COLLEGES OF EDUCATION

HC Deb 29 July 1974 vol 878 cc335-58

7.18 a.m.

Mr. Christopher Price (Lewisham, West)

At this early hour I do not want to raise a particularly controversial matter. I do not raise this subject in any sense of massive onslaught against the Government's promises in respect of colleges of education. Unlike many of my colleagues on the Labour benches, I was rather in favour of the James Report and, so far as it concerned the colleges, the general strategy of the White Paper of the right hon. Lady the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) that followed it.

I was a member of the Select Committee of 1969 which inquired into teacher education. Service on that committee made it clear to me that the colleges needed a substantial change in rôle and that some amalgamations would need to take place. Therefore, I have no broad general criticism and no desire, like Canute, to stop the tide of change in colleges of education, which is clearly coming. However, I have considerable disagreements about the way in which the operation is being carried out. I do not say that carping at my own Minister, because I believe that he is carrying out this operation in very much the same way as his predecessors did.

The substantial criticism of the operation is that it is being carried out in an atmosphere of secrecy which is producing a slow and very serious erosion of morale among teachers in the colleges. I could and should be carried out in a very much more open and orderly manner.

In general, I agree with the comment in the leader in The Times Higher Education Supplement on 28th June that The Department should start to argue its case college by college more openly and persuasively instead of carrying out the most profound institutional reorganisation in the history of British education by stealth. It has been left to The Times Higher Education Supplement to give us such information as we have. On 12th July of this year, we had the most comprehensive progress report on how the Department's plans for the colleges were going. This sort of information which The Times Higher Education Supplement and other newspapers have to winkle out of the Department ought to be produced quite openly periodically by the Department.

I understand that the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) will be discussing his patch in the North of England. I want to concentrate my remarks mainly on London, because I believe that London is bearing the brunt of the reorganisation, partly because of what I call the blind percentage policy which has been applied to London in a completely meaningless way.

The White Paper suggested a 43 per cent. reduction in numbers by 1981 so as to bring the output of colleges in line with the needs of the country. We can argue about that. The National Union of Teachers, for example, says that the cut is too great. The White Paper then applied this 43 per cent., which was a broad national average, to different areas of the country. London is losing population a little faster than other areas. It applied 54 per cent. to London, when London has rather more than its fair share of colleges.

This is an attempt to impose on London colleges an unacceptable burden of contraction which, if forced upon them, will result in grave national loss. Some of the colleges in London—for example, Goldsmiths, the Froebel College in South-West London, Rachel McMillan College, which pioneered nursery education—do not fulfil simply a local role in training teachers to teach in London. They have always fulfilled a national role not only in training teachers for London as a whole but in being in the forefront of educational advance for the country as a whole.

Simply to put London into this 54 per cent. straitjacket—or any slight erosion of which the Inner London Education Authority has managed to persuade the Department by now—is a completely blind and mindless way of proceeding. The Government would not dream of limiting London University to its proper percentage of places for the number of students that London needs. Therefore, it is wrong to apply a differential policy to the colleges.

What is becoming clear at the moment is that London schools are having problems quite disproportionately more difficult than those in the rest of the country. When, over the past year, people have said that certain London schools are on the point of collapse, in my view they have not been exaggerating. Therefore, any attempts that can be made to push the teacher-pupil ratio, particularly in London, down to a reasonable level whereby education can proceed more efficiently and, at any rate, to a position where education in London does not collapse should be welcomed. For that reason I hope that as a result of this debate, the Minister will think again about the degree to which he intends to squeeze the London colleges. It is undertandable that there has to be some cutting back. Nobody denies that. But it is the degree which is proving unacceptable to London.

My second substantial criticism of the Government—I emphasise that this is not of my hon. Friend, but of the time-honoured methods of the Department of Education and Sceince in proceeding with colleges of education—is that they are being fundamentally hypocritical in the way that they are carrying out this operation.

The impression given at Question Time by my hon. Friend—I do not blame him—is to say, "It is for the local authorities to submit schemes, we will consider them, and we are proceeding with consultations with this, that and the other person." The Government are pretending to stand on the sidelines prating about local autonomy, whereas, as is clear from what has come out in The Times Higher Education Supplement, they are bulldozing through a plan which is clearly worked out within the Department but is not open either to the local authorities, to the public at large or to the teachers in the institutions. If the Department is going to all these lengths, as it quite properly is, to work out some plan, let us have it done more openly. Let it make it an open planning exercise and stop all this pretence that it is a job of ad hoc-ery with individual plans being considered, as it were, on their merits. I suspect that the time has come to end the secrecy and to come to some decisions.

