EDUCATION (LEWISHAM) (Hansard, 17 December 1973)

Mr. J. Selwyn Gommer (Lewisham, West)

With great pleasure I raise this evening the question of the continuing problems of education in Lewisham. Naturally, quite a number of the problems there are under the direct control of the Inner London Education Authority and it would be improper for me to raise those problems here tonight, but I should like to draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister to the special problems which arise particularly in my part 1106 of the borough of Lewisham and which are different from those in the rest of London.

London is an area where the size of the school population, particularly the secondary school population, is generally falling, but in Lewisham and certain parts of Wandsworth it is rising and the primary school population also shows a considerable increase. It is therefore likely that there will be continual pressure on the Department to give permission for the extension of existing schools and to establish new ones. It is to ask that the Department should face up to the grave problems which we have that I raise the matter on the Adjournment tonight.

The particular problem which has given rise to this debate is the establishment of the new Lewisham school for which the Department gave permission sometime ago after a considerable campaign by parents and teachers and the then Conservative-controlled ILEA. We were pleased that the King Alfred Girls' School was to be replaced by a new school in my constituency The school has been in two buildings, separated by the South Circular Road. It has grown, and it is an excellent school under the headship of Mrs. Shelton. She has gathered a good staff, all ready for the move to the new school for which the Department has given permission.

Unexpectedly, with no indication to the parents, who came to me for advice, who had chosen to send their children to the new school, it was not opened at the beginning of the new school year, and we have no indication from the Inner London Education Authority whether it will be ready even for next year. It is to that that I ask my hon. Friend to turn his attention.

The King Alfred School was a three-form entry school and the new Lewisham School is to be seven-form entry. For two years the King Alfred School has expanded its intake ready to move into the new premises.

Unfortunately the new premises are not ready, and no notice of this eventuality was given. Until the last moment the people concerned thought that they would be moving into the new buildings in Manwood Road. They have been recruiting pupils and teachers and now find 1107 that they are on two sites, so that a primary school is unable to open for children who desperately need it. This is three miles away from the other two buildings which are still separated by possibly the busiest road in London, the South Circular. One of the buildings now occupied by the King Alfred School is scheduled to be taken over by a primary school. That primary school is fit to burst. We are in grave difficulty in finding enough benches for bottoms, let alone good accommodation and teachers.

When we have a school such as the King Alfred School, which has done so well, with a full complement of staff, even according to the generous staffing allowances of the Inner London area, it is a serious matter for the parents of children who opted to go to that school on the explicit understanding, which I believe my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State also accepted, that the Inner London Education Authority would provide that school in time.

I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to pressure the authority and demand, as the money for the school is forthcoming from the Government, that we get a date for its completion and that that date is before the end of the current school year. Otherwise, we shall have not merely five forms of children trying to work out their time in a primary school but another intake far too big for the present accommodation, which would be totally unacceptable and would do great damage to this growing school.

Let us picture the situation of a parent in my constituency. He or she might ask me "Should I send my child to the new school?" My reaction would be "Of course. It is a first-rate school with a very good headmistress and staff." But then the parent will ask "Will there be a place for my child, in the sense that there will be a desk at which he will sit?" I will be unable to advise him or her to put the child down for the school, because we do not know whether it will open.

The Department has a responsibility to make sure that its money is being spent properly and to find out why the Inner London Education Authority has so far been unable to explain either why the school is so late or what it will do to make sure that the school arrives on time.

1108 This is a specific example of the problems with which we are faced in Lewisham. We are at the bottom of the list in Inner London. Because of our special problems of an expanding school population, because of being right at the edge of the Inner London Education Authority area, we find ourselves always unable to provide the kind of accommodation, teachers and environment that other parts of London can find.

I have asked my hon. Friend and his predecessors to take a special look at the needs of the area of Lewisham, particularly the need for another boys' school. So far the Inner London Education Authority has refused even to make a recommendation to my right hon. Friend. But when it does recommend that there is a need for another secondary school in Lewisham to replace the present Roger Manwood School to set free a building in Kilmorie Road, rebuilt after the war, for primary education, I hope that my right hon. Friend will consider that recommendation with great care.

We in Lewisham have a further problem, which exacerbates the difficulty of actual places. For many years the Inner London Education Authority's figures have, I believe, been inaccurate. The authority has not been able to say how many school places we need. That is why we have a great shortage at both primary and secondary school level. But now, with a general teacher shortage in London, we are in a particular difficulty.

My hon. Friend will no doubt say, and I will agree with him, that the two background facts to the teacher shortage are that, first, over London as a whole there is a better teacher-pupil ratio than in the rest of the country, and, secondly, that the economic climate must be taken into account. Today is an ideal time to mention it. The Government are pointing out that we must face the fact that in many ways stage 3 is the most generous incomes policy we could possibly have because, with the lack of growth which we now face, particularly owing to the industrial action we are experiencing, we shall find it more and more difficult to increase wages. In those circumstances it would obviously be unacceptable to offer the teachers an agreement which was outside phase 3.

