§ Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent)Occasions such as this provide an opportunity to release bees from Back Bench bonnets to buzz busily around the Chamber. Sometimes, one hopes, their sound may be heard more widely outside. Sometimes, too, they provide opportunities for the emission of Back-Bench spleen against Ministers, so I am particularly pleased to pay a warm tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science and his team. It is my serious belief that the present Secretary of State could well go down in history as one of the most effective and genuinely reforming Ministers of Education. But the task facing my right hon. Friend and all of us in truly formidable.
Let me begin by making this point. When a man is encased in plaster from head to foot it is demonstrably absurd to berate him for not moving more easily. An unattractive feature of the present educational debate—I fear that some of my hon. Friends have a share in that unattractiveness—is the widespread readiness to attack teachers. Teachers are immured in a straitjacket made up of institutional rigidities, definitional rigidities and a strangely out-of-date blindness to the whole range of opportunities which would in other circumstances be open to them. They are not, for the most part, idle. Many work very hard indeed, well beyond the narrow terms of their paper contract. But too many of them are weary, stale or disenchanted. It is my purpose in this debate to seek relief for them rather than to denigrate them.
It is time to move, and to move fast. The Secretary of State has taken a number of bold steps, but there is much more to be done. The report of the National Economic Development Council and the Manpower Services Commission—Competence and Competition—tells us that 50 per cent. of the British workforce has not even the equivalent of one CSE pass. And what employer values one CSE pass? In 1981, 52 to 60 per cent. of our 16 to 18 year-olds were in education, against 86 per cent. in Germany and 91 per cent. in Japan. If I may be allowed to adapt H. G. Wells, British history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
Yet we do have room for manoeuvre within our present resources, so we must look for a moment at what those resources are. They include, of course teachers. But teachers are faced with the trauma of falling rolls: 7–8 million children in schools in 1984, a projected 7–1 million in 1991. They are faced with stagnation in preferment. It is very hard indeed for the average teacher now to see himself or herself in a post that represents promotion. Teachers are also faced with rigidities in the structure. It is extremely hard and unusual, for all sorts of reasons, for teachers to move between one sector of education and another. Teachers are faced, too, with constant demands for changes in their role.
To give some examples, many teachers are much less subject oriented than they were when they came out of teacher training college. They are expected to be much more concerned with passing on skills and, in some mystical way, with the growing up of their pupils to an extent which parents used to feel was much more their role than some do now. Teachers have much less authority and much less parental support. As the school leaving age rises, so do the height, weight and truculence of many of 434 the pupils. Teachers therefore are regarded with less esteem in society, although they have made tremendous efforts to create an all-graduate profession.
Teachers and others are unclear about their job definition. In school and out of school, in class and out of class, they are unclear. At the heart of the present unfortunate and unattractive dispute lies an anxiety about the definition of the teacher's role and job.
Further education is bigger than it has ever been. It involves 80,000 full-time academic staff and an unknown number of part-timers. The Manpower Services Commission is spending more than the whole of the further education budget on tasks which hitherto would have been done by further education rather than some outside organisation.
There has been an explosion in courses and qualifications. An extraordinary incoherence and obsolescence exists. Many courses and qualifications are too narrowly based, too backward looking and too long in the acquiring. I therefore warmly welcome the announcement by the Secretary of State for Employment of a full-scale inquiry into qualifications.
The number of home students has increased by 60,000 since 1979–80. That is encouraging, and yet people on the dole are unable to afford self-improvement, even to meet declared needs in the market, because of the crippling loss of benefit which might result. I hope that the Government will seriously re-examine that aspect urgently.
Higher education is perhaps our most inefficient sector. It is large with 31,499 full-time staff and 2,739 part-timers. However, causes for anxiety exist. When selecting students, universities depend heavily on "O" levels and head teachers' reports, which almost by definition are biased because it is good for a school if its pupils are accepted by universities.
The system of "O" levels is also an inadequate basis for assessing whether a student will make a success of university. I know from my experience as a university teacher that one of the most depressing features of teaching in universities is the number of young people who arrive at university with their intellectual curiosity already dead. One carries them through an over-taught course so that they receive a qualification when one should be stimulating and exciting them with intellectual curiosity. Many colleges and universities do not even interview potential students and are wholly dependent upon inadequate selection procedures.
