified teacher status. Surely a person with such experience as my constituent in achieving qualified status should have taken into account her pre-diploma experience rather than having to serve a further additional period of post-diploma experience.

11.58 p.m.

Mr. Peter Hordern (Horsham)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) for raising this matter this evening. The case of my constituent Miss Shaw is similar to the case of Mrs. Green. Miss Shaw, who lives in my constituency in Loxwood, has taught for no fewer than 23 years. She has now been told that she cannot teach after 31st August because she is not qualified to do so. It seems a ludicrous and heartless decision.

Is the Minister suggesting that all her pupils have suffered untold damage as a result of her unqualified instruction? Are we now to assume that there are hundreds of people who feel that their development has been stunted because of Miss Shaw's lack of professional qualifications? Is she now supposed to be such a danger to her pupils that within five months she must be stopped from doing the job that she has done so ably for 23 years? What is the urgency? Have we so many teachers in West Sussex that we can follow this kind of pendantic nonsense?

What is to become of Miss Shaw? What arrangements have been made to compensate her for the loss of her life's work? This whole episode is a shabby and mean decision entirely typical of this Government. My constituents will not forget it.

11.59 p.m.

Mr. G. B. Drayson (Skipton)

I have a similar case in my constituency, although the person in question has not been teaching for as long as the people who have already been mentioned. I have not asked the constituent to give me permission to mention her name, though I should like to mention it.

She took up an appointment at a primary school in order to help out with some teaching difficulties some time ago. She says I enjoyed my job very much, but was expected to carry on in a temporary capacity with a view to becoming permanent by at least the next academic year. I must state that I have only a university degree with no further teaching experience. However, they were glad to accept me when they needed someone, and during my last two terms everyone has been at pains to tell me how well I am getting on. She has now been told that she will be able to give up her job at Easter time but that she can become a fully qualified teacher if she does one year and a term's further teaching. But, she says, how can she possibly do this if she cannot get employment of this kind?

As a result of this debate, I hope that the Minister will have second thoughts. I hope, too, that the local education authorities will have second thoughts on these matters and be able to put forward some constructive suggestions. My impression is that there is a considerable shortage of teachers in secondary schools, and we can little afford to do without the experience of such people as my constituent on our school pay rolls.

12 midnight.

Mr. Douglas Dodds-Parker (Cheltenham)

I wish to support my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten), for two reasons. The first is that I represented his constituent, Mrs. Green, for 15 years, and I have great pleasure in endorsing all that he has said about her and Ascott.

The second is to raise the case of Mrs. Biss, a constituent of mine, who taught French for 11 years in France and has a brevet from there. She taught French in Cheltenham for five years, to the contentment of the young, parents and colleagues, and I have forwarded to the Secretary of State a petition signed by hundreds of young and not so young people that she should be allowed to continue teaching spoken French In a primary school. It is a tribute to her.

It seems ridiculous that, after five years of successful teaching, she should be told that she is not qualified. Recently, I put a Question to the Minister, and he said in a Written Answer that there would be exceptions. He went on: One of these is that, where a school needs a particular specialist skill and no qualified teacher is available, an unqualified person may be employed in the capacity of instructor to fill the gap. This provision should cover most of the difficult cases."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th March, 1970; Vol. 797, c. 140.] I hope that the Minister will be able to say that cases such as my colleagues and I have raised will be covered, and that our constituents and the teachers will be able to work together for a long time in the future.

12.2 a.m.

Mr. Jasper More (Ludlow)

I wish to support my hon. Friends and cite the case of Mrs. Neal, a constituent of mine, which is on all fours with the others about which we have been hearing. It is slightly ironical that the news of her having to give up teaching reached me at the same time as a letter from the National Union of Teachers claiming that there will be a shortage of 35,000 teachers coming out of our training colleges.

12.3 a.m.

Mr. W. R. van Straubenzee (Wokingham)

No one listening to this short debate can fail to be impressed by the very human problems which have been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) and others of my hon. Friends who have supported him.