I should like to put some specific questions to my hon. Friend, First, what about the regional advisory councils? Clearly we need some regional planning in this area. The White Paper foreshadowed in a vague way, which was never made clear, that the regional advisory councils would somehow subsume teacher training responsibilities. How far has the Department's thinking gone along those lines?

I should like to warn my hon. Friend against having too many tiers. Further education in the past has been bedevilled by too many cooks sometimes spoiling the broth. Local authorities, the Department's further education inspectors, the regional advisory councils, rather grand civil servants in the Department and the institutions themselves have all been trying to do their own planning, all thinking that they have a degree of responsibility, and it never being made clear where the autonomy lies. It is incumbent upon the Department very soon to come out with a clear statement about the future of the regional advisory councils and regional machinery generally.

I declare an interest in Battersea College of Education: I am a governor and, before I was elected to Parliament, was on the formation committee with South Bank Polytechnic. Many of the staff at Battersea were reluctant to merge with the polytechnic and were frightened of what might happen. After long discussions between governors and staff, it was agreed in principle that the college should merge with the polytechnic.

My hon. Friend will know how much of a decision to jump in at the deep end that was. Battersea College trains housecraft specialist teachers and general primary teachers. In the discussions it was argued that South Bank Polytechnic had a general educational side to it.

No sooner had the decision been taken than the Department said in an informal letter to the Inner London Education Authority, "We approve the merger, but you will have to ditch all your general primary work." It is a belief held strongly at Battersea that it does not make sense to train specialists without some part of the college concentrating on general training as well. That came like a bolt from the blue. The patient preparation by the two institutions has suffered a serious setback.

A similar situation arose with the proposed merger between Furzedown College and Philippa Fawcett College in South London which the education officer had worked out with extreme patience. Nobody could accuse Dr. Briault of being a wild revolutionary and producing unsafe schemes. It had always been assumed that there had been discussions with the Department and that the merger would go through. Suddenly—again in an informal letter from the Department—it became clear that this merger as it stands will not do and it must take place in a completely different way. Perhaps it must, but serious personnel problems will arise following the long discussions that have taken place.

There are methods of protecting the salaries of lecturers on a merger. The loss of status—for instance, losing a department—is even more traumatic than taking a cut in salary. Any commercial organisation contemplating such a vast reconstruction or merger would conduct an exercise aimed at protecting the posi- tion of staff and resettling staff, where necessary. Many lecturers in colleges of education have given a lifetime of service and are in their fifties. It will not be easy for them suddenly to switch from teaching rather nice, well-behaved middleclass 18-year-old girls to the rough and ready conditions which must be faced in colleges of further education.

This is similar to what happened when authorities went comprehensive. If we made a mistake in that reorganisation I think it was to neglect the personnel function and to think that if grammar school teachers could teach clever kids they could also teach children who were more difficult to teach because they had more severe problems.

So far as I know, neither local authorities nor the Department of Education and Science have even begun to think about making an effort to resettle those people who will lose their jobs as a result of reorganisation. I hope that the Department will now start to take this point seriously.

The Times Higher Education Supplement was right when it called the reorganisation of colleges of education the most profound institutional reorganisation in the history of British education…". The reorganisation represents a tremendous change. It can produce new institutions which can take Britain into the next century. There is no reason why it should not do all the things expected of it, but it will collapse in bitterness, bewilderment and frustration if the Department continues to approach the matter in the secretive Whitehall way in which problems were approached in the 1950s and early 1960s. We need open planning from the Department, rather than secretiveness and informal letters. We also need much more openness about where the real power lies in the Department, as well as clear time scales so that the teachers involved know how long they have in which to reorganise themselves for what in many cases will be a complete change in their careers.

My worry is that the Department, because it has so much else on its plate—and there is much upon which it can congratulate itself—is carrying on rather mindlessly in exactly the same way as it did during the time of the previous Government, and that previous way was not so much a Tory policy as a civil servants' policy. It was deep in the Weaver tradition.

If we have a more open approach we shall find that there is sufficient good will even now among staffs of the colleges to make the reorganisation a success.

7.38 a.m.

Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed)

Even if I were enthusiastic about the James Report and that which follows from it as is the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) I would support the criticisms of the way in which this matter is being handled in relation to the future facing colleges, and those working in them, for reasons which I will explain shortly. But we are bound to ask how we come to be discussing college closures at all. It is principally because of population projects which suggest that we are, or will soon be, overproducing teachers in relation to the number of children in school. Population projects can be notoriously unreliable, as was shown, for instance, when it was thought that we were producing too many doctors. A decision was made accordingly, but it had to be changed quickly.

