§ 8. Mr. AmessTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what steps he has taken to increase the interest of parents in the education of their children.
§ Mr. EggarThe Government have introduced a wide range of measures to extend the part parents play in their children's education, notably by giving parents a much wider choice of schools, by enabling them to seek grant-maintained status for their schools and by increasing the information available to parents on their children's progress.
§ Mr. AmessDoes my hon. Friend agree that education is very much a partnership between parents and schools and that it is quite wrong for some parents to expect the schools to take total responsibility for their children's education? Does he also agree that the time that parents spend with their children in the evenings and at weekends can in later years pay great educational dividends?
§ Mr. EggarI entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Many parents spend long periods helping their children. Through our various reforms—including the national curriculum and the reporting mechanism for parents—we shall be assisting those parents. I regret that too many children get stuck in front of the television set as soon as they arrive home from school, that there is too little discussion in the home and that too few books are available. Even the very best teachers and the very best schools cannot effectively educate children in a vacuum.
§ Mr. CryerDoes the Minister accept that parents in Bradford are very interested in their children's education and often take part in campaigns in support of the local authority's requests for more money to restore the city's crumbling schools? Is he aware that there are more than 600 temporary classrooms in use there? Surely it cannot be conducive to the provision of good education that some of those classrooms have been in use for so long that they need radical repair or replacement with more temporary classrooms. Does the Minister agree that it is time the Government accepted the representations from both Conservative and Labour majorities that provision be made for a decent level of education expenditure so that Bradford's crumbling schools may be restored?
§ Mr. EggarYes, that is why, in this year's settlement, there is a 15 per cent. increase in the capital available to Bradford. That is why many parents in Bradford have voted with their feet, both by supporting grant-maintained status for Bingley grammar school and by making application for a Bradford CTC. They know where good education is to be found.