Mr. Patrick May hew (Royal Tunbridge Wells)With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I beg leave to present a petition.
It is the petition of Rusthall St. Paul's Infants' School Parents' Association, its school managers, its nursery school group, Rusthall Residents' Association, the Parochial Church Council, and the residents of Rusthall, Tunbridge Wells, in the county of Kent.
The petition shows that the accommodation and essential facilities provided by Rusthall St. Paul's Infants' School building are totally inadequate to meet the needs of the increased number of children attending the school. The petitioners pray that priority be given to providing a new school building forthwith.
The necessarily bald language of the position cannot do justice to the conditions at the school. Built in the last century, by today's standards it should accommodate no more than 120 children. Last term, it had 189, and housing in Rusthall is increasing.
The school is split between two sites. There is no hall. The lavatories are too few, out of doors, out of date and often out of order. There is no dining room or kitchen. Every child, every day, has to cross the busy High Street and three other roads to get his lunch at a hall five minutes' walk away from the school building. The playground is already too small, and it is reduced further by the presence of a temporary classroom. The headmistress's room is also used as a secretary's office, the staff room for her six teachers, the television room, the library, 1096 the music room, the sick bay, the Ml room, and for remedial work, among other school activities. There is not very much room left in it for the headmistress.
These conditions are rightly thought in Rusthall to be a scandal, and 3, 464 of my constituents have signed the petition. They include 29 county and borough councillors and among them are members of the Kent Education Committee which for years has tried to replace this school on land which has already been bought for the purpose, but they have been prevented by central Government from doing so.
It is a curious system of priorities which will provide £1, 000 million over the next five years for new comprehensive schools and yet cannot provide the money to replace—
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas)Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. and learned Member for Royal Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Mayhew), but I think he knows that the speech he is making should be delivered on an Adjournment debate or on some other occasion. Tonight he can only present his petition.
§ Mr. MayhewIf I have transgressed I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The immediate rebuilding of this school is the urgent and earnest prayer of the petitioners in this petition which I now beg leave to present.
§ To lie upon the Table.