It is notable how little faith the Minister's colleagues had regarding this matter when they were in opposition. For instance, on 2nd July 1973 a motion was moved by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), now the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs: That this House regrets the Government's intention to reduce the number of initial training places in colleges and polytechnic departments…". The Minister of State spoke on the motion on behalf of the then Opposition. He said: But a more important point is that even if the reduction in birthrate was the crucial factor in the number of teachers that the Government want and hope to see in schools in 1981, that would be deeply indicative of the different attitudes of the two major parties. For one party, the Government party, a reduction in the birthrate can be looked upon as an ideal opportunity to save money. For the Labour Party a reduction of the birthrate would be looked upon as an ideal opportunity to improve standards. That is the crucial difference between us. He went on: The Government do not even aspire to an overall target of a better teacher supply than 40-sized classes in primary schools and 30 in secondary schools, which is the 1945 target at which the Government are still aiming. It is certainly not a target which a Labour Government will aim at, and it is a figure which we hope will fade into the past by the end of the first Labour Government's lifetime. Consider again the opportunity which the Government have lost here. The college of education places are there."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd July, 1973; Vol. 859, c. 107, 108, 116.] He then argued what use should be made of them.

That was only a year ago. Why should not this Government act more in the spirit of those statements? I say this not by way of a party argument but simply to call attention to what the Labour spokesman was saying then. One would hope that to approach the standards of pupil-teacher ratios in the private sector would be one of the objectives that the Government would seek to pursue. Even if the standards accepted now were to be implemented, that would still be a long way from the position in the private sector. Those of us who put our faith in the public sector would like it to match these qualities of the private sector so that it can win by competition, rather than by more drastic means.

I suspect that the present surgery is too drastic. The college of education places are there and they should not be lightly thrown away. Even given that some reduction is necessary, we must question the way it is being done. Phrases such as "slaughter of the colleges" in the reputable education Press suggest that the Department's handling of the matter has not met with approval from informed opinion. It has been described as "unusually arrogant and tactless", and has been accused of …shuffling colleges about like pawns on a chess board", and of carrying out …the most profound institutional reorganisation in the history of British education by stealth". My first criticism is of the Department's refusal to disclose the overall plan, picking off the colleges one by one, as The Times Higher Education Supplement put it, without justifying the plan in an overall context. To find the overall context one has to go to the education Press. The pieces of the jigsaw have been put together by The Times Higher Education Supplement, but it is the Department's job to disclose the plan, so that the colleges can see where they fit in any challenge arguments on a broad canvas.

My other criticism is that the Minister should not claim that he is simply advising local authorities. I am prepared to accept his good faith if he says that his plan is not final, that he proposes to discuss each proposal with the local authorities and colleges concerned and that many of the proposals will be modified. I hope they will. But is he pretending that the local authorities who might choose to go against his advice will be able to operate properly within the existing educational framework? Does he suggest that if local authorities continue colleges which he thinks should be closed or amalgamated they will be allowed the intake of students for the colleges and that their capital works will be approved by the Department in future? If so, he is saying that under his aegis there has been a major change in the way education is administered in this country. This might be welcomed, but it is asking too much to expect us to believe that he is simply advising, no more than that, and I ask him to be more frank.

The strategy I have criticised, with the failure to disclose the full plan and the attempt to convey that this is all a matter of polite advice, is particularly hard on colleges such as Alnwick in my constituency. Now we can see what the whole plan is. We can see from the education Press who is down for closure and who for amalgamation. We can see that Alnwick's case is far stronger than that of some other colleges not recommended for closure.

First, I draw the Minister's attention to the particularly good achievements of Alnwick in training mature students, many of them drawn from the college's own rural area of Northumberland. It has taken large numbers of such people who are going into teaching from other occupations. Its entry qualifications have therefore been low and the Department has used that to some extent as an argument against the college. In view of the success with students with low paper entry qualifications we can see how signal have been the college's achievements in taking people whom the education system has not treated very well and fitting them to serve in that education system.

I do not accept what appears to be the Minister's argument that we can move quickly to a graduate teaching profession. In particular I do not accept that in trying to make that move we should begin by throwing out of the education system the contribution which mature students of this kind can make with the help of a college such as Alnwick.

May I draw the Minister's attention to Alnwick's increasing work in nursery education, a field which the Department acknowledges must be expanded and upon which reductions should not be allowed to fall heavily. The college has made considerable strides there and its future contribution could be very great. I remind him of the college's reputation for experimental and adventurous course planning which attracts a particular type of student who wants more discretion over his subject than he can obtain at many other colleges.

