HC Deb 27 January 1984 vol 52 cc1237-46

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Garel-Jones.]

2.35 pm
Mr. Kevin McNamara (Kingston upon Hull, North)

I wish to raise the subject of the past and future basis for deciding the proportion of teacher training places to be allocated to voluntary colleges engaged in teacher training.

The concept of the historic share for Church of England and Catholic colleges is acknowledged by all concerned to have played an important part in determining the allocation of teacher training places during the severe reduction of teacher training in the 1970s. The concept originated in the Department of Education and Science, and the historic shares were the shares of teacher training before the reduction began.

There is a difference of view about the role that it played in the 1970s. In the Secretary of State's view, in words he has used many times, the historic share was a factor in the decisions on contraction, but not an overriding factor. In the view of the Church authorities, the historic share, as administered by the Department of Education and Science, was not just a factor in the sense that past shares were considered but not necessarily followed in the making of decisions, but became the basis for determining the total of places allocated to Church of England and Catholic colleges; that is, their shares were based on the historic share.

The past role of the historic share is a matter of importance for several reasons. Recently, the Secretary of State, in his letter of 30 September to the Bishop of Portsmouth, chairman of the Catholic education council, expressed his unequivocal view that, in a changing world, there can be no commitment to any particular share of the public sector initial teacher training intake for the colleges supported by any particular denomination".

In saying that, is he continuing the policy of previous Secretaries of State at the time of previous reductions in teacher training—notably on the last occasion in 1977—or is he making a new departure in policy? He appears to think that he is not making a new departure. But if he is wrong, as I believe him to be, he is framing new policy under a misapprehension about previous policy and in the mistaken belief that he is following previous policy. If this were shown to be the case, as I consider it can be, he would, I assume, naturally wish to review his approach fundamentally, once he knew that it had started from a misapprehension of an obviously serious kind.

Moreover, as the right hon. Gentleman has acknowledged, the matter of historic shares has been one of wide public interest and debate. In his letter of 30 September to the Bishop of Salford about the future of the De La Salle college, a letter which he published with a press release in view of the national interest in the matter, he stated During the past months a great deal has been written and said about historic shares

For all these reasons I consider it important to examine the past role of the historic share concept before turning to future policy on teacher training in voluntary colleges.

The question of the role of the historic share has arisen in particular over the case of De La Salle college, the governors of which brought a court action against the Secretary of State. One of the grounds for seeking judicial review of his decision to end teacher training at the college was that he had misinformed himself about the past role of the historic share. Affidavits made on behalf of the governors of the college and the Secretary of State referred to documents relevant to this dispute. The governors of the college dropped their action at a late stage, in the light of a promise by the Secretary of State, at a meeting with several Catholic bishops, to review fundamentally his previous decision, and there were enough nods and winks there, with an election in the offing, to make people think that the Catholic Church would get its way in the matter, but they were sadly disillusioned. It was agreed that the past role of the historic share should be included in the review, and the Catholic education council submitted a statement reviewing the evidence, which was similar to that produced in the affidavits for the court action.

In his letters of 30 September, the Secretary of State, in reiterating his previous decision, still did not give his views on the issue of the historic share. Subsequent answers to parliamentary questions by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi), who joined me in this case and argument, have shown that the Secretary of State adheres to his previous position, but to date there has been no statement, in correspondence or otherwise, which seeks to justify in detail his position on this point or to answer the case made against it.

Before turning to the detailed case, I shall pose a question for the Under-Secretary of State to answer in the course of his reply. I welcome the presence of the hon. Gentleman, with whom I have argued various education issues in the past six or seven months. As the Secretary of State has acknowledged that the issue that I am raising is of wide public interest and as his interpretation of past policy and events has been challenged, why has he failed to give a detailed reply to the questions and representations that have been put and made to him? Will he give a detailed reply now to those representations?

The case is even stronger because Ministers were not eye-witnesses to the operation of the historic share on the previous occasion when there was a contraction of teacher training in 1977 under the then Labour Government. By contrast, many of those who dealt with these matters on the voluntary side in the 1970s are still in post. My right hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Mr. Oakes) was the Minister of State, Department of Education and Science in 1977, and he had particular responsibilities for these matters. My right hon. Friend disagrees with the Secretary of State's interpretation and considers that the historic share was what its name suggests—a share—and was not merely a factor that had to be taken into account. When eye-witness testimony is so much against the Secretary of State, there is an onus on him, in my view, to provide a justification for disagreeing with the detailed case that was submitted to him.

