§ Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Garel-Jones]
10.31 pm§ Sir Anthony Meyer (Clwyd, North-West)The subject that I propose to raise tonight is adult education in Wales. I am concerned primarily with the Workers Educational Association, but I shall touch on the activities of the Open University which is, as I well understand, outside the remit of my hon. Friend the Minister of State. I shall also touch briefly on the provision for adult education made by local education authorities as well as the extramural departments of the University of Wales.
I am not launching an attack on the Government, still less on the Welsh Office. Welsh Office Ministers deserve at least half a cheer for their success in postponing for a year the cuts in the grants to the WEA that have already been applied in England. A year's delay means an extra year of support at the old higher rate, but, even more importantly, the longer advance warning of a coming cut enables the WEA to plan its economies with appreciably less disruption of courses of study.
I shall not argue either—as I might well be tempted to — that there should in these days of sadly high unemployment be a substantial expansion in public expenditure on adult edcuation. It is true that I want to see an expansion of adult education, but I have always taken the view that it is greatly preferable to increase charges to the individual, whenever possible, than to cut services. It follows by extension that I must accept that, at a time when reductions in public expenditure are inevitable, there is nothing inherently wrong in increasing the charges to adults taking education courses or even in increasing the proportion of the total costs of those courses that are covered by fees.
My worries about the Welsh Office's proposals for a cut of 7.5 per cent., phased over the next two years, for the north Wales district of the WEA out of a contribution of £109,000 from the Welsh Office are practical and pragmatic. From the point of the view of the WEA, the cut is substantially worse than it appears at first. Local education authorities normally match the contributions of the Government, although in some cases the matching is pretty meagre, but they will reduce their subsidy correspondingly.
Right hon. and hon. Members are only too well aware that local authorities are coming under pressure as severe as any that they have encountered to find money to pay for nursery education and higher teachers' salaries and to satisfy demands for smaller classes from a budget that is being squeezed by angry ratepayers and a justly tightfisted Government. The WEA is therefore facing a cut in the money it gets from the Government and a corresponding cut in the not excessively generous sums that it gets from local authorities. In addition, the WEA, which used to get all of the receipts from courses that it ran jointly with the extramural department of the University of Wales, will now, under a new agreement that was concluded last year, get only 50 per cent. of receipts. For the north Wales district, that means a loss of £2,000.
The WEA is responding to the challenge, partly by increasing course fees, in a desperate attempt to maintain its full pattern of activity. It has managed so far to avoid increases in charges to old-age pensioners and the 512 unemployed, but that entails some pretty steep increases for other students. The point has already been reached at which the scale of charges is sufficient to deter potential students. Indeed, some existing students have had to give up their courses.
There is another, and perhaps even more worrying, development. It is cheaper and more profitable to hold courses in substantial centres of population such as Rhyl, Llandudno or Colwyn bay than in remote country areas to which tutors might have to travel long distances and where the classes are likely to be much smaller. However, it is in just those remote areas that the work of the WEA is more necessary. The classes are a vital ingredient in enabling some scattered communities to retain a reasonable quality of life. I fear that we might be witnessing a noticeable and gradually accelerating decline in the numbers involved in WEA classes and a steady reduction of WEA activity in rural areas.
The same need for economy is also limiting the scope of the Open University, which is of special significance in scattered rural areas. For some time I and, I am sure, many of my colleagues in Wales have heard from Open University students in our constituencies that they are having increasing difficulty in meeting the new higher fees, which now amount to very nearly £1,000, to collect the credits necessary for their degree. As a result, some are having to drop their degree courses before completion. In addition, the mounting pressure on local education authorities which are desperate to find economies, means that they have to cut the number of evening classes that they run in schools.
It is not easy to dramatise the case for adult education—it is not headline-grabbing stuff—or to claim that any reduction would bring catastrophic consequences. I have already debarred myself from arguing in principle against any increase in course fees. Nevertheless, it would be a bad mistake to allow the decline in the provision for adult education to gather pace, especially when one considers the derisory sums of public money to be saved. Is it really worth stopping some classes in remote areas, and put at risk the attendance at others, to save the princely sum of £9,000?
It is commonplace to talk about the increased leisure in our society and the need to find rewarding ways of using it. Most of us, I fear, have not faced up to the fact that unemployment, or very part-time employment, will go on for many people for a long time. Human beings thrown on to their own resources in this way will be unhappy, perhaps destructive, people if they have not been given the intellectual skills or manual dexterity to make satisfying use of all the time on their hands.
We in this country — indeed, people throughout the industrialised world — will have to adopt a different attitude towards work, which, however brainless, boring or unhealthy, is always regarded as meritorious; and towards leisure, which, however wisely and constructively used, is regarded as being ignoble—not the sort of thing one should be seen doing on a weekday afternoon.