May I draw the Minister's attention to the vital contribution the college makes to the small town of Alnwick. Employment, particularly professional employment at present provided by the college, would be irreplaceable in a town such as Alnwick which even now has less than half the national average of "group 4" professional people in its employment structure. Forty such jobs would be lost if the college were to close. A recent independent report on the economy of Alnwick said prophetically It goes without saying that the college of education and the Ministry of Agriculture office must be retained at all costs. The local economic and social importance of such establishments is too often forgotten when their functions and provisions are being discussed at higher levels. That importance extends to an estimated contribution of at least £300,000 a year to the economy of Alnwick by the College, and that is a considerable sum for a small town. It extends to the involvement of students and staff in every aspect of the social and cultural life of the town. It is hard to imagine how many of the events in Alnwick—the fair, and many of the artistic events—could take place without the contribution of the staff and students of the college.

The North East Development Council in its representations to the Minister has pointed out that it is by no means farfetched to compare what would happen to Oxford if the university were to close with the impact on Alnwick of the removal of its college. I am making a comparison not of educational institutions but of the relative importance of the institutions to the towns. Oxford is a large town with alternative industrial employment. Alnwick is a small town with very few opportunities.

I ask the Minister to remind himself of the massive recent investment in Alnwick College—well over £250,000 spent on projects, and money still being spent on them, designed to equip the college for a rôle which the hon. Gentleman seems determined to take away from it.

The Minister is bound to have in his mind the supposed disadvantages of Alnwick. One of the arguments which seems to find favour in his Department is that Alnwick is remote and therefore unsuitable. I cannot see how that argument can be advanced when it is not advanced against colleges in the Lake District or Scarborough, for example, which are expected to remain open. I ask the hon. Gentleman to acknowledge how greatly communications in the area have improved, and in how short a time one can reach Alnwick from Tyneside by road.

I also ask the hon. Gentleman to remember that if Alnwick College closes he will be creating an educational void between Tyneside and Edinburgh. There will be nobody being educated beyond the age of 18 in the whole of my constituency, the whole of north Northumberland. There is no other further education in the whole area.

Another supposed disadvantage of Alnwick is the low entry standard, the low paper qualifications of students. In fact, the college's achievement has been to take people whose previous educational opportunities have been limited and achieve extremely good results and demonstrate how great their contribution to education can be.

Yet another supposed disadvantage is the difficulty Alnwick might have in establishing a validation arrangement with Newcastle University or the CNAA. The difficulty of establishing a validation arrangement between Newcastle and Alnwick has nothing to do with Alnwick College and is no sense a criticism of it. It arises from internal decisions at Newcastle as to whether that university's resources should be involved in validation at all. It represents no criticism by Newcastle of the possibility of Alnwick's coming under its umbrella for validation purposes.

As one who was working at Newcastle when the decision was made, I recall clearly that it was an internal decision relating to the university's use of its own resources, in which individual colleges were not discussed. CNAA validation might eventually be developed by co-operation with institutions in Newcastle, which is not as far away in terms of time as the distance on the map might suggest.

Alnwick's case is supported by many people beyond its own area, including some of the Minister's hon. Friends and hon. Members on all sides of the House, who may very well ask why Northumberland in particular is being asked to sustain a high level of cuts, particularly in comparison with County Durham. If the cuts must be made in Northumberland, they may also ask, why must they fall on Alnwick and not perhaps in a more distributed way on colleges closer to Tyneside, where some of the arguments I have advanced do not apply and where the problem of replacing lost jobs is by no means as serious as at Alnwick? We are particularly disposed to ask why Alnwick must be sacrificed, in effect, to the development of education institutions within Tyneside, whether the other colleges or the polytechnic.

I realise that the Minister is due to meet representatives of the local education authority today. I do not expect him to give a decision today or to commit himself. But I must ask him to indicate certain things. First, I hope that he will be more frank with the House than he has been so far and be prepared to admit that his Department is setting out a far-reaching plan, in which it no doubt has confidence, but which should be argued thoroughly throughout the education system if it is to win the confidence of those who must work under it. The Govment must set an example of openness and a willingness to participate in discussion. They must not do so on a hole-in-the-corner one-college-at-a-time basis but in a full and open way.

In that spirit of frankness the Minister must recognise that his Department has the whip hand. He is not giving his advice. His Department has the ability to control the future of the colleges and those who teach in them. Therefore, these decisions are crucial. I ask the Minister to recognise that his proposals represent an attempt to subordinate the educational pattern of the Alnwick college and the needs of the town to the tidiness of an administrative plan. It is very easy to destroy what has been built up but it may be harder, particularly in an area such as North Northumberland, to replace it.