I do not ask my hon. Friend to do that. What I ask him to do is to ensure 1109 that the Secretary of State and her colleagues make the best offer which can be made within the terms of phase 3 to the teachers of London. Secondly, I ask him to do all he can to ensure that, when we move into easier times, at the top of the list of priorities shall be means of providing for teachers working in London the opportunity to earn a salary commensurate with the pressures on them and the cost of living in London.

If my hon. Friend did that, it would be right for him also to ask that the ILEA looks at a number of issues which up to now it has failed to face. He can use his influence to ensure that it does so. First, if the pupil-teacher ratio in London as a whole is as good as I believe it to be, it seems odd that it has not been possible to improve the situation in Lewisham, Wandsworth and one or two other areas. The ILEA must look—my hon. Friend must press it to look—at ways of getting teachers to move to these areas within the general catchment area.

Secondly, my hon. Friend must do all he can in consultation with the Minister for Local Government and Development to ensure that local authorities do more in the provision of housing in areas like mine where the possibility of buying a house is considerably diminished by the activities of the local authority. In Lewisham nearly half the units of accommodation are owned by the Lewisham Borough Council or by the Greater London Council.

Therefore, if there is to be housing for teachers, some of it must come from the general stock of local authority housing. Because of pressures which I have led in my constituency, the local authority has given way and provided some housing for teachers. I would hope that by hon. Friend the Under-Secretary could use his influence to ensure that that pressure will be maintained and that we provide more accommodation for teachers in areas of stress such as the southern part of the borough of Lewisham.

Thirdly, my hon. Friend could do much by way of encouragement and circular to get local authorities concerned with education, particularly the ILEA, to face the issue of the size of schools. A school which serves my constiuency, 1110 although it is not in it, has a school population of over 2,000. It is a good school with a good staff and good headmaster. It would be a better school if its size were diminished. Instead, the ILEA suggested that it should be increased—that it should be a school of 2,500 children. That would be an intolerable burden to place on those who organise and run such an establishment.

It is no good the local authority pretending that this is not at the heart of the problem of bringing teachers to London. If we provide them with an environment in which it is almost impossible to teach, we cannot blame them for going to pastures new. If the only educational change which takes place is not the radical change which I should like to occur but the traditional conservative change of insisting on large schools for children aged from 11 to 18, there will be a lowering of the number of teachers who want to come to London.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary could do a great deal to help in the matter of discipline in schools. If we have a society in which the schools are unable to provide the atmosphere in which academic or any other work can take place, we do not have a society which easily attracts teachers. My worry is that in many areas of London—Lewisham is by no means the only area—there are schools which could be much better if only their size was right and if only we could find ways of improving the teachers' conditions. I do not mean conditions in the sense of bigger staff rooms and the rest, but conditions in which teachers may teach. What worries me is that they are so often non-existent.

I want to see my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend set a standard and bring to the notice of those who are concerned with education the need to provide the minimum of discipline which is necessary if there is to be education at all. The reason why I commend to my hon. Friend the special situation in the new Lewisham school is that in the King Alfred School which it will replace I met that fascinating middle way between discipline which was too strict to provide for the natural exuberance of young people and discipline which was too lax to make it possible to teach. It was a relaxed atmosphere without being an atmosphere in 1111 which no work could be done. That is a great tribute to the staff who worked in very difficult circumstances.

Finally, I ask my hon. Friend to bring his influence to bear upon the ILEA in considering plans for the recruitment of teachers in Lewisham and, above all, to bring home to the ILEA that, if we are to solve the continuing problems of education in Lewisham, we must look at the facts on the ground rather than at the educational theories which so often inform those who make policy at County Hall. This is an area of racial and social mixture in which many young people start with the great disadvantage of a deprived home.

The activities of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mean that in this area there will be pre-primary education of a kind we have never dreamed of before and that primary schools are being replaced. I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to match that with secondary school provision that is sufficient to meet the genuine aspirations of the young people of Lewisham and a teacher supply that makes it possible for them properly to be taught in an area where education means so much.

Many parents in my constituency have moved there because they wish to give their children an education which they themselves were not fortunate enough to receive. It is to those parents that my hon. Friend must address himself. They ask him to use his influence to see that the ILEA ceases to treat my borough, and particularly my bit of the borough, as the Cinderella of London's education and faces the special problems of an area where the numbers on the school rolls are rising so fast.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Timothy Raison)

In listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Selwyn Gummer) I had a sense of déjà vu because, as he will recall, it is not many years since he and I were both members of the ILEA Education Committee. I happened to be on what passed for a front bench and he was in a comparable position to his present one. I learned then what an eloquent advocate he was of the needs of education in Lewisham.

1112 Small as is the attendance here this evening, those who are present cannot help but be impressed by the fervour with which my hon. Friend has spoken on behalf of the children in his part of London. He has always taken an outstanding interest in what happens in the schools in Lewisham, and I am sure that in time the children will look back with gratitude at what he has contributed.