It is too easy in some subjects and in some universities—but less so in polytechnics—to coast through on the basis of a good schooling. I wonder whether, in an era when young people will have to re-educate themselves throughout their lives, it is necessary to take three or four years to turn out people with only the basis of a qualification to which they will have to add later to be employable. Secondly, they retain too many inadequate students. There is virtually no counselling out of university. At £5,000 to £6,000 per annum, the business of keeping on a student who at the end of the first year is causing enormous anxiety to the course and to the teachers on the course, with the sense at the end of the third of fourth year that any inadequacy that he displays in his examinations is a direct consequence of the incompetence of the teaching so that one feels responsible to the student and allows him to graduate, is not an efficient way of running a part of the education system for which there is still intense competition.
435 It is worth reflecting that in the United States as many as 50 per cent. of students drop out, but 35 to 40 per cent. more go to university. It may be that somewhere in that discrepancy between us and the United States there is room for adjustment.
I believe that in many colleges and universities the examinations procedures are still grossly inadequate. They are too dependent on written tests and on asking what one knows, not what one can do.
There is a lot of room for argument about how much each of these resources which I have enumerated should be pruned, expanded, controlled or given more autonomy. However, I think that there is no room for argument that, as a nation, we are on the edge of a gigantic expansion in demand, call it what you will. Throughout the country pensioners, the unemployed and wage earners in their growing spare time are taking courses in everything under the sun, in classes, on video, increasingly by cable, as well as through the traditional medium of books. People in work are seeking to diversify their skills, employers to upgrade their work force's skills. Re-education and training is the name of the game, and what a rapidly growing game. Why, then, are our existing teaching resources locked into what is seen as steadily narrowing cul-de-sacs when out there is a whole world to conquer?
There is some interchange between schools and further education, employers and further education, universities and industry, but this depends entirely on local personalities, and not on any coherent national or regional strategy. In this morass, it is not surprising therefore that the Government have used the Manpower Services Commission as their principal agent for change, but how bad that must be for the morale of teachers in the education service.
When the MSC gave evidence to the Select Committee on Employment, the chairman declared that he felt strongly that he had a dotted line of responsibility to the Secretary of State for Education and Science as well as a solid line of accountability to the Secretary of State for Employment. I should like to ask how real the dotted line is, and to what extent the MSC with its many tasks is effectively able to keep in close touch with the Department of Education and Science.
If I may give one small example of the rigidities that I should like to see broken down, Lady Warnock the other day said rather well that teachers are finding themselves increasingly unable to stay in teaching—the job which they like to do—because in order to make a living they have to go into administration. She suggested, among other recourses, that they might go into teacher training colleges. I believe that would be one minor but important rigidity reduced.
We have to look for new boundary definitions. We have falling rolls and empty school buildings, and at the same time inadequate training provision by and for private employers. That by itself is a demonstration of the need for imagination.
When the members of the Select Committee on Employment visited a private recruitment agency recently they discovered that the differential between the price payable to staff capable of operating expensive modern machinery such as word processors and those who were still stuck to their typewriters was so great that it was worth the agency's while to provide a sophisticated training 436 course with one tutor to three students. So great was the demand for the course that the agency decide to expand the operation.
There is scope for placing that kind of resource within the campuses of schools. Training colleges work mostly at evenings and weekends, so that sophisticated expensive machinery—which, by its nature, has a short life span —can be available to schools. The agencies would have access to some of the brighter pupils at a young age and the schools would be able to make use of the machinery. There is too little liaison between schools and employers about the provision of mutual aid.
We must make the maximum use of our resources. It is better to burn them out by using them fully in many different ways than to husband them frugally well past the date of obsolescence. Visits to centres of education are too often like expeditions into industrial or educational archeology.
The training explosion must be understood to realise the demand that exists for teaching skills. Few commercial and industrial organisations have more than a handful of people with real teaching skills. The scope for exchange between an education system in which teachers feel themselves to be boxed in and the commercial world must be great.
When a CBI delegation recently came to the Select Committee, we discussed this issue, and although the members of the delegation held varying views on almost every point, it was clear that some of them were already discussing with the Department of Education and Science the possibility of using teaching skills which are available in schools to help them with their training.