The Minister has assured us—he assured me in a reply in the House—that he is in control of the situation. He has not said that his Department is carrying on with a plan of its own with which he is little concerned or that he is executing the previous Government's policies with more ruthlessness than they displayed. He has examined the plan and he is committed to it.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Gerald Fowler)

It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman did not invent a plan and persist in claiming that it exists. If that part of the hon. Gentleman's argument falls, the rest of his argument falls with it.

Mr. Beith

That intervention is less than worthy of the Minister. If he reads his own copy of The Times Higher Education Supplement he will discover what he should know already—namely, that he has put forward proposals for many education colleges. It may be that his proposals should not be taken as one plan and that they should be regarded as scores of individual proposals. The Minister may wish these matters to be regarded as individual proposals but they add up to a plan which will profoundly change the educational system. Its impact on the whole college system is enormous. I cannot understand why he is so keen to deny that there is any overall thinking behind it. It would be a severe criticism of him and his Department if there were no general thinking behind the series of individual proposals which he has put forward.

I ask the Minister to consider Alnwick College with particular care in applying his set of proposals, if he would prefer to call it that, or his plan as I call it. He acknowledges that he is in control of the situation. I am prepared to believe that if he acknowledges that in this respect this is not a good plan and if he ensures that Alnwick's future is as a college of education.

7.58 a.m.

Mr. William Shelton (Streatham)

I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) for raising a matter that is becoming of increasing concern to many people not only in this House but in the teaching profession. I am sure we all wish to avoid anything that seems to harm the status and importance of teachers and that we would wish to consider carefully whether that was the result of a certain policy.

First, I wish to make the Conservative Party's position clear. I hope that the Minister of State will not quote at me the speech that he quoted recently to my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) outlining the policy to which my hon. Friend gave his support when he was in the Department. That is our present policy for teacher training colleges. We are not going back on that. We accepted it and we accept it now.

What we do not accept is the implementation of this policy. I hope that that is clear. On this we seem to have a coalition of the three parties that are represented in the Chamber in that we are saying more or less the same thing. There is something wrong in the way this matter is being carried through. It seems to be a nonsense on the part of the Department. Perhaps the reasons for it was given inadvertently by the Minister of State in his intervention just now—that there is no plan. If there is no plan, perhaps that is why the thing is going wrong.

The hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) mentioned Philippa Fawcett College. It is in my constituency. I have here a rather pathetic but important letter from the students' union, written without the knowledge of the principal. It says: Philippa Fawcett College has for the past year or so been engaged in planning for an amalgamation with Furzedown College in Tooting, in line with the recommendations made in the White Paper 'A Framework for Expansion'. More recently, however, we have received a circular from Mr. Harding of D.E.S. which effectively puts paid to these plans. The circular suggests that a further reduction in teacher training is necessary, and the impression is gained that Philippa as a centre for teacher training will undoubtedly cease to exist, as it is suggested that we merge with the expanding F.E. Sector…". The way this matter has been handled by the Department is alarming and confusing to the college to such an extent that the President of the Students' Union has written such a letter to me.

I wrote to the Minister, enclosing a copy of the letter, on 16th July, but to date have not had any reply. I do not wish to pursue this matter further because I think that the hon. Member for Lewisham, West covered the points excellently. He made the speech I would have made had he not made it first. The House would be grateful to the Minister if he would look carefully at what is going on. Why does a teacher training college first receive a circular through the post? A visit should have taken place first.

Again, why do we have in the Berwick-upon-Tweed constituency a situation in which it seems that the teacher training college is being considered as though it existed in a void and is not a relevant and important part of the community? Why is it that the situation of colleges like Philippa Fawcett is such that they cannot plan ahead? The letter from the Philippa Fawcett Students' Union goes: Without knowledge of what is being planned at a higher level we are finding it very difficult to plan ourselves, and we feel that we should be in receipt of such information in order to plan courses and seek amalgamations that would be beneficial to the teaching profession, and in line with the national picture. The planless picture seems one of uncertainty and confusion. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to take this opportunity to resolve the doubts and tell us in which way the policy is moving, reassuring us that the policy will be implemented in a thoughtful, sensitive manner with open consultations with all those concerned.