The detailed evidence on the historic share was given in affidavits that were sworn for the court action brought by the governors of De La Salle college. It was summarised in the CEC statement to the Secretary of State. The affidavits deal with the Catholic share of teacher training. A letter of June 1975 from the Department of Education and Science set out the basis of the Department's proposals for a Catholic share of 9.33 per cent. of teacher training places. That was based on the previous proportion of students. Subsequently in letters of July and August 1975, the Department argued that the annual intake should be based not exactly on the share of places but on the share of intakes in previous years, which would result in a fractionally lower figure. Each letter argued that the 1976 intakes should be based on the historic proportion of the total intakes which Catholic colleges had had in the previous years.

The following year, in a circular and letter about intakes in 1977, the Department stated: The Church of England and the Roman Catholic institutions have been allocated their historic shares of the total intake and these have been divided between individual institutions in consultation with the Church of England board of Education and the Catholic Education Council.

A reorganisation of teacher training took place in 1977 as a result of which, incidentally, I lost the Catholic teacher training college in my constituency. I have never forgiven my local bishop for that. The Department's original proposals, which were set out in the press notice of January 1977, gave the Church of England colleges and the Catholic colleges their historic share of total provision. The Catholic colleges' share was 9.3 per cent. The Department envisaged the cessation of teacher training at St. Mary's college, Fenham, and the college sought to continue.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Halton, the then Minister of State, wrote a letter to the chairman of the governors, the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, in which he stated: It needs to be recognised of course that with a ceiling of about 45,000 places and the retention of the Catholic colleges' historic proportion of total provision, the reversal of any proposal to discontinue teacher training at a particular institution would inevitably have consequences for one or more others.

It was later agreed that St. Mary's college, Fenham, should continue with 300 teacher training places, these being found from within the total of 4,200 that had previously been agreed as the Catholic share. In the event, the national total of teacher training places increased beyond 45,000 — the figure that had originally been announced — but there was no increase in the total Catholic share. That was pointed out to the Department, and it led to the Catholic intake being restored to 9.3 per cent.

The hon. Member for Hornsey and Woosd Green has asked two questions about the basis used in the contraction of teacher training in 1977. I am surprised that in answering the first question the Under-Secretary of State should have quoted the Department's press release of December 1976 without referring to the release of January 1977. I am surprised also that when, in the second question, his attention was drawn to the release, he should have answered it without referring to the arrangements finally made on intakes.

The Secretary of State has argued that the voluntary share of teacher training has been determined at different times in different ways. He has not specified what period of time he has in mind. His statement may be true about a long period, but that is not the issue. The issue is whether he has departed from the basis used in the reduction of teacher training in the 1970s. Therefore, I ask whether the Under-Secretary claims that the Secretary of State has proceeded, as far as the Catholic colleges are concerned, on the same basis, as regards their proportion of the teacher training system, as was followed in 1977? Does he claim that there has been the same attentiveness as in 1977 to the maintenance of the Catholic share? It would be hard for him to claim that, because in 1977 the Department's original proposals were based on historic share, whereas in 1982 the Secretary of State's original proposals sought to reduce the Catholic share by nearly 20 per cent. Therefore, for the reasons that I gave earlier, it has been important to look at the past policy, which the Secretary of State proposes to change.

As for future policy, as far as it can be divined from the Secretary of State's statement, he was at pains in the statement that I have quoted to give his unequivocal view that there can be no commitment to any particular share of the public sector initial teacher training intake for colleges supported by any particular denomination. Not only the Catholic colleges are involved; so are the Anglican colleges.

I am informed—I am not surprised to hear it—that the Secretary of State's statement has caused great concern in the churches and voluntary colleges. What is their security for the future, according to the Secretary of State? They may take comfort, if they wish, in the Under-Secretary's statement at the meeting of the Association of Voluntary Colleges. When asked what value he placed on voluntary colleges, he replied, "Profound." However, "profound" does not attach to percentage or historic share.

Voluntary colleges will also need to weigh the statement of the Secretary of State to the Bishop of Salford, in which he said: The Government is firmly committed to the dual system, and I accept that commitment has implications—subject to what is said below—for the training of teachers for Catholic schools. I accept unreservedly that the Catholic colleges have a significant place in the teacher training structure and that decisions about their future position should have some regard to the historic position".