We must look again at the school day. Is there any reason why we should be constricted to a 9 am to 4 pm day? The limited school day was devised in a bygone era and it now serves mainly a purpose of social control. Its intention is to make it possible for two wage earners to go out and earn money while their children are taken off their hands by the education system.
As a long-term goal, we should seriously consider altering the use of schools, adopting a shift system. This is not a new idea, but an idea whose time has come. The Columbus technical institute in Ohio operates from 7 am until 11 pm on Mondays to Fridays and from 9 am until 4 pm on Saturdays. It has considerable use in the evenings, but it is available throughout those long hours, and that must be valuable to a community in which the work patterns of the adults is constantly changing. More and more shifts are being worked, even by senior managers.
Further thought should be given to teacher retraining. It is absurd to suggest that for teachers—or, indeed, for anyone else — one qualification is sufficient for a lifetime. I welcome the Secretary of State's suggestion of more money for local education authorities, although we are still a long way from the recommendations of the James report all those years ago. Why not pay teachers, and not only teachers but employees in many other industrial and commercial operations, with some kind of voucher which would give them a right, as they built them up, to choose where they went for training or retraining? The advantage would be that, if a person did not cash the voucher in that way, it would cost the education authority or the firm nothing. Those who were prepared to Undertake training would be able to cash the vouchers at approved institutions.
437 We need a huge increase in the number of part-time contracts, not as a cost cutting exercise, but because the opportunities are great for people in education to spend part of their time in adult education, technical training and so forth. It is absurd, for example, that in one educational institution that I know of, the suggestion that one of the staff should be entitled to a job share was turned down out of hand. Yet of all activities teaching is one which lends itself to job sharing. In theory the Government are keen on increasing job sharing.
If students grow out of school at an ever earlier age —and there is clear evidence that many school children find being constrained in school sufficiently irritating for them not to give of their best—might they perhaps be allowed to take an educational allowance with them into the public or private college of their choice? The output and standard could be controlled by the Government through the qualifications.
We now see a massive paradox. We see despair and disillusion among teachers while all around us the demand for education grows exponentially. I urge the Government to change the name, the system, the input and the outcome, and today's despair will become tomorrow's golden opportunity.
§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish)May I first congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) on entering the ballot for the debate, on getting it and on making a thoughtful speech? Although it is perhaps too early an hour to be excited about speeches in the Chamber, we owe him a debt because he has brought the issue before us this morning. I agree with much of what he said, although there might be a problem in turning some of his more interesting ideas into practical realities.
I go back to the first question. The hon. Member did not address himself to the sad fact that over the past 10 years our belief in education has evaporated. It makes an interesting exercise to compare yesterday's White Paper on education with the one that was introduced by the Prime Minister when she was Secretary of State for Education during the 1970–74 Conservative Government. The Government talked then about the expansion of nursery education and their aim to get 22 per cent. of the relevant age group into higher education. It is a sad reflection that in the intervening period the sights of the Conservative Government, and perhaps the sights of the nation, have been lowered so much. It would be attractive if we could rekindle that belief in education. We must consider carefully why a belief in education has evaporated to a certain extent. Too often in schools and elsewhere people were told, "Work hard at school and you will get a good job." Once graduates did not get jobs, the belief in education as a means to a meal ticket started to evaporate. It is sad that we did not encourage many more people with the intellectual curiousity to which the hon. Member referred to enjoy education for its own sake rather than as a meal ticket.
The education system was too much a failure system. Whatever the stage at which people left the system, they left feeling like failures. It is regrettable that tremendous emphasis' at all ages is placed on getting through examinations. The obverse of that point is that people will fail. The 11-plus examination has not yet been abolished 438 in many parts of the country. From 11 onwards, a number of tests and examinations are imposed on youngsters, most of which say, "You have failed." At university the emphasis is on the quality of the degree. The other day, I heard someone comment, "He got a PhD, but it was not a very good one." Failure seems to stay with people.
The hon. Member talked also about youngsters outgrowing schools. Recently I have been in many schools and have been amazed by the fact that in many primary schools the teachers often treat the youngsters as adults, giving them amazing amounts of responsibility. The youngsters respond extremely well. Too often, the teachers at secondary schools start to treat the youngsters as children, rather than as young adults. It is paradoxical that, the older the youngsters in a school, the less responsibility and independence they are given. I agree with the hon. Member that many youngsters outgrow school, because some schools impose rigid restrictions. Many youngsters move to tertiary colleges and sixth form away from traditional schools because of such attitudes.