8.5 a.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Gerald Fowler)

I have found this debate a little disappointing in the sense that, if I had not been here to speak for the Government, I would have concluded that the principal source of education planning in this country—indeed, the source of all wisdom in education—was The Times Higher Education Supplement, and that every word printed in that remarkable journal must be accurate. Because one reporter of The Times Higher Education Supplement has succumbed to the conspiracy theory of history, it does not mean that every Member of this honourable House should do the same.

I have been accused of acting, on the one hand, as if there is an overall plan. Those words have apparently been used to mean a rigid plan which determines the future of every college in some detail. That is certainly the way in which the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) was using the words, until I challenged him and he slid into equating his use of the word "plan" with what he called "general thinking". Of course there is some general thinking in the attitude of myself and my Department in this matter. It would be quite extraordinary were that not so. But to say that there is general thinking does not mean that there is a detailed plan worked out in advance for every college and every area of the country.

Mr. Beith

Does the Minister not recall that I conceded that the plan or set of proposals which he had may very well be provisional and that he may not be at all rigid and may be prepared to reconsider it? But does he ask us to believe that when he has made proposals for every college we are not allowed to consider this as something of a general plan, however provisional?

Mr. Fowler

Yes, but I am afraid that this is a simple matter of logic. If we take 100-and-however-many colleges it is, and ultimately there is a solution proposed, whether in the first instance by the authority or by the providing body, or perhaps in the second instance by my Department, and we come to the end of the exercise, I suppose that the hon. Gentleman will say "One hundred and so and so separate proposals all add up, making a plan." But that is not the way in which we use the word "plan" in the English language. This is a matter of simple logic. I am denying that there is an overall plan in the sense in which the hon. Gentleman was using that word early in his speech.

The local education authorities are responsible for the maintained colleges. The voluntary bodies are responsible for the voluntary colleges. Proposals come in the first instance from those bodies, normally through the LEA. It is at that stage that my Department comments. Sometimes it says "Yes". Sometimes it says "Yes, but you might like to think of one or two alternations or additions" Sometimes it says, "We do not think this is the right way to proceed. Have another look at it if you do not mind". But my Department is not the original source of proposals. I hope that that is absolutely clear.

If I say that, I am at once open to the opposite charge. Both have been made in the debate. Hon. Members have not been quite as consistent as they seemed to think they were with each other. The opposite charge is that we are doing things, in the words of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, in a hole-in-the-corner fashion on a one-college-at-a-time basis. We cannot both have an over-all plan and be doing it on a one-college-at-a-time basis. It is true that we proceed one authority at a time within the overall framework, which is perfectly public and is set out in Circular 7/73 which was issued under the Conservative Government.

That overall framework for regional distribution of teacher education places is the only overall framework that exists.

In The Times Higher Education Supplement I am told that we proceed by stealth and by secrecy. I had a meeting yesterday with representatives of one authority. I have a meeting later this morning with the local Education authority of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed. I have a meeting, with my right hon. Friend, with representatives of another area of the country tomorrow evening. I recently went to Coventry. I have met people from Brighton. So I could go on. Is this stealth or secrecy? I know the origin of that charge. It is that the Department communicates with local education authorities and not with The Times Higher Education Supplement.

Mr. Beith

Or Members of this House.

Mr. Fowler

I was not aware that Members of this House maintained colleges of education. I cannot discuss what is the property of the local education authorities with other people until I have first discussed these matters with the authorities. The correspondence with the local education authorities is in no sense secret. It is not marked "confidential". There is nothing to prevent the chief education officers and their committee discussing it absolutely openly—indeed copying it if they wish—with all the staff and students in the colleges. I know that some chief education officers were under a misapprehension and we have specifically written to chief education officers saying that the letters we send them on this subject are in no sense confidential. There is no stealth or secrecy.

Mr. Christopher Price

Without wishing to enter the Byzantine argument about which point of the spectrum between rigid planning and absolute ad hoc- ery the Department stands at the moment, may I ask my hon. Friend whether he would not agree that the 1944 Education Act lays down a great distinction between the autonomy of local education authorities in further education generally and in teacher training? Does not the Act lay upon the Secretary of State considerable responsibilities in terms of teacher supply for the teacher training sector? From that point of view, although I take my hon. Friend's point about the way in which he has been trying to consult, does he not think that the Department has some responsibility implicit in the 1944 Act for producing a more coherent, open, plan, than he has so far admitted?

Mr. Fowler

If my hon. Friend is suggesting that we have a responsibility to make sure that teacher supply is, according to our lights, right and that we do not permit college by college, area by area, to be filled ad hoc and the whole exercise to fail, so that we ultimately get too many or too few teachers, then I accept that. That is why I referred to Circular 7/73. That is exactly what it is about.