What emerges from the statement is, first, that the Government support the dual system in schools, but that their commitment to it in teacher training may not be as strong; secondly, that the commitment in teacher training has no more than qualified implications for the training of teachers for Church schools; and, thirdly, that decisions about the future of Church colleges should have some regard—not no regard, but equally not a great deal of regard—for their past shares.

In the passage from the Secretary of State's letter that I quoted, there are two sentences that begin with fairly strong statements and include the strong adverbs "firm" and "unreservedly", but the latter halves of each sentence immediately qualify what the first halves appear to say. Therefore, I have to ask the Under-Secretary whether he will give an unequivocal statement about the Government's attitude to the future of voluntary colleges and their historic share.

The only unequivocal statement so far is the one that I have quoted about there being no guarantee of any Church's stake. It is time for unequivocal statements of a positive rather than negative character. Otherwise, the Churches and voluntary colleges will be reinforced in the suspicions that they already entertain about the attitude of the Secretary of State and his Department to voluntary colleges.

I hope that the Under-Secretary will appreciate the seriousness of the issues that are being raised. The Secretary of State appears to be taking the position that he or his successors should determine the position of voluntary colleges on the advice of officials arid inspectors, without regard to the traditional objectives of the Churches, which have contributed so much to teacher training.

There used to be a tradition of consultation with the Church of England and the Catholic Church. That appears to have been abrogated, consultations being limited, as in 1982, to those occurring after publication of the Secretary of State's proposals and never before—almost like the situation at GCHQ, Cheltenham.

Two of the proposals in respect of voluntary colleges were withdrawn without needless damage, but what problems will arise in future? Unless the Under-Secretary can give a convincing answer about future policy, I and other hon. Members will regard the issue as one to which we must give continuing attention, and we shall have to retain our suspicion about the Government's intentions on the training of teachers and the future of the dual system in Church schools.

2.50 pm
The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Peter Brooke)

It is commonplace on these occasions that the Minister congratulates the hon. Member who speaks on the Adjournment, but I offer a particular welcome on this occasion because the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) has chosen a subject which is of particular public moment. I thank him also for his advice to me on the particular issue that he intended to raise.

I have listened with interest to what the hon. Gentleman said about the contribution of the voluntary sector to teacher training. I know that it is a subject to which he attaches considerable importance, and yet again I want to take the opportunity to emphasise that the Government are fully committed to an education system in which the voluntary sector has a significant role to play. Since the hon. Member referred to the voluntary schools as well as the teacher training colleges, let me also say that the Government accept that voluntary schools contribute an important measure of diversity within the maintained system. We shall sustain the guarantee of their place enshrined in the Education Act 1944 and reinforced by subsequent legislation.

The hon. Member's concern are rooted in the 1982 restructuring of initial teacher training provision. That exercise was undertaken because of the need once more to reduce the planned total of places in the system, but at the same time we had to increase the provision of primary training. Within the reduced total figures for secondary provision the Government believed there should be an emphasis on training by the postgraduate route and that the distribution of PGCE places should involve a shift in the balance of provision towards the universities. The combined effect on the public sector was that a reduction of over 40 per cent. in secondary provision had to be accommodated by comparison with actual recruitment in 1981. In distributing the total of primary and secondary entry places to public sector institutions, the Government took account of a number of criteria, which included our intention to build on the existing strengths of institutions and to use resources efficiently.

Throughout the exercise we were aware that the various voluntary bodies which supported teacher training establishments would expect their interests to be respected in the new pattern of public sector provision. The same would apply to the local education authorities, both as employers of teachers and as the providers of maintained establishments. The result did, in fact, preserve a continued strong commitment to initial teacher training for the voluntary sector, but I know that the hon. Member's particular interest, or he has evidenced to day, is in Roman Catholic provision, and I shall therefore turn to the question of historic shares.

During recent months a great deal has been written and said about historic shares, both within this House and outside it. The Government do not dispute the fact that the Catholic colleges have a significant place in the teacher training system and that decisions about their future should have some regard to the historic position. We cannot, however, acccept the argument that the Roman Catholic colleges or any other providers have a claimed right to any fixed share of public sector places, whatever the total of such places might be. The hon. Member suggested that in taking this view we have made a new depature from the policies of our predecessors and cannot be fully aware of what those policies were. We have given very careful consideration to the documentation of the 1970s and are satisfied that there has never been agreement on immutable rules for the determination of a fixed share.