It is important that we apportion some of the blame for the way in which belief in education has disappeared. Shirley Williams, as the Secretary of State for Education and Science, during the Labour Government, has to accept some of the blame. The dithering over the examinations system was fatal to education. She allowed the myth to develop that standards were falling. When the right hon. and learned Member for Warrington, North (Mr. Carlisle) was Secretary of State he allowed the myth about falling standards to continue. Assisted places and vouchers implied that some of the state schools were not good enough and that standards were falling.
Standards have risen. If standards are measured by examination results or other criteria and if schools of today are compared with those of 20 years ago, the achievement is considerable.
We do not give enough credit to the education system which coped with a major bulge in the population of young people. By and large, the school system coped successfully. It is only now that youngsters are leaving school and searching for jobs and only now that they are searching for housing accommodation that society is letting them down. We should have placed on record the fact that over the past 20 years our education system has succeeded, although, of course, it could do better.
The Government were right in the White Paper yesterday to talk about wanting to raise standards, but they should give credit also to the fact that schools have done well. I appreciate the fact that the Government are grasping the nettle of reorganising examinations. I am a little worried, especially with the present dispute, that the Government are not giving teachers sufficient time to get the curriculum going. I am worried also that many schools with imaginative curricula will find that their curricula will be reduced to fit a national pattern. That would be disturbing. At least the Government are getting on with reorganising the examination system. I am pleased that the Government are going for the record of achievement, which I believe will encourage youngsters.
The real problem with all of those initiatives is whether the Government are producing the money. Resources are the key to improving standards. We got through the past 20 years with massive economies of scale. The education system has done well to get through those economies of scale, but now the Government are asking for economies 439 from contraction. That really is not possible. The Government say that the pupil-teacher ratio is better and expenditure per pupil is better, but an awful lot of capital items are there whether there are 30 pupils or 20 in the class room. They are not items on which you can benefit from economies of contraction. And it is going to cost more to maintain curriculum width for fewer pupils. So the Government have to take on the question of the amount of resources available.
Certainly, if the hon. Gentleman is right that there is going to be a tremendous expansion in demand, we have got to convince the country that it must be prepared to pay. I wish that the Minister and the Secretary of State would spend a bit more time going out into the country campaigning for education and pointing out that if we want to be a prosperous country education is important.
The hon. Member gave a few details of the number of people getting education in this country as with other countries and pointed out that if we are to be able to compete in the world we must have more highly trained personnel. He reminded us that we are very proud that we are a democracy in this country, but increasingly taking decisions involves a great deal of information and the skills to evaluate it. If we want to be a genuine democracy we have got to talk about widening educational opportunities and supplying information and skills to the whole population, not just to a selected group.
When it comes to leisure opportunities, again education is a very important component for a very large number of people in making their leisure enjoyable.
There is a Government myth that we can transfer resources from the arts and the social services to technology. We cannot do that effectively. We must find extra resources. It is ironic that in many ways it is not our scientists and technologists who are letting this country down. If we take the mining industry in the last 12 months, it was not that we did not have good mining engineers and good mining technology; it was our inability to manage the industry effectively that let us down. If we take housing, it is not that we have not got good architects and builders; it is our inability to put those skills together to ensure that people live in decent housing. I could give a lot of other examples.
If the Government want a peaceful, contented society, it is important that we put extra resources into the whole education field and that we do not rob one diminished area to build up another area.
It seemed to me very sad that in the Government White Paper on better schools there was not a commitment to expand nursery education. Getting the start right is crucial in our education system. The hon. Member for Mid-Kent made the point that we have an awful lot of empty school buildings, so it would not be all that expensive to take the opportunity now to expand nursery education. Even if we returned to the target set by the Prime Minister when she was Secretary of State for Education and Science, we should be talking about a very considerable expansion of nursery education.
The Government must also take up the whole question of teacher morale. There will not be good results from education if the Government continue the conflict with the teachers. In one of the schools that I visited this week the head was talking about wanting to get curriculum development going. He pointed out that for much of the summer term last year there was virtually no discussion of this among the staff outside school hours because of the 440 sanctions. And the same thing will happen this year. I believe that the Government have got to find some more money and that with an injection of new money they could get effective talks going, improve the morale of teachers and set in train many of the things that the hon. Member for Mid-Kent wants to see done in the schools.