I think that we all agree that, in the teaching profession, it is most desirable to move towards fully qualified status. That is not in dispute. But we are discussing those who have given devoted service for many years and who are in teaching at present.

We understand the limitations of a short debate of this kind, but I hope that the hon. Lady will feel able to say that, in the light of this short but human debate, she will undertake to look at these cases and the principle involved. I hope especially that she will look at the examples of other great professions where it has been found possible to have different arrangements for those who are in the profession at the time that professional status is imposed.

All that my hon. Friends ask for is a litle elasticity and common sense which will bring a spirit of goodwill into cases which may be small in number but which are causing real hardship and heartfelt feeling in many people.

12.4 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Miss Joan Lestor)

In many ways, I find this debate a sad one. However, before dealing with the real substance of the matter, perhaps I might say to the hon. Gentleman who referred to this decision as a … mean and spiteful act typical of this Government", that his words were not typical of the attitude with which his hon. Friends have approached the debate.

The issue surely is that the Government are raising the standard of education by insisting upon qualified teachers being employed in their schools. Because of this, I accept that a few people who have given valuable service to the community are likely to suffer. This is not mean or spiteful. This is a human difficulty which exists because we are trying to raise our standard to give the best possible education to our children. There is nothing mean or spiteful about it. It may be difficult and there are not the loopholes perhaps that we might like to see.

The point raised about mentally-handicapped children is a different matter. This is concerned with the transfer of responsibility of the teachers of mentally-handicapped children from the Department of Health and Social Security to the Department of Education and Science.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles

But surely the hon. Lady agrees that this, like the other cases, is a circumstance in which an ounce of experience is worth more than a pound of formal qualification.

Miss Lestor

I do not know that I would go along with the hon. and gallant Gentleman's measurements. There is a different situation here. This is not the same case, but I take his point.

On the general case, put so well by the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten), I accept completely what he said about the valuable work that Mrs. Green has done with her small number of infants over the years in the village primary school. From what the hon. Gentleman has said, I realise that she is valued in the local community and that many people wish her to continue as a teacher. I also accept that this is true of many other people who are likely to fall by the wayside under the new arrangements. There is no question of saying that they have not given valuable service or that they have been necesarily less capable because they were not qualified. But the employment of people like Mrs. Green after 31st August this year involves important issues for school staffing policy in view of what has now taken place.

The conditions under which teachers may be employed in the maintained system are laid down in the Schools Regulations. Under those regulations as they existed before 1968 teachers had to be qualified. That is to say, with certain specified exceptions, they had to have taken a normal teacher training course or possess some specially approved qualification. We are considering the interests of the children in the new regulations. I should think that the local education authorities and the teachers are the best qualified in this instance to make the judgment, not necessarily the parents. It would have been difficult to have taken parents in as partners in this situation.

One of these exceptions was the category of "occasional teacher". Such teachers, though unqualified, could be employed in emergency on a stop-gap basis. It is, however, a fact that, because of teacher shortage, and often in isolated places, so-called occasional teachers were sometimes used by local education authorities as regular and even long-serving teachers though they never had security of tenure nor any kind of assurance of continued employment. There is no doubt, however, that this practice involved bending the rules at that time, because of certain local difficulties. Mrs. Green was such a person, employed de facto on a regular basis as an unqualified occasional teacher.

It was partly because a number of unqualified persons were being allowed to teach who did not fulfil the conditions laid down that, in 1967 and the early part of 1968, the N.U.T. introduced its sanctions campaign. Following that campaign, the Working Party on Unqualified Teachers was set up to examine the arrangements for the employment of unqualified teachers in maintained schools. Its report, which was ratified by all the constituent associations, both of employers and of teachers, and welcomed by my right hon. Friend, recommended a number of important changes which would make it possible to progress towards the generally accepted objective of a wholly qualified teaching force in the schools, and I do not think that any hon. Gentleman opposite would want to dissociate himself from that objective. These recommendations were given effect by the Schools (Amendment) Regulations, 1968, which came into operation on 1st September.

