HC Deb 13 May 1977 vol 931 cc1856-64

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

4.1 p.m.

Mr. Philip Goodhart (Beckenham)

In the last few years, by means of many Questions, I have pursued the problem of the official statistics on the provision of school books, but this is the first time for 10 years that I have raised the subject in an Adjournment debate.

In replying to my debate on 23rd March 1967, the then Minister of State, Department of Education and Science, who is now Secretary of State at the same Department, said: It is fair to say that we still do not know in detail the precise statistics for expenditure on books, as distinct from other sorts of equipment, and I hope that we shall give careful consideration to obtaining rather clearer statistics from local education authorities on this matter."—[Official Report, 23rd March 1967; Vol. 743. c. 1982.] Since the right hon. Lady made that encouraging pronouncement 10 years ago, the situation has, alas, deteriorated sharply. The only official statistics on expenditure by schools on books can be found in the volume "Statistics of Education" published annually by Her Majesty's Stationery Office. It shows the total amount spent on books at primary and secondary level by schools in England and Wales.

Another volume, "Education Statistics", published annually by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, gave a figure for expenditure on books per child for each local education authority in England and Wales until 1972–73, but since then the institute's figures have become much less precise and now cover material and equipment as well as books. Indeed, for 1976–77 the "Education Statistics" volume of the institute changes its basis of calculation yet again, and physical education equipment and stationery are included. The figures of the institute and of the Ministry appear up to two years after the period with which they are concerned.

In general, the money which any school gets towards spending on learning resources, including books, comes as a capitation allowance. The amount that a school gets depends on the number of pupils, but local authorities vary enormously in the way they calculate capitation allowances and they vary widely when considering what items they expect schools to purchase with the allowances. Local education authorities also change the items to be covered by capitation allowances from year to year. Many authorities, therefore, can say that it is difficult to state with any accuracy how much they are spending on books or plan to spend in the near future.

Meanwhile there has been a further deterioration in the position. The Association of Education Committees used to issue recommendations on the amount of money that local authorities should make available for the purchase of school books. The AEC is now being disbanded and its last set of recommendations was issued in 1975.

Since then we have had the authoritative Bullock Report on literacy, "A Language for Life". Alas, there seems little enthusiasm either in the Department of Education and Science or in the local education authorities for a standing working party, recruited from both the Department and LEAs, to investigate the allocation of resources to schools which was recommended in chapter 21 of the report.

The report made it clear that the working party's first task would be to recommend minimum figures for book provision. Why has the Minister shown such reluctance to implement that vital recommendation? More than two years has passed since the recommendation was published and generally applauded. When will the working party be set up?

Perhaps one reason for the reluctance to implement the recommendation is that it would certainly expose a deteriorating situation. The year 1972–73 was the high point of book provision in our schools. In 1972–73, using figures adjusted to 1976 prices, we spent an average of£3.10 on books for each child in English and Welsh primary schools. By 1975–76, the last year for which figures are available, this had fallen to£2.73. In 1972–73 we spent on average£6.43 for every child in a secondary school. By 1975–76 the figure had dropped to£4.73. Meanwhile, book prices have soared.

An article in the Teacher of 12th November 1976 estimated that in the last three years there had been an average increase of 64 per cent. in the price of textbooks. The article referred to one widely-used French textbook published by Harrap which had gone up from 65p in 1971 to £1.60 in November. In the same period a teachers' handbook published by Penguin had increased in price by 200 per cent.

In the last two years there has been intensified pressure on local government spending. The capitation allowance is one of the few items in the enormous education budget that local authorities have the power to cut. They cannot cut teachers' salaries or stop providing school meals without causing an uproar, but they can cut back on school books or refuse to make any allowance for inflation.

I am glad to say that my own local education authority in the Greater London borough of Bromley has behaved well. This year the capitation allowance for primary children will increase by£3.00 from£8.50 to £11.50. Allowances for secondary school children will rise from£14 to£19.50, with greater increases for sixth formers.