If we have got falling rolls we must look at making the schools a community resource. We have got to tell the teachers that it is important that they bring other people into them, because that changes the attitudes in schools.
We await with interest the Government Green Paper on higher education, but it is very sad that this is being prepared in terms of maintaining the status quo and of contraction rather than in terms of the importance of expanding higher education in the interests of prosperity, democracy and enhancing people's leisure.
I was a little disappointed that the hon. Member did not refer to the Open University. This would have been an opportunity to put in a firm plea for the Government to listen to all the advice that was given by the visiting committee, which said that the Open University was doing a first-class job. We should be talking about expansion and widening the university's role, demonstrating that its skills of distance learning can be applied to a wider group of people and can also be used as a resource for many of the schools and other educational areas. Yet apparently the Government's response to the visiting committee is to leave the Open University with the same cuts, but just a year later than was said before.
The point that I want to make to the Minister — I think that it is the point that the hon. Member for Mid-Kent was really making—is that for all our futures' sake, we must expand education and make sure that it becomes an exciting world where intellectual curiosity is important, but where we are also serving the nation. All our futures depend on having a first-class education.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Peter Brooke)Like the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett), I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) not only on his good fortune in securing a place in tonight's debate but on his choice of subject. From the compendium portmanteau title that he gave to the subject, it was a little uncertain quite what to expect. The debate strayed somewhat into the area covered by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment, and it would not be proper for me to say too much about it, but I hope to say something about relations between the Department of Education and Science and the Manpower Services Commission. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his compliments to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science on the manner in which he holds his office in my Department. It is also a pleasure to have the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish taking part in the debate.
There is an element of chance that we are having the debate within the same parliamentary sitting as the launch of "Better Schools". I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I say something about "Better Schools", because the more widely the propositions in it are understood in the nation, the better it will be for our system.
The White Paper sets out the Government's policies for schools in a way that has no post-war precedent. Whereas 441 earlier White Papers were mainly concerned with the structure and organisation of the school system, "Better Schools" is mainly concerned with what is actually taught and how it is taught. That follows logically from the Government's two principal aims for education at school, first to raise standards at all levels of ability, to which I shall return, and secondly to secure the best possible return from the resources invested. I shall also return to that matter in the context of the speech by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish.
The White Paper shows how all the Government's policies for schools pursue those two aims by making the curriculum as it is delivered in the schools serve better than it does now the needs of the individual and of the nation by developing each pupil's full potential and preparing him for the responsibilities of citizenship and working life in a technological and competitive world. Many schools cope successfully with their increasingly demanding task, to which my hon. Friend referred in his remarks about the teaching profession. However, many schools also show weaknesses. If the high standards achieved by pupils of all abilities in some schools could be achieved in all comparable schools, the quality of school education would rise dramatically.
The Government cannot act alone. The education service is a partnership in which local education authorities and teachers have essential roles. However, the Government have a responsibility and a duty to give a lead and also to have regard to the needs of the schools' customers, not least parents and employers. The Government are not taking new legal powers to discharge that responsibility, but are using their existing powers to fulfil a duty and meet a national need. Criticism that the Government's policies are centralist is misplaced. They acknowledge the distribution of functions between the partners and the need for a co-operative effort. It can only help good education for the Government to set out how they will discharge their functions and what they expect of their partners in the discharge of theirs.
In terms of the objectives in the White Paper, the Government will take the lead in promoting national agreement about the purposes and content of the curriculum. The proposals will encourage schools to do more to fulfil the vital function of preparing all young people for work. They will complete the reform of the public examination system taken at 16 in the interests of the curriculum and standards. They will introduce the new examination—the AS-level—to broaden the programme of students on A-level courses. They will work towards a national system of records of achievement, and I was pleased to hear a welcome for that. They will make the in-service training of teachers more effective through new financial arrangements; that matter played a large part in my hon. Friend's speech. They will give school governing bodies more balanced membership and improve the distribution of functions of governors, local education authorities an heads in regard to their schools. They will set new guidelines on the minimum size of schools. They will take steps to reduce under-achievement, including that found among many ethnic minorities, and they will tackle truancy through improvements in the work and training of education welfare officers.