The Regulations abolished the category of occasional teacher. No new first appointments were to be made after 1st September, and none was to be employed at all after 31st August, 1970. There was therefore a two-year breathing space—they were not sacked just like that as one hon. Gentleman suggested—and that two-year breathing space is now coming to an end. From 31st August next unqualified persons can be employed only as student teachers, or as instructors. Student teachers replace the old temporary teachers. As the name implies, they are people who have the necessary entry qualifications for, and are waiting to enter upon, a teacher training course.

The category of "instructor" was put in to allow persons who were not qualified at the time to be employed, in the absence of a qualified teacher, to give instruction in any art or skill, or in any subject or group of subjects, like shorthand, typing, and swimming, the teaching of which required special qualifications or experience. These are the only two, strictly limited, exceptions permitted to the broad policy of phasing out of schools by the end of the next summer term all unqualified teachers.

Mr. Marten

What is the meaning of paragraph 12(b) of Circular 15/68? The hon. Lady said that this was done under pressure from the N.U.T. Can the hon. Lady say whether the present Minister, who agreed to this, is a member of the N.U.T., or has ever been?

Miss Lestor

I have no idea about that, so I cannot answer the last question.

I have dealt with the two exceptions to the qualified teacher status, and I think that it is clear to the hon. Member for Banbury that Mrs. Green does not come within the scope of either of the exceptions. I have already said that Mrs. Green has given valuable service. I am very sorry that she finds herself in her present situation, but I am sure that nobody would want to go back on the policy of moving as quickly as we can towards the objective of a fully qualified teaching profession in the schools. This policy has been generally welcomed.

It has been implied by hon. Gentlemen opposite that the agreement among the partners in the education service might have left some loophole which would permit the continued employment of unqualified people like Mrs. Green—people who had given long service and who were exceedingly valuable. It might, but unfortunately the fact is that it did not, and that exception does not exist.

It provides, as I have said, for a two-year transitional phase, during which no new unqualified appointments could be made. Existing unqualified teachers could stay on for two years, but they were informed that they were expected to go at the end of that time. The idea was that during that transitional period unqualified teachers could either set out to improve their qualifications and attain qualified status—a course which, as has been made clear, is not one which one could expect Mrs. Green to embark upon at her age—or to find alternative employment.

12.15 a.m.

Mr. Speed

Can the hon. Lady say how many people are in the same category as Mrs. Green or my constituent? Can she give the global figure?

Miss Lestor

I think it is about 3,000. I cannot hold out any hope tonight that my right hon. Friend will be prepared to consider any modification of existing policy, for which in any event he would have to reopen the agreement already reached with the local authorities and the teachers.

Dealing with the question of unemployment, I would say that with a new policy there are bound to be hard cases and Mrs. Green and the others who have been mentioned are undoubtedly such cases. I do not think my right hon. Friend would regard this, in itself, as a reason for watering down a reform which he is satisfied is highly desirable and which has been welcomed. At no time has Mrs. Green, during her years of service, had security of tenure, as her employment shows. She has been employed longer than many others who have been employed on a temporary basis but many others are also in exactly the same position.

I have been in touch with Oxfordshire Local Education Authority, and I have discussed with them whether they can offer alternative employment to Mrs. Green in their service. The difficulty is that she has no formal qualification and that she lives in a remote area. If they can offer her anything for which her background and experience have fitted her, they will. They are good employers and have said how much they have valued her service over the years. They are anxious to do what they can within the new rule.

Mr. Hordern rose—

Miss Lestor

If I may, I will continue and give way later. The hon. Member made a point about other professions which have maintained unqualified status and where people have been absorbed or phased out. I do not know a great deal about those other categories and I would not like to pronounce on them or to say whether they are comparable, but I will report and ensure that the Secretary of State is informed of what has been said tonight. However, in default of any concerted approach from the partners I doubt if he would be prepared to relax his policy.

Mr. Hordern

Will the hon. Lady be good enough to consult West Sussex County Council about Miss Shaw as she has consulted Oxfordshire?

Mr. Marten

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I beg to give notice that in view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I will seek to raise the matter again on the Adjournment.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at eighteen minutes past Twelve o'clock.