We must get away from that attitude and away from the idea that education happens to people between the ages of five and 16, or 18 if one is lucky. Education—or, for that matter, training — should be a continuous, almost lifelong, business if we are to have a society able to face the challenges of technological change and diminishing industrial employment.
513 The WEA has been a pioneer in developing those attitudes and changes and it has done so at amazingly little cost to the taxpayer, because so many of those who work for it are happy to do so for material rewards which are far lower than they would get on the open market. There is no danger that an increased allocation of taxpayers' money would be swallowed up in ever larger wage claims. On the contrary, the public gets the kind of value for its money in the operations of the WEA that it gets by its subventions to voluntary organisations; very little public money produces a disproportionate amount of public good.
The Minister will probably tell me of the successful efforts which the Government have made to maintain, indeed improve, standards in education. I do not dissent; this Government, and the Secretary of State for Education in particular, have achieved great things in raising education standards. But if I have tonight drawn the attention of my hon. Friend to the anxieties felt by those who work in adult education, if I have succeeded in highlighting the social value of this form of education, and if I have reminded him of the disproportionate contribution that the WEA could make at small cost, I have not wasted the Minister's or my time.
§ The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mr. John Stradling Thomas)I wish at the outset to compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West (Sir A. Meyer) on his excellent speech, to which I listened with great interest. I appreciate that this is a subject in which he takes great interest—indeed, almost a vested interest — as he has contributed directly to the adult education movement as a Workers Educational Association lecturer, and therefore speaks with a voice of experience. I am pleased, therefore, to assure my hon. Friend that I, too, want to encourage the development of the adult education service in Wales.
Let me put the matter in context. We have in Wales a long and proud tradition of adult study, beginning with the circulating schools of the 18th century and progressing through the Sunday schools movement to the variety of public and private sector provision which we have today. The demand for adult education remains strong, I am glad to say, both from those who see it as a means of acquiring or improving their qualfications and thereby advancing their career prospects and from those who simply wish to undertake a course of study for its own sake, which in the context of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West is very appropriate. I am grateful to him for setting the kernel of what he had to say tonight in the context of total adult education. It is my Department's policy to seek to ensure that the demand from both of these categories is met, and in the most cost-effective way possible.
My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that this commitment to adult education can be demonstrated in terms of the expenditure which is being devoted to it. Total expenditure—that is, expenditure by the local education authorities and Welsh Office grants to other bodies — amounted to £3,069,000 in 1983–84. The sum is expected to increase to £3,250,000 in the current financial year, and the provision being made for 1985–86 is £3,930,000— 514 not far short of £4 million. A little more than a half of this expenditure is in the form of Welsh Office grants and the balance is expenditure by the local education authorities.
I have already mentioned one of the bodies which receives grant from my Department, the Workers Educational Association. The WEA has of course made and is continuing to make a very important contribution to the tradition to which I referred earlier through the opportunities that it offers to adults to increase their knowledge and personal capability. I recognise and appreciate the work that the WEA does and is doing, and I am pleased that my Department is able to support its work with grants which will amount to £264,000 in the current financial year.
However, my hon. Friend will, I am sure, concede that the WEA is not the only body carrying out useful and important work in adult education. In fact, my hon. Friend acknowledged this during his speech, and I thank him for it. A very substantial share of the adult education service in the Principality is provided by the local education authorities through their adult education centres and further education colleges. In 1983 the local education authorities and colleges enrolled nearly 100,000 people on adult education courses at their adult education centres and youth centres.
This compares with enrolments of nearly 40,000 for courses provided by what are technically known as the "responsible bodies" in Wales. I thought that we were all responsible bodies in Wales. However, that is a technical term. The responsible bodies are the Workers Educational Association, the extramural departments of the university colleges that were referred to by my hon. Friend, and the YMCA.
Other bodies active in this field are Coleg Harlech and the adult literacy and basic skills unit. The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education also plays an important part in co-ordinating provision and staff development on an England and Wales basis.
In addition to providing support for these bodies, the Government have taken some initiatives of their own. Hon. Members will be aware of the Government's professional, industrial and commercial updating programme—known as PICKUP—which is designed to encourage employers to arrange retraining and updating courses for their employees in mid-career. I should also mention the Government's REPLAN scheme, designed to promote the development of educational opportunities for the adult unemployed to improve their employment prospects by giving them new skills and knowledge. My hon. Friend referred to the difficulties that high unemployment can create and therefore I stress the importance of that aspect.