As my right hon. Friend said yesterday, the Government recognise that it may be difficult to achieve 442 those policies in full within existing real levels of expenditure per pupil, but substantial progress can be made with better use of the available resources and there is considerable and continuing scope for redeployment through increased efficiency. The efforts made by the education service can only help its future claims on resources.
My hon. Friend cited the proportion of the work force who do not have even one CSE pass. It was that basic statistic, among others, that stimulated my right hon. Friend's speech in Sheffield a year ago, in which he addressed the questions of breadth, balance, differentiation and relevance in the curriculum and also signalled the changes in the examination system.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish is more confident than the majority of the House that standards have risen during the past 20 years. He clearly joined issue with us on that, and it was one of the common causes that followed the Sheffield speech. But much still needs to be done and the more that the various partners in the system can collaborate the more we are likely to achieve.
§ Mr. Andrew F. BennettIs the Minister really claiming that standards have not risen? Surely he accepts that standards have risen in exam results. I remember teaching in secondary modern schools in the 1960s and the problems we had to contend with then are not present in the vast majority of schools now.
§ Mr. BrookeI take the hon. Gentleman's point. By putting the matter in the way that he did, he underestimated the concern of parents about the quality of present standards, which of itself provides motive for a further improvement.
Although the fact that a large number of people have limited qualifications played a large part in the Sheffield speech, the speech also continuously emphasised the concern about our under-achievement overall and not simply in the bottom half.
My hon. Friend referred to the role of teachers and the new demands on them. "Better Schools" addresses itself specifically to that issue and recognises the difference in roles which they are being asked to fulfil. The White Paper reminds us of the work which was set in motion by DES circular 3/84, which was Welsh Office circular 21/84 on initial teacher training. It set out the considerations on which the council for the accreditation of teacher education will base its work in the reform, review and upgrading of teacher training throughout the system.
The most significant element is that which relates to in-service training. This is a response to the recent ACSET report. I remind the House of paragraph 176 in "Better Schools", which sets out what is envisaged. The Government have concluded that the most effective way of achieving these aims on in-service training would be through the introduction of a new specific grant to support LEA expenditure on most aspects of in-service training, including that expenditure currently supported through the in-service training pool. They propose accordingly to introduce legislation to extend the Secretary of State's existing power to grant-aid in-service training.
It is envisaged that the grants paid under the extended power would fall into two parts. One part would continue the existing in-service training grants for national priority areas of training. The other would be a general in-service training grant to cover both provision and release costs for 443 training that is planned to meet locally assessed priorities. The expenditure to be supported by the grant will be determined each year. It is envisaged that the conditions of grant to be specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State would require each LEA to submit information about its plans for in-service training, including arrangements for identifying teachers' needs for in-service training and making good use of the teachers who have been released to engage in this training.
Responsibility for planning and implementing much in-service training would continue to rest with the LEAs as employers of most teachers, but within a framework that would enable the more effective planning and management of training. Those last three words are key words in the process that is envisaged.
I recognise the problems which are contained within the present situation which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent graphically described. The Government are clear that a key method of improving standards is to concentrate on teacher training both initially and in in-service work. Clear proposals are coming forward on how that will be implemented.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent talked a bit about further education, but it did not play as large a part in the speech of the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish. My hon. Friend referred to the announcement of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment that there will be a working study and review of qualifications in this area.
In further education, there is a responsiveness to meet the changing needs of industry and commerce. That was very much a problem which was addressed in "Training for Jobs". I remind the House that that was a White Paper which was brought forward by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Education and Science and for Employment. As the House will recall, there was an Her Majesty's Inspectorate report shortly thereafter on the relationship between the further education college system and local industry. It showed that in nearly half the cases considered relations were good and that in a further third relations were adequate. However, in 20 per cent. of cases relations were not good and that is where work needed to be done. "Training for Jobs" is directed to that objective. It is now well known that the Audit Commission will be producing a report on efficiency within the FE system, and that will demand a response by the Government. There is also concern to exemplify value for money within the system.