My hon. Friend has asked my Department to face several important problems. I here introduce a theme which will have to recur again in saying that most of the things my hon. Friend has talked about are fundamentally for the ILEA, as he himself acknowledged. However, the Government have this relationship with all education authorities and we will follow closely and sympathetically the various points my hon. Friend has raised in so far as it is within our power to do so. He can certainly count on my personal sympathy for what he has said.

I recall the days when I was on the ILEA Education Committee, hearing about and visiting the King Alfred Girls' School, to which my hon. Friend has paid an apt tribute. As he implied, this project is in the starts programme, so in a sense the Department has done its bit. I have not had the time or the opportunity to look into the details of why the new Lewisham building project should have been delayed. In fairness, however, I must point out that there is one aspect which comes within our responsibility—the building situation generally. I should be surprised if that has not contributed to the delay.

Even before today's economic announcements, we had taken steps to try to get rid of some of the great pressure which has built up on the building industry, and I hope we shall see the consequences in an easing of the position in those schemes which are under way or are meant to be under way. I hope we have done something which will help in this respect, but I will look more closely at the details of the case.

I will also inquire into the more general point my hon. Friend raised about the future needs of Lewisham in education and the question of an additional boys' school. But the recommendation that there should be a new boys' school in Lewisham, if it be the right thing, must 1113 come from the ILEA, and it is not proper or desirable that the Department should usurp the functions of education authorities in this respect. But I will look into that matter also.

Naturally, and almost inevitably, my hon. Friend referred to the vexed question of supply of teachers in London, particularly in areas like his own. We have heard a lot about this during the last few weeks, and rightly so. We all recognise that the supply of teachers is the crux of good teaching. Everyone would like to see an increase in the pay of a great many professions, and teaching is no exception. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his clear realisation that whatever can be done has to be done within the framework of stage 3. If we breach stage 3, we merely let loose inflation and all those things which have brought us to our present difficulties.

I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will note what my hon. Friend has said about the best possible offer that can be made under stage 3. This is primarily a matter for negotiations within the Burnham Committee and there are set procedures for it, but I am sure my hon. Friend's words will have been noted.

I also have no doubt that what my hon. Friend said about special measures which might help to get teachers into areas like Lewisham have been much discussed in education recently. Questions like the possible provision of special housing for teachers is one which London boroughs have been looking at closely, and it is right and proper that they should.

My hon. Friend mentioned yet another subject of great importance—the size of school and the great bearing this can have on the quality both of the formal education and the discipline or environment—whatever one likes to call it—prevailing within any school. There is no doubt that there has been something of a change of heart or change of mind in London on this topic.

My hon. Friend will recall that when we were both serving on the ILEA, the received doctrine of those days was that schools should be very big and that comprehensive schools needed to be very big 1114 and all-through 11-to-18 schools. A number of members on the Tory side of the authority tried to see whether the doctrine was capable of a little modification, because even then we did not believe that it was the best education gospel. But it proved a difficult job.

It must have been of great interest to my hon. Friend, and to many others who were at that time concerned in London education, that the ILEA itself put forward proposals recently relating to North and North-West London acknowledging that schools did not have to be very big if they were to work effectively as comprehensive schools. In place of the old notion that 2,000 or more children were necessary to produce a viable comprehensive school, the ILEA is now talking of 750 or thereabouts. What is more, my right hon. Friend has made the point repeatedly that she believes that size can be excessive, and she will have followed this new development with great interest.

The corollary is that it is necessary to look afresh at sixth form provision, but the proposals put forward by the ILEA about more flexible ways of providing good quality sixth form teaching are of great interest to the education community, and they strike a sympathetic response in my own heart. We welcome the fresh thinking that is going into how to provide comprehensive education which matches the quality desired.

It is not unreasonable to say that the comprehensive argument is moving from the doctrinal, theological state of a few years ago to a more healthy state where we can look at practical problems of how to make schools work effectively without thinking constantly in terms of very loose principles.

I endorse what my hon. Friend said about discipline. Again, what happens inside the schools is primarily a matter for the education authorities, especially for head teachers and staff, with the support of the governors and so on. Very few people want to see the Department of Education and Science excessively interventionist in these matters. We have a great tradition of putting our trust in our head teachers and staffs. But we are bound in the Department to be aware that there is a great deal of concern throughout the country. We share it, and 1115 we have been thinking hard as have outside bodies, about these vexed questions of violence, truancy and so on. My hon. Friend's words evoke a sympathetic response on my part.

The schools of Inner London labour under great difficulties. We are doing a good bit nationally to try to help in terms of the special provision that we can give to deprived areas, and I am committed totally to this kind of approach. But that is only part of the story. It will need continuing effort and continuing reinforcment.

We ought also to remind ourselves that, as well as the difficulties of schools and the black or grey spots, there are some bright spots. There are teachers in 1116 London who are doing a magnificent job. Whatever criticisms we may make of some aspects of London education and the response of some teachers to the relative teacher shortage in recent times, I still retain from my ILEA days a deep sense of affection for London education and the belief that most of those in it are deeply dedicated to the children whom they serve.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this important topic, albeit at rather short notice. We shall take very much to heart the points to which he has drawn attention.