HC Deb 18 June 1975 vol 893 cc1553-60
Mr. Ronald Bell

I beg to move Amendment No. 37, in page 15, line 25, to leave out Clauses 22 to 28.

These clauses apply to education, and I propose to delete them from the Bill because, if they remain in, no single-sex school may be established because schools exclusively for boys or for girls will be a declining category, and only existing establishments would be exempted from the provisions of the Bill.

In my experience there is a considerable demand from parents for single-sex schools. There are already not enough of such schools for parents who want to send their children to them. This is certainly true of my constituency. I believe it to be the case throughout most of the country. Yet this position is bound to get worse under the terms of the Bill as time passes.

So far as I know—I shall be corrected if I have missed something in the Bill—it will not even be permissible, for example, for the Roman Catholic Church to start up a new convent school for girls only under the terms of the Bill. An absolutely rigid doctrine is to be clamped down, and it will mean that gradually single-sex education will be faded out.

Different people have different views on this matter. I believe that there should be freedom of opinion, freedom of conscience, and a variety of facilities available to the public.

I happen to believe in single-sex schools. I know that there are people who take a contrary view. We should all be free to back the view that we hold. The Bill is in that respect tyrannous. It is not merely dogmatic and overbearing. It is entirely ruthless and leaves no mitigation for the future. Nowhere will it be possible to start, either by a local authority or privately, an independent single-sex school.

I am surprised that this has not attracted more attention than it has. One of the strange things about this House is that if a lot of controversial and extreme proposals are put into a Bill, controversy is concentrated upon a few of them, such as the NUT amendment dealt with earlier. There is a great row and battle over a number of them, and a whole lot of things which are equally important slip through with very little attention and comment.

In my time in the House I have noticed that if a Government want to get through some quite outrageous things, all they have to do is put them in the schedules at the end of a very long Bill, and by the time the Committee gets there, having had battles all the way, it all goes through and the Committee hardly knows what it has done. This is a provision of that kind in this Bill which has had very little public attention and virtually no parliamentary attention. Here we are abolishing for the future—it will be gradual, I admit—single—sex schools. It is quite outrageous and I do not think I need say anything more about it.

I know that the hon. Lady the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science does not approve of single-sex schools and would like to see every child go to a mixed school. I do not dispute her right to hold that view, if indeed it is her view. What I dispute is the right of any legislature to say that nobody else shall effectively hold any other view. That, I think, is quite monstrous.

I wish I had realised earlier—it is my own fault—that the clauses that I am moving to omit, Nos. 22 to 28, only apply to the admission of pupils, and that colleges at Oxford and Cambridge or other universities, or single-sex schools, are going to be exempt in no way under the Bill in relation to the engagement of staff, so that they will not be able to say at a boys' school that they want masters, or at a girls' school that they want school-mistresses. The hon. Lady confirms that that is so. I think that has slipped through without being noticed, and it is outrageous. The spokesmen for the Government should have drawn attention to this fact earlier on. They did not do so. The first time I heard of it was this evening. Had I known of it earlier I would have put down an amendment to the employment clauses to deal with it. Perhaps that can be put right in another place and come back to us in that way.

I ask the House to take my amendment very seriously, if belatedly. I hope that my hon. Friends will support me in this and that we shall not let this drift through unchallenged because other things have taken up our attention and nobody has bothered about it enough.

Miss Joan Lestor

I should like to help the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) if I could, because what he is saying has no relevance to what he is trying to do. He has moved that we leave out Clauses 22 to 28. That would mean taking out all the education clauses. But Clause 26, one of the clauses which the hon. and learned Gentleman wishes to remove, is the express clause which allows single-sex schools to exist. An amendment will be moved to Clause 26 later on which deals with single-sex schools. But if the hon. and learned Gentleman succeeds in getting the approval of the House to this amendment, he will remove the clause which retains what he wants to retain—the preservation of the single-sex school.

Mr. Bell

The hon. Lady is right that I seek the removal of Clauses 22 to 28 and that Clause 26 allows existing single-sex schools to continue. But, without Clause 22, we do not need exceptions. Clause 22 says: It is unlawful, in relation to an educational establishment …, to discriminate against a female … in the terms on which it offers to admit her to the establishment". Clause 22 is the operative clause. I agree that Clause 26 is a mitigating clause. But I am not just proposing to leave out Clause 26. I am proposing to leave out the whole of the Bill's application to education. If that is so, I am content to do without mitigation, because there will not be any disaster to be mitigated.

Mr. Michael Shersby (Uxbridge)

I listened with great interest to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell), and I wish to make one or two further remarks about the operation of this legislation as it affects education.

Since coming to this House, it has been my experience that there is one factor above all others in which parents are interested. In past years we have had great arguments about comprehensive schools, direct grant schools, independent schools, and the rest. But what many parents desire above all is the opportunity to send their children to single-sex schools. I should be extremely concerned if any provision in this legislation prohibited any parent from sending a child to such a school or prohibited the setting up of any single-sex school in the future.

I hope that we shall have an assurance from the Minister that nothing in this measure prohibits any parents in my constituency sending a child to a single-sex school which exists today or which may be set up in the future.

Miss Joan Lestor

One of our difficulties is that we shall be discussing later the very clause dealing with single-sex schools, which is the exception in all this, and I do not want to make now the speech which I intend to make later.