In this context, I acknowledge—I am glad to say that employers now acknowledge this, too—that employers do not always articulate their needs as clearly as they might. I was delighted to have the chance to launch one of the college-employer link projects. These are being undertaken on a pilot basis to see what can be learnt from eight cases spread around the country—north and south, urban and rural—about ways of further improving the links between colleges and employers. Those projects are now well advanced.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent referred to the report "Competence and Competition". A clear message of the report is the need for greater investment by employers in the whole training process. The Government's response is the commitment to the youth training scheme that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor made last week. A substantial part of the additional cost of a two-year scheme will be expected to come from the 444 employers' side. A significant feature of the move towards a two-year scheme is that a longer course should lead to recognised qualifications. My hon. Friend referred to the study that is to be made of that. One thing that will be examined is the extent to which we can build up a modular credit system in the framework of CPVE — the certificate of pre-vocational education—so that people on the scheme can put together a qualification by means of a series of modules.
I am not sure that it is sensible to dwell at length on TVEI — the technical and vocational educational initiative—today as it is still at the pilot stage, although it has been greeted with enthusiasm by all those involved —teachers and pupils. Local authorities have also been anxious to participate. What is clearly emerging is a shortage of teachers to teach the required subjects in certain areas, so in the next couple of years, before the Government secure through Parliament legislative powers for specific grants there will be a period in consultation with the Manpower Services Commission of expanding in-service training in those areas.
§ Mr. Andrew F. BennettThe attractive feature of TVEI for the schools participating is the injection of resources and equipment. If it is intended to extend TVEI or anything else, the Government will have to find the resources to make it a practicality.
§ Mr. BrookeI take the point. An element of the enthusiasm has been the availability of resources with which to work. The presence of volunteer teachers and pupils and of some extra resources clearly does wonders for enthusiasm.
Incidentally, on the industrial secondment of teachers under the Department's scheme to provide direct grants to LEAs in this context, I am glad to say that that now extends to further education. Likewise, I am delighted that one of the education support grants is directed to in-service training among further education teachers in information technology.
My hon. Friend used fighting words about higher education and talked of it being the most inefficient sector. This is a matter in which I have direct responsibility. Indeed, I am chairman of the National Advisory Body for Public Sector Higher Education, so I am clearly on sensitive and vulnerable ground in the light of what my hon. Friend said.
The review being conducted under the chairmanship of Sir Alex Jarratt by industrialists and academics on efficiency in the university system is due next month.
§ Mr. Andrew F. BennettWill it be published next month?
§ Mr. BrookeIt will be received next month. I cannot give a date for publication, but the hon. Gentleman knows that the Government have a good record on publishing documents, even when they are sometimes inconvenient.
My hon. Friend will know from public expenditure White Papers that there has been a continuing efficiency squeeze on universities' resources, which is reflected in staff-student ratios. The effect is even more noticeable in the public sector where the increase in productivity has been significant—it has gone up from about 8:1 to 11:1 under this Government.
My hon. Friend took an idiosyncratic view of the low drop-out rates. Many people feel that one of the glories of 445 the British system is that those who enter higher education pass out with degrees faster and more efficiently than elsewhere. One in four of the cohort which arrive each autumn—not just freshmen—get a degree the following summer. The figure for the West as a whole is one in seven, so in terms of the deployment of resources, ours is a significant achievement. Professor Marris' recent lecture at Birkbeck college dwelt on that. I should be loth to extend our successful three-year course. The familiar statistic is that there have been 60,000 more students in higher education since 1979.
As for the efficient use of buildings, I hesitate to say that, outside the House, few people like working through the night, so there are problems associated with getting more intense use of facilities. Much maintenance of buildings and equipment is done during vacations and, of course, research continues. A significant development has been the use of university facilities and campuses for conferences on a large scale. It is not widely known that the total income of British universities, including all outside sources of income, research contracts and grants, has increased by 18 per cent. in real terms since 1979. That is a significant achievement on the part of the institutions.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish referred to the switch to engineering and technology. The Government are determined to pursue the conversion of higher education to even greater economic and social relevance. The hon. Gentleman said that we are deploying resources away from the arts to science and engineering. The extra numbers of science and engineering students are among the 60,000 I mentioned earlier, and there is no reduction in the other subjects to which he referred. The hon. Gentleman will know that £43 million for the next three years was announced in the Budget, and further exemplified in documents since.
§ Mr. BennettNot completely new money.