My right hon. Friend was clearly aware that the historic share was a major criterion in the reorganisation exercises of the 1970s, but saw no evidence that his predecessors had regarded it as a factor to which all other considerations were subordinate. Indeed, he noted that the right hon. Member for Halton (Mr. Oakes), as Minister of State at the Department at that time, subscribed to a paper produced for the Advisory Committee on the Supply and Training of Teachers in December 1976, which identified a number of factors to be taken into account in the resructuring of the system. That paper saw a need nationally to ensure that the then balance between maintained and voluntary colleges and between the two denominations was not substantially changed by the process of reorganisation. It made no commitment to the maintenance of a precise historic share and concluded that the weight to be given to different considerations and different circumstances would have to be a matter of judgment.

Although the provisional proposals published in January 1977 envisaged that the Roman Catholic share of total places in the reduced system planned for 1981 would, at 9.38 per cent., be similar to their previous share, the result of the 1977 exercise was that the Roman Catholic share of the England and Wales target evenutally established for 1981 was rather less than that proportion, at 9.02 per cent. The Catholic Education Council had sought to keep the share at the level originally proposed, or at least to apply a figure of 9.33 per cent. to intakes rather than places. A letter from the Department in May 1977 made it clear that it was not feasible to adjust the Roman Catholic intake on the basis of a fixed proportion of national intake but agreed that some marginal adjustment of intakes would be made to ensure that the Catholic share of places did not change substantially. Again there was no explicit commitment to an historic proportion. What happened in 1977 was that the Secretary of State decided it was not possible to retain the share which had been envisaged for the Roman Catholic colleges under the earlier proposals. However, when it was decided to increase the places available for non-Roman Catholic colleges there was sufficient flexibility in the system to allow some marginal adjustments to mitigate the effect of this on the Roman Catholic proportion.

If the hon. Gentleman still feels that I have not answered him in sufficient detail on these matters, I shall gladly make available copies of the relevant sections of the Department's affidavits in the De La Salle case which further examine the events of the 1970s. As the hon. Gentleman knows, neither the governors' affidavits nor those of the Government were tested in the courts, and an Adjournment debate is scarcely a sufficient vehicle for the process of discussing them, but I shall gladly write to the hon. Gentleman to enlarge on the Government's position if he so wishes.

On the narrative, the hon. Member is uncharacteristically mistaken in thinking that the meeting of the Secretary of State with the Catholic bishops this summer occurred before the general election. It occurred on 28 June. It was not a matter of nods and winks. I can say that because I was there. At that meeting the Secretary of State repeated the assurance given in an affidavit in March 1983 that whatever the outcome of the court case he would be reviewing the decision of the previous year.

With my right hon. Friend, I am satisfied that in practice the Roman Catholic contribution has been established in different ways on different occasions. I do not understand how it could have been otherwise in the context of the significant changes which the teacher training system has experienced over the last decade, and the many other factors which have affected the planning of provision.

Notable among those changes have been the increased contribution of the university departments of education to initial teacher training and, as I have already said, the increased emphasis given to the PGCE route. A decade ago the universities accounted for less than 5 per cent. of intakes, but in the 1980's the proportion is some 30 per cent. Secondary PGCE courses in the universities are forecast to take nearly half of all recruits to secondary training, whilst over 60 per cent. of public sector secondary places will also be for PGCE students.

I accept that the results of applying these policies have not proved favourable to secondary training provision in Roman Catholic colleges because those colleges have tended in the past to concentrate on bachelor of education provision in some of the subjects — history, English, foreign languages, social sciences and geography —where we believe students are more appropriately trained by the first degree route to PGCE. More than two thirds of the public sector secondary BEd intake places in future will be devoted to business studies, physical education, home economics and craft design and technology, which are subjects to which the Roman Catholic colleges collectively have not recruited large numbers, though I acknowledge the strength of De La Salle in craft, design and technology.

In order to sustain the number of secondary BEd places at the Roman Catholic colleges it would have been necessary either to invite them to offer subjects in which they had little strength, or to modify our policy in respect of the relationship that ought to exist between PGCE and BEd as the appropriate training for secondary teachers. Both options were likely to hamper our efforts to improve the match between teacher training and the needs of the schools and therefore could not be accepted.