Some of the charges, laid primarily in The Times Higher Education Supplement and repeated in this House, have essentially one origin. We ought to be clear about this. I am concerned about the future of the staff in the colleges. I am glad that my hon. Friend has drawn attention to their problems. It is natural that they should be exceedingly concerned about their future at the moment. It is equally natural that if proposals are made affecting their colleges, which, as they see it now, may adversely affect their future—and which perhaps do not fully meet their wishes with regard to their college—they should react by saying that the Department is proceeding by stealth and secrecy and that the Department is using a sledge-hammer and so on.

I understand this. I have every sympathy with these people. That is one of the reasons why I am exceedingly keen to proceed with this exercise on the basis of consultation, of receiving representations whether at ministerial or official level, from whoever may wish to make representations. Above all, it is why I am anxious to have the matter settled as quickly as it can be settled, consonant with getting the right answer. That is the only way in which we shall still these natural worries.

I do not propose to comment at length on the subject of Alnwick. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed will not be surprised because he has given the reason. I have a meeting with the maintaining authority later this morning and it would be improper of me to deal with the argument before we meet the authority whose property the college is. I have every sympathy with many of the arguments adduced by the hon. Member. This argument can be adduced with respect to many areas of the country. Everyone thinks that his own case is unique, and that is what makes this exercise peculiarly difficult. The hon. Gentleman will have noticed that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) made a plea that the cutback in London should not be so sharp. If it is not, some other colleges will go. When I went to Coventry recently I heard a plea that there should be expansion there. I have heard pleas that there should be an expansion of teacher education in about six areas. I cannot concede all those pleas. That is inconceivable. Every time than an hon. Gentleman makes a case for the preservation of his own college or for its expansion if it is likely to remain in the system he makes a case for the run-down of somebody else's.

We are dealing with a piece of string, not a bit of elastic. We cannot stretch it in all directions.

Mr. Beith

I accept the hon. Gentleman's point. However, does he agree that some hon. Members have got as near as they can to conceding that it might be desirable that the string should be stretched in a particular way? If cuts have to be imposed in, say, the North-East, they must be imposed in a slightly different way, perhaps by restricting expansion or reducing the total number in some of the other colleges rather than totally destroying one college.

Mr. Fowler

I shall be happy to consider arguments of that kind later this morning, and when I see the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members. However, he takes the general point that it is impossible to make a case for expanding or keeping open one college without making a case for running down another.

The Alnwick case is not unique in another sense. The hon. Gentleman mentioned a college in the Lake District. The geographically very large County of Cumbria, with a substantial population, has only one college of education. The Northern Region as a whole is well provided with places in colleges of education. But there is a heavy concentration of those places on the eastern side of the country. Cumbria has but one. Cornwall and Suffolk have none. In my County of Shropshire the local education authority has proposed, and we have agreed, that this year shall see the last intake to Radbrooke College. That will leave Shropshire with no college of education.

In my constituency I have a town, rather larger than Alnwick, which will ultimately be the size of Leicester. The hon. Gentleman referred to Oxford. What about a town the size of Leicester with no higher education? These problems are not unique. They affect many parts of the country and many constituencies.

The hon. Gentleman said that he did not accept that we can move quickly to an all-graduate teaching profession. I do not accept that we can move to an all-graduate teaching profession tomorrow; neither does anyone else. But both the Government and the Conservative Party are firmly committed to the proposition that we shall move as rapidly as possible to an all-graduate teaching profession. We should be in dire trouble with our teaching force if we were to renege on that commitment, even to the extent of saying that we can exclude the output of one or two colleges.

The hon. Gentleman asked, regarding the development of the teaching profession, whether it was the Government's aim to improve standards. I can assure him that it is our aim, and if he has heard my right hon. Friend speak on this subject in the House he will know that we have committed ourselves to a reduction of class sizes to a maximum of 30, in the old-fashioned language we would normally use to refer to the teacher-pupil ratio, in both the primary and the secondary sectors.

I come to one of the major points I want to make about the factors which determine our policy. The hon. Gentleman referred to the projections which show a declining population in the schools. The school population, on present projections, will reach its peak in 1976 and thereafter will begin to decline very rapidly.

The birth rate continues not simply to decline but to plummet. I am not predicting that that will continue, but I can operate only on the basis of predictions showing that that is happening. As from about 1976 smaller age groups will begin to work through the secondary sector. Then there will be a sharp drop in school population. Even keeping the target of 510,000 teachers set by the previous Government, that means that we can reckon on improving standards by 1981 to a much greater extent than was originally planned.