§ Mr. BrookeI agree that there is a degree of redeployment. Nevertheless, three quarters of it is money that would not have previously been available to higher education, and in that sense it is an expansion.
§ Mr. BennettHow much of it is new money?
§ Mr. BrookeIt is new money to those who will be able to deploy it in science, engineering and technology. It comes from outside the UGC's previous grant.
I welcome my hon. Friend's emphasis on quality and rigour. Some of what he said will be read with interest in higher education institutions throughout the land. I am not wholly sure that his comparison with American experience is helpful in our context because much of the American emphasis in higher education is on the graduate degree, and the undergraduate degree would not be regarded as strictly comparable to that which exists here.
My hon. Friend referred to adult and continuing education in his comprehensive speech. In terms of the adult training strategy, my Department and the Department of Employment are involved. I am delighted at the success of PICKUP. It is possible to under-estimate what is happening and the strength of the current in this area. To take an example from my hon. Friend's county, it is warming that the university of Kent and Kent local education authority have combined in an adult education 446 centre, where university and county provision go on side by side. It is reported that students in one category are sampling what is available in the other. A great deal is going on in adult education.
My hon. Friend referred to the Manpower Services Commission. The new chairman of the MSC and I have, wholly by chance, known each other for more than 20 years. He is kind enough to say that I launched him on his career. It profoundly helps the quality of the working relationship between my Department and the commission.
I shall say a brief word about the links betwen schools and business. Again absolutely by chance, I had occasion yesterday to visit St. Mary's, Twickenham, where there is a pilot diploma in the practices and principles of industry and commerce as an in-service training exercise. I met the teacher-students on the present course and those from last year's course. The enthusiasm for the work that those on last year's course were getting from pupils, employers and fellow teachers was particularly warming. At present the diploma course is funded by industry. It is a most impressive initiative.
My hon. Friend referred to hours in schools and in other parts of the system. He would be encouraged by the considerable use made of equipment in the TVEI experiments. In the public sector of higher education, the contact hours on computers is jumping regularly each year as a function of their being used longer and longer throughout the day.
Of course, I understand what the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said about resources, and he will be aware of what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said yesterday. He will also be aware of the study which we published late last year on how the teaching force might be redeployed, with the intention of increasing the number of teachers in areas where we wish to see improvements and for which we have set objectives. That increase would be partly sustained by the redeployment of other teachers from areas with falling rolls. I recognise that that requires a considerable exercise in political will, but we shall not need extra resources to achieve the switch. I hope that we shall see more of it. The hon. Gentleman regretted the fact that there was little reference to nursery education. I am delighted to say that more under-fives are receiving nursery education now than ever before, but I recognise that it is still a minority.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent referred to the process of recruitment into universities and higher education generally. The advice that we received from the University Grants Committee and the national advisory body last September extended the Robbins principle into the ability to benefit. In a debate in the House on 26 October, when giving an initial Government response, which will be amplified in the Green Paper, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that he was content with that extension, provided that there would be real rigour in the higher education institutions in analysing and assessing the ability of the candidate to benefit from the system. I am delighted to say that the number of mature students in higher education has increased during the lifetime of this Government and their immediate predecessors, and the projections for the rest of the decade and into the 1990s show a higher increase.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish mentioned the Open university. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in response to the visiting committee's report, in one way or another a further £2 million has been 447 provided for each of the next two years, against the original cut of £4.7 million. I agree that the Open university still believes that it needs more, and that dialogue will continue.
§ Mr. Andrew F. BennettBut the Open university did not accept the Government's figure for the cut, did it? It believed that it was much more.
§ Mr. BrookeThat is perfectly true, but we eventually reached reconciliation. A problem with the Open university, which was exemplified by the slowness with which it explained the figure of £13.2 million which it cited, is also reflected in the visiting committee's report. Chapters 1 and 6 contain references to the visiting committee asking the Open university for details of how its costs were made up, in terms of the savings that it was seeking, and the Open university was unable to answer those questions.
I said at the beginning that it was impossible to know what to expect from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent. He has stimulated a most valuable debate, and I am delighted to have taken part in it. I hope that in the future there will be similar opportunities to discuss the education system. It was warming to see yesterday the many hon. Members who wished to ask questions about the White Paper, which is a sign of the concern which the House has for education.