We all know that there is an enormous disparity between areas. I shall refer to one school, the Hartcliffe School in Bristol, which was analysed in detail in The Times Educational Supplement on 8th April this year. It is a 2,000-pupil comprehensive school in a large council estate. In 1975–76 the capitation grant totalled£39,000. In 1977–78, despite inflation, the capitation allowance is£27,000. The result of these pressures is real deprivation. We heard recently of one school which could afford only half of a two-volume German dictionary. Children can learn only German words beginning with the letters A to M. in another school in Fleetwood, Lancashire, 96 pupils share one atlas. In Gloucestershire one teacher was found to be buying class books with her own money and obtaining others by means of her own public library ticket. From Surrey, Camden, Carmarthen and Somerset I have reports of schools that are officially asking parents to help pay for the provision of adequate textbooks.

It is natural enough that education publishers should be anxious to expand the money that is available for school books, but the concern about this matter goes right across the education spectrum. I praise the attitude of the National Union of Teachers on this issue. I thank its education department for the help it has given me personally.

I do not often agree with the views of Mr. Max Morris, the well-known Left-wing leader of the NUT, but in conversation with him recently he contrasted the views of the Leader of the Opposition when she was Secretary of State for Education and Science with those of the present Ministers at the Department. In 1973 there were cuts when my right hon. Friend was Secretary of State. However, she specifically asked that book provision should be preserved. In the face of more stringent cuts now imposed, the Department has take a "hands off" attitude. It has written: It is not open to Ministers to attempt to influence priorities of expenditure. It is not surprising that Mr. Max Morris should say to me that the technique now is to hide information.

The Minister may well reply that a broad-based departmental inquiry is taking place into all aspects of non-teaching expenditure in education. I believe that the inquiry is slow-moving and far too broad. When we are supposed to be having a wide-ranging debate on the quality of education, it is crazy that the critical book position should be ignored. We all understand that even if there were unrivalled prosperity it would still be well nigh impossible to ensure that every child was taught by a first-rate teacher in a modern schoolroom, but for a comparatively tiny sum we could soon ensure that every schoolchild was provided with decent books. It is time that we acted.

4.13 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Miss Margaret Jackson)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart) for raising this subject. As he has indicated, it is one of considerable importance. Clearly the provision of books in schools, whether textbooks or library books, should be adequate.

The hon. Gentleman seemed to be making two basic points. First, he said that there is insufficient money available and that insufficient books are available in schools. He quoted specific examples and specific cases. Secondly, he seemed to be saying that greater publication of figures—for example, of the money spent—would give us a more accurate picture. It is on that matter, first, that I take issue with the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Gentleman does not need to be reminded, but it is always as well to get it on the record as so few people seem to be aware of the fact, that in this country we have a highly decentralised education service. The decentralisation goes right down to the grass roots. Not only is my right hon. Friend not in a position to tell local authorities how much they should spend on books, but local authorities within their own areas delegate a great deal of responsibility in matters of this sort to their head teachers.

The effects of the decentralisation are in this context twofold. First, as the hon. Gentleman indicated, it is extremely hard to get a reliable national picture of spending on school books and on books generally. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy used to publish more detailed figures than it now gives, and I gained the impression that he regarded it merely as a matter of regret that it would no longer publish information in quite so much detail.

I must tell the hon. Gentleman that the reason why the institute ceased to publish the figures in so much detail is not that it wished to be unhelpful to the hon. Gentleman or to others who wish to study the subject. The truth is that the institute became more and more aware that publishing figures in that way did not give an accurate picture of what the provision of books was across the country. Because it felt that the sort of league table of spending which it had produced in the past tended to be misleading, it discontinued it in the form which the hon. Gentleman described.

There are several reasons why the figures were unreliable. For example, some schools have substantial stocks of books made available to them from the public library service. Apart from the fact that there are differences in the amount of provision made from the public library service, there are differences also in the way that provision is shown in local authority accounts. There are considerable differences from one authority to another, and one cannot therefore see a simple correlation of that kind.

Moreover, it sometimes happens that where an authority has provided a general stock of books—for example, if a new school has been equipped and opened—the authority charges the amount of money spent to its capital account. Such a sum would therefore not appear in the ordinary figures collected as they were by the institute on the basis of information drawn from revenue accounts. Here again there is a possible source of error.

The money which is provided at school level in the capitation account, as the hon. Gentleman said, is provided to the headmaster or headmistress, and it is within the head's scope of decision-making to determine how it shall be spent, whether upon books, and what kind of books, or on other goods or services.

Again, the range of goods and services expected to be covered by the capitation grant varies from authority to authority, even though the discretion of the head is usually universal. So there is scope for difference and error here too.