That is one of the major factors to be taken into account in planning the future of the colleges. Apart from what the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed suggested at the beginning of his contribution, it makes it imperative to introduce the colleges to the general system of further and higher education. Unless we do, we shall never have the flexibility that will allow us to expand or contract teacher education to meet fluctuations in the birth rate. At the same time, wastage rates from the profession are at a low level. Further study undertaken partly on behalf of the Department suggests that there will be a larger number of married women returners coming into teaching at the end of the decade than we have been accustomed to.

If we add all those factors together, it is clear that the number of initial training places that we are likely to need by the end of this decade will be lower rather than higher than the figure shown in the 1972 White Paper. It is in that national context that I ask hon. Members to consider individual proposals which show a run-down of teacher education places, or even a proposal for the closure of a college.

The trend of those who are able and willing to profit from higher education—to use the Robbins' phrase—is also behaving oddly. The proportion of the age group able and willing to benefit from higher education is not increasing as rapidly as we thought it would three or four years ago. That points to a smaller number of places in higher education. I am not telling the House anything new. The right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) said that last January. I am not predicting that that will prove to be so, because the trend may turn up.

In looking at the future of the colleges in the next few years, an additional constraint is then that we are talking about a system which is not expanding quite so rapidly as we thought it would. The pace of expansion will be much slower, and it is, therefore, more difficult for colleges to fit in and diversify unless they are sizeable units when they enter the system of further and higher education. We cannot hope to put into the system a small teacher education unit on the understanding that with the overall expansion of the system within a few years that unit will be able to diversify naturally and with little difficulty.

I turn now to higher education courses. The introduction of modular courses of teacher education and general higher education necessitates much wider diversification within institutions and, therefore, the institutions must be of greater size at the moment of entry to the general system than we have been accustomed to with mono-technic institutions, with courses not based on the modular principle. This helps to determine our attitudes. Against that background we look at individual proposals.

We have reached a point in our discussions with the Inner London Education Authority where, as between the authority and ourselves as opposed to some of the colleges, only one college remains at issue.

In general we are clear on what should be done in London. In essence the plan is the ILEA's. When the ILEA submitted its plan to us, one of my officials replied to the Chief Education Officer. The dear old Times Educational Supplement described that reply as a "blockbuster" Well, I suppose it is in terms of size since it is a substantial document, but London is a substantial place with many substantial colleges, so it was reasonable that it should be a bulky document. But in terms of language—and I will not read it to the House since it is so long—it is a moderate document indeed.

What it said was that with regard to the maintained colleges in London, the future of three of them was accepted as the authority had proposed, the future of another three was accepted, with one or two minor qualifications, and the future of the remaining three we would wish to discuss further. I do not think that situation is too bad. I do not think it can be said to be a bulldozing or block-busting attitude.

I was asked specifically about Battersea College. I shall look at that question again. I was aware of the suggestion that Battersea should run down its training of primary teachers. The primary reason for that suggestion was that the requirement for primary teachers is beginning to diminish rapidly. We have to cut back somewhere in respect of primary teaching.

As for the Philippa Fawcett and Furze-down Colleges, all that was suggested was that the future of a merged institution would not be as clear on the ILEA proposal as it would be if some vocational element could be added to that merged institution. I should like to quote from the letter to ILEA: We doubt whether in the circumstances of Central London the development of these two colleges as liberal arts colleges would be viable and would like further consideration to be given to the possibility of their amalgamating…". The letter refers to amalgamation with either a named college of FE or with a neighbouring institution of FE. There was no suggestion that either institution should close. That seems to be very mild indeed.

With regard to London, as with the rest of the country, I suggest that our policy has been proceeding on the basis of discussion with the authorities and with the colleges, and in general by agreement. On the other hand, I would not pretend that all the London colleges will be happy with what is agreed, whether the proposal originates from ourselves or from the authority. I hope that with good will we can continue the amalgamation of colleges of education with the general system of further and higher education.

I should like to end on a personal note. I have long believed—long before James, long before the White Paper—that it was not in the best interests of teacher education that it be continued in monotechnic institutions divorced from the mainstream of higher education. I believe that two or three years from now we shall have the outlines of a system which will stand us in very much better stead as we leap towards the twenty-first century than did the system of further and higher education we knew in the past.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas)

Mr. Jessel.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade (Mr. Clinton Davis)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not quite extraordinarily ill-mannered and highly discourteous to you and to my Department that the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel), who purports to exhibit such interest in matters of this character, should deem it inappropriate to give notice either to you or to me that he had no intention of being here for a debate on an important issue like Maplin?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I do not know why the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) is not here. I envy him.