I do not seek to deny the Roman Catholic intakes to secondary training—taking BEd and PGCE together—are forecast to decline by some 59 per cent. between 1981 and 1985. The other side of the coin is that the same institutions are being asked over the same period to increase their contribution to primary training by some 92 per cent. This expansion allows for the recent decision by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to increase the allocation of primary PGCE places to the Liverpool institute of higher education. That decision means that the forecast Roman Catholic share of total public sector intakes in 1985 will be 8.5 per cent. scarcely different from the 8.7 per cent. share of the total intakes recruited in 1981. If we are to talk at all about the maintainence of shares, I should have thought that the latest recruitment figures available at the time of the reorganisation would be a more appropriate basis for comparison than a figure related to the circumstances of a similar exercise some years ago.

My point is that we no longer have the teacher training system of the mid-1970s. For some time now it has not been possible for Catholic secondary schools to recruit all of the staff that they need from the Catholic colleges, or indeed from the public sector The time has passed when any institution or small group of institutions —denominational or regional—can expect to offer and recruit to training courses at the secondary level in a sufficient number of subjects to meet all of the requirements of the secondary school curriculum. There is every likelihood that an increasing number of Catholic students will choose in future to study for a first degree before taking a PGCE and that many will aim for a place at a university or a polytechnic. I am not convinced that they will then be less likely than students at Catholic colleges to seek teaching posts in Catholic schools and to meet the requirements of those schools in every respect.

I cannot agree with the assumption that the Catholic colleges present the only acceptable recruiting ground for Catholic schools, especially as the student body in those colleges is not exclusively Catholic.

Mr. McNamara

Catholics have never said that. I went through a first degree course and a PGCE course at university and then went to a Catholic school.

Mr. Brooke

The hon. Gentleman and I can pursue that matter in our correspondence.

Mr. McNamara

But I have never made that point or tried to.

Mr. Brooke

Some Catholic colleges give appropriate training in religious education as an integral part of their course but I understand that in-service courses are also available for teachers who have come to Catholic schools by other routes.

The hon. Gentleman is also anxious that Catholic schools should have an equal chance of recruiting from Catholic colleges, whatever their geographical or regional position, and he has referred to the high proportion of the Catholic school population to be found in the north-west of England. Again, it seems unrealistically restrictive to talk in terms of recruiting from Catholic colleges alone, especially in terms of the local college. After all, Catholic students from the north-west who wish to train in a Catholic college to teach, say, foreign languages or home economics will have to travel outside the region to obtain such a place but may well seek a first teaching post in the area from which they originally came.

Mr. McNamara

I have not advanced that as an argument today. The Minister is giving me answers to points that I raised some time ago. I have advanced a general case today, not the specific one of the north-west of England or De La Salle, which I mentioned merely to illustrate the historic share. It is wrong for the Minister to use that as an excuse.

Mr. Brooke

I was not trying to use it as an excuse. Even at the primary level it will be necessary to think more in national terms in future but we have nevertheless tried to meet some of the worries expressed to us by agreeing to increased primary PGCE intakes to the Liverpool institute of higher education. I acknowledge that the size of the increased allocation does not compensate for the loss of initial teacher training at De La Salle college—that was not the purpose of the offer—as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State satisfied himself after a very thorough review of the 1982 reorganisation that the places which would be required to sustain De La Salle are not needed in terms of the national training system.

I realise that the Government's decision to end initial teacher training at De La Salle will have caused considerable disappointment to the Catholic community in the area surrounding the college and I can appreciate that, in a broader context, the remaining church colleges may hope for guarantees of a secure future. That is only natural and I am sure that the staff and students of maintained establishments feel the same. It would make life a lot more comfortable for Ministers if we could give such guarantees, but of course we cannot. It will continue to be necessary to take several important factors into account when planning national provision and it would be irresponsible to make commitments which it might prove impossible to honour. This does not, however, detract from our intention to give all concerned the opportunity to comment before any proposed changes are implemented. That was our policy when provisional reorganisation plans were made known in August 1982 and it resulted in the withdrawal of proposals to cease initial teacher training at the Roman Catholic Newman college, as well as at an Anglican college, Bishop Grosseteste.

It is simply not true to suggest that the Government are actively seeking the weakening of the voluntary colleges' contribution to teacher education. Indeed, we recognise that the system would be the poorer without such a contribution. However, I am sure that many committed Christians will agree that the Church colleges cannot be exempt from the adjustments which the rest of the system has to make to match national developments in society and in education. I was pleased to see the view expressed recently in no less a journal than The Tablet that the Department is keen to be fair to Catholic interests. Indeed, we are—and to other denominations as well. We shall continue to do what we can to preserve those interests within the framework of a system which is planned to meet national needs.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at three minutes past Three o' clock.