In effect, it would seem that the only way to reach a really accurate picture of what is happening in authorities and in schools would be to take a detailed analysis of accounts in respect of each individual school and then collate and analyse them. But not all authorities do this. They keep a general eye on spending in relation to the capitation allowance, but they do not as a rule keep detailed control over it. Indeed, even if a more detailed control were kept it would still be subject to some discrepancies and some differences of recording unless authorities actually took the step of totting up all the invoices and going through all the accounts in detail. I am sure the hon. Gentleman recognises that many authorities would be reluctant to do this, and we might well be reluctant to ask them to do so at a time when they are so much burdened with other work.

As I say, CIPFA realised that the figures which it was publishing gave a somewhat distorted picture, it decided to discontinue them and, as the hon. Gentleman said, it now publishes a composite figure.

It is true that we could ask authorities to try to provide more precise figures than they have shown in the past, but we recognise that, apart from the difficulties of actually collecting the figures which I have described, there are other difficulties too.

I do not for a moment suggest that books are not an essential item in a school's equipment—of course, they are extremely valuable—but they are nevertheless one factor in an authority's spending priorities.

The hon. Gentleman instanced an authority that he thought had done sonic of the right things and others that he thought were making a mistake in their spending priorities. But an authority spending quite large sums on books might be doing its pupils little service if at the same time it was severely cutting back its expenditure on teachers. There are many items of various kinds on which authorities spend their education money, and even accurate figures simply of spending on books would not necessarily give the overall picture of the service that an authority was giving in schools.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned a fall in spending on books, which we all regret, as we regret any fall in spending on any part of the education service, although it has been found necessary recently. What the hon. Gentleman has left out of account is that there are developments in educational technology and teaching methods. Although I imagine that there will always be a considerable need for books, there are some areas of teaching in which, although they are a valuable tool, they are not the only item available to help the teacher, as perhaps they were in the past. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman is being a little unfair in saying that there is a direct correlation between spending on books and the experience available to the children.

Although I recognise that this is a serious question, what matters is that authorities should try to ensure that there is adequate provision of books to meet the requirements of the children, which will vary according to the kind of work they are doing and the teaching methods the schools have adopted. We can all agree on that, and I am sure that the local authorities also agree that they would wish, as we would, to be able to do more.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the steps taken by the Leader of the Opposition when she was in the Department in which I now have the honour to be. He pointed out that at a time when cuts in spending were less severe than they are now the right hon. Lady suggested to authorities that they should preserve the book provision and that this was in many ways an admirable step. He seemed to indicate that we in my Department had not felt able to take a similar step. That is a mistake on his part. We have not said to the authorities that we should like them to keep the spending on books at the same level, although we wished we were able to do so. However, we have said that we would like them to maintain the pupil-teacher ratio in their schools.

The hon. Gentleman quoted Mr. Max Morris, a gentleman for whom I have the utmost respect. I would be a little surprised if Mr. Morris felt that it was a more admirable priority to tell authorities to keep up their spending on books rather than on teachers. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's remarks came as a surprise to me.

However, let us return to the question whether the publication of more detailed figures would really assist the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps we can agree to disagree. I thought that perhaps in any case that was of less concern to the hon. Gentleman and that he was really worried about the amount actually spent on books and felt that it should be increased. Unfortunately, ail areas of public spending are having to suffer restraint. Education must take its fair share of that, and spending on such items as books—what we call non-teaching costs—must also bear a share. Like the hon. Gentleman, I bitterly regret it and eagerly look forward to the day, I hope not far distant, when this is no longer the case and local authorities can increase their spending on books, as on every other aspect of the service. At present, however, I cannot financially assist the hon. Gentleman and I suggest that the more detailed figures for which he asks would not materially assist him either.

Mr. Goodhart

I referred to the working party that the Bullock Committee, more than two years ago, recommended should be set up to provide minimum figures of book provision. That recommendation was widely applauded at the time. Since then absolutely nothing has happened. Does the Department intend to take any action?

Miss Jackson

The Bullock Report made many recommendations, most of them for local authorities to implement and the various implications of many of which are still being considered. It seems to me at least possible that any working party would encounter much the same difficulties in finding reliable statistics and being able to interpret them as the DES or the chartered accountants have found over the years. Therefore, I question whether that would assist the hon. Gentleman as much as he would wish, either.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes past Four o'clock.