The variety of provision is desirable if we are to provide an efficient and flexible service for adults with widely varying requirements. However, the budget available to my department — my hon Friend described the Government as justly tight-fisted — is limited, and, in order to encourage the development of new initiatives it is sometimes necessary to trim back a little on the support for well-established programmes. That is the situation with the programmes of the WEA and the extramural departments, referred to by my hon. Friend, whose financial allocations from the Welsh Office are being marginally reduced in 1985–86 and 1986–87. However, the reductions in their forward provision are very small. Indeed, in both 1985–86 and 1986–87 the WEA will still 515 receive more in cash terms from the Welsh Office than it is receiving this year. As my hon. Friend pointed out, we have phased that over two years, which is helpful from a planning point of view.
Therefore, the reductions in the Government's level of financial support for both the WEA and the EMDs are in no sense significant cuts. Furthermore it is my belief that the WEA could compensate for the small reductions by making some increase in its fees to students. I noted carefully my hon. Friend's points on that aspect, but the present fees are low and arrangements are always made for old-age pensioners and the unemployed. I hope that that can he maintained, but I noted my hon. Friend's point that that to some extent increases the burden in adjusting fees. I understand that.
The fees charged in Wales are modest, ranging from 60p per class to £10 for 20 lectures. Even so, I would expect the WEA districts to agree fee structures, as they do at present, which provide for the remission of fees to which I referred a moment ago. Therefore, there is scope for the association to increase its income from fees without causing any significant difficulties for adults who wish to attend its courses.
The reduction in the level of grant to both the WEA and EMDs has been made so that Wales can take part in initiatives to improve opportunities in adult education. The financial support to this wide range of bodies means that I have had to effect savings, albeit small, but nevertheless deliberately restricted, to meet the extra financial demands arising from those new initiatives.
The adult literacy and basic skills unit, whose remit has been extended to 1988, continues to perform invaluable work in Wales in stimulating provision for adults who have literacy and basic skills problems. For that reason, in conjunction with the Department of Education and Science, I have increased our contribution to its budget not only in the current financial year but for the next two years.
In relation to the adult unemployed, I am pleased to be able to say that I have agreed to join the DES REPLAN — the adult unemployed programme announced by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science in March 1984. Under the banner of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, the institute and the further education unit are managing complementary programmes of development projects.
The institute is employing and managing an advisory team of field officers led by a national co-ordinator. The field officer for Wales took up appointment earlier this week and I envisage that she will be contacting the LEAs, voluntary bodies and other organisations, including the WEAs, about courss and other activities. In the coming year and the next academic year I expect great activity in the setting-up of courses. Apart from the financing of the field officer, my Department is also contributing towards the cost of the development projects. Two of those projects have been agreed for Wales, one in the Mid-Glamorgan and Gwent area to encourage groups to acquire skills and expertise, and to help towards self-sufficiency and the creation of commercially viable enterprises, and another for Coleg Harlech for research into the education needs of the unemployed.
516 I shall now deal with vocational training. I am pleased that we are now a part of the professional, industrial and commercial updating programme. At local level the PICKUP agents provide liaison between colleges and employers. The PICKUP agent in Wales has been in post since last September, and I know that he has already been actively promoting the scheme in many parts of Wales.
I mentioned earlier the benefits to be expected from a diversity of provision. For some time there has been pressure from adult education interests in Wales for an advisory council to be set up to co-ordinate provision to organise staff development and to offer advice to the providers of adult education and to central Government. I recognise that there are special Welsh considerations in this as in other areas of education, and I have taken note of the views expressed by bodies within Wales and by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. The institute has expressed its particular concern about the absence of a Welsh dimension to its work and it has pointed out that it has no specific single point of reference within Wales. A proposal which has been put to me would involve the setting up of a separate sub-committee for Wales of the institute, which would carry out the sort of co-ordinating role that has been suggested and which would provide the institute with the presence that it has been looking for in the Principality. I have come to the conclusion that such a sub-committee could perform a useful function for the providers of adult education and, in time, could lead to significant improvements in the service. I am pleased to be able to announce today that I have endorsed that proposal in principle, and that funding of £11,000 for each of the next three years will be made available by my Department to enable a sub-committee of the institute to be set up for a trial period. My Department will now consult with the institute, the Welsh joint education committee and other interested bodies about how the sub-committee should be constituted and about its terms of reference.
In conclusion, I wish to emphasise that my Department remains committed to the provision of an efficient adult education service for the people of Wales. I believe that there is a strong demand for the benefits that the service is able to offer. The service must recognise, however, that the type of courses that adult students require will change over time. The Government and the Service need to be alert to the changes in demand and must be prepared to adapt the pattern of provision in line with the change in requirements of the students, for whose benefit the service exists.
I have taken careful note of the points that my hon. Friend made. Coming from my background, I understand his points about remote rural areas. However, I still think that we must be cost-effective in adapting to changed circumstances, and I hope that we shall have both demand and provision for adult education in the Principality. I know that it is dear to our hearts and part of our tradition.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at two minutes to Eleven o' clock.