If the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) reads Clause 26, he will see that what he is asking for is covered by that clause and that there is no need for his concern.

The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) directed almost all his remarks to single-sex schools. He said that, because he wished to preserve such schools, he wanted to remove all the clauses relating to education. But this is not what he wants at all. He wants to ensure that the doing away with sex discrimination does not apply in any area of education.

We have no intention of removing education from the Bill. Clause 26, which gives certain exemptions on single-sex schools, is another matter with which I shall deal later.

The principle of putting in education is such an obvious one. It is no good arguing that when children leave school there should be equal opportunities for boys and girls, whatever occupations they choose to follow, irrespective of their sex, when we have an education system which, by virtue of the way it operates, discriminates not so much by having boys' schools and girls' schools, which is a separate issue, but by what it teaches girls and boys, whether they be in single-sex schools or co-educational schools. It can apply to both. The teaching and educational opportunities given to those children means that ultimately they do not have equal opportunities. That is the point of having education in the Bill. It would make a nonsense of sexual equality for men and women if it were not.

11.30 p.m.

I know what the views of the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield are upon women—and men—because it works both ways. If we want to give equal opportunities to boys and girls we must ensure that we do not build into the educational process a conditioning which makes assumptions about the roles of girls and boys. We have to ensure that there is equal access to all subjects, irrespective of sex. Whether this takes place in a single-sex school or a coeducational school is not the most important factor. This subject will be dealt with when we come to Clause 26.

Mr. John Page

Can the hon. Lady state quite clearly that when the Bill is passed it will be possible, if this Clause remains as it is, for new single-sex schools to be established in the private and public sector? Can she give us a categoric assurance?

Miss Lestor

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman will not wait until we reach Clause 26. He is being unfair to those hon. Members who have tabled amendments to that Clause. I am being asked to give an answer to something that we have not yet reached. If the hon. Member wants an answer without any explanation I can say that there is nothing in the Bill which prevents an authority from establishing a single-sex school. That is why the hon. and learned Member's remarks were so erroneous.

Mr. John Page

And independent schools? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] The hon. Lady was kind enough to answer part of the question but I specifically referred to independent schools and schools within the State sector. I was wondering whether she had particularly singled out schools within the State sector.

Mr. Shersby

I have listened with great care to the hon. Lady and I am grateful to her for her explanation. Could she elaborate precisely what she means by avoiding discrimination in relation to teaching? I find it hard to follow her on this. What do the Government wish to avoid in terms of discrimination within teaching?

Miss Lestor

This is something that will arise later. Other hon. Members have tabled amendments to the clauses dealing with this point. I have done my best to reassure the hon. Gentleman. It is not fair to those who wish to move amendments later if I answer the point before they raise it. I hope the hon. Member will be patient.

Mr. Alison

The hon. Lady is beginning to ignore the mood and reasonable requests of the House. We are debating a group of amendments which include Clause 26. She has mentioned Clause 26. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Page) made a perfectly reasonable request of the hon. Lady, who, sensibly enough, answered it, after making a great deal of fuss. I hope that she will now answer simple questions We do not ask for elaborate explanations We want short answers to succinct questions. If the hon. Lady wants to elaborate later we will not object. I hope that the hen. Lady will not say "I have a lot to say but I will not say it now I will wait until it suits me." The Opposition are properly moving amendments and we insist upon answers to reasonable questions. I hope that the hon. Lady will not prolong our debates by producing delaying answers telling us that we must wait and see.

Mr. Ronald Bell

When an amendment is moved to leave out Clauses 22 to 28 everything in those clauses is in issue. It is not unreasonable to ask for answers, nor is it fair of the Minister to suggest that nine clauses deal only with the single question of the curriculum, with what the children are taught at school. Clauses 22 to 28 inclusive are seven clauses dealing with a wide variety of subjects.

The hon. Lady brushed aside the question of the curriculum. Because of lack of time I did not mention, although I had intended to, that this is also a strong argument against having education in the Bill, because it is the avowed intention of the Bill to control the curriculum of schools in order to shape people's minds in the way in which the hon. Lady wants them shaped. That is the purpose of most of these clauses that I want to leave out. The hon. Lady has virtually said so. It is to reverse the views that people may hold on their own about what it is desirable that their sons or daughters shall learn, or what the daughters want to learn. There will not be freedom, for example, to have cookery lessons for the girls while the boys do something else. All this prescribed by Act of Parliament, not personal preference or desire, but Act of Parliament based on partisan prejudices.

This is entirely wrong. The only proper thing to do is to take education out of the Bill and leave it to the free play of parental choice and preference, and not the prejudices of, or put it bluntly, Left-wing Socialists.

Miss Joan Lestor

The hon. and learned Gentleman has got it wrong. There is a great difference between what we are doing and saying "We shall control the curriculum and you shall learn this, this and this". The hon. and learned Gentleman asks "Why can't girls learn cookery and boys do something else?" That is exactly the prejudice we are getting at.

What we are saying, as most people in the country understand, is that at whatever education establishment whether single-sex or co-educational, the subjects available shall be available equally to boys and girls. There will be no dictation that a girl must learn cookery and that a boy must not, as is often the case, or that a boy must do woodwork while a girl does something else.

We believe that as wide a curriculum as possible should be available to all the children at the school. If that is not crystal-clear, and if it is regarded as dictatorship, the hon. and learned Gentleman is misusing words.

Amendment negatived.

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