DISTURBANCES AT CARLTON APPROVED SCHOOL

HL Deb 30 March 1960 vol 222 cc471-93

THE EARL OF AYLESFORD rose to call attention to the recommendations contained in the Report of the Inquiry by Mr. Victor Durand, Q.C., into the disturbances at the Carlton Approved School on August 29 and 30, 1959; to ask Her Majesty's Government what action they propose to take; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, for some time now, and in fact before the occurrences at Carlton Approved School took place, I believe that there has been some disquiet, not only in the minds of the public but also in the minds of magistrates, approved school managers and the police. I should have raised this matter before your Lordships earlier, but in view of the fact that the Report of the Inquiry into the disturbances at Carlton Approved School was coming out, I decided to wait; and I am very pleased that I did. I believe that the Report is excellent, and it is my personal opinion that Mr. Victor Durand, Q.C., should be congratulated on its excellence.

I will not weary your Lordships in going through the full Report. Most of your Lordships will have read it, and others will be familiar with approved schools—or should I say with the running of approved schools. With your Lordships' approval, therefore, I should like to turn straight to the recommendations, which will be found on pages 56, 57 and 58 of the Report. These form the three sections, and Section C refers specifically to Carlton. Sections A and B appear to me to be general. It is about the 15 recommendations in these two sections that I should like to refer as briefly as I can.

But first may I make two points clear? I am not one who subscribes to the view that there is anything at all wrong with the youth of Britain to-day. I am certain in my own mind that they are perfectly first-class. Having made that clear, may I go on to make a second point, and that is—I am sorry to see that the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, is not in his seat—that I feel that there is a tendency nowadays, as he mentioned in his speech in the debate on adult education, to muddle up education and training. In view of the fact that there are other noble Lords who are going to speak after me and who are far better qualified to deal with these matters than I am, I should like, if I may, just to mention one or two matters of policy and leave the administrative side of the question to them. I am grateful to the noble Lords who are to join in this debate, and I know that your Lordships will be looking forward to hearing from them, so I will get on as fast as I can.

In the main, I feel that this Report, as I have said before, is excellent. The only recommendation with which I quarrel slightly is recommendation 5, because I fail to see that, whatever we call an approved school, it will be anything different from an approved school, and by changing the title I do not think we shall have much effect on whether boys resent it or not. The only recommendations that come my way under the word "Policy" appear to be Nos. 1 and 2 in Section A and Nos. 11 and 12 in Section B. From various talks which I have had with Members of your Lordships' House and people in other walks of life I find that opinions appear to be fairly evenly divided. So far as I can gather there are two definite schools of thought: one feels that approved schools ought to be stricter and that there ought to be more discipline, and the other feels that more ought to be done on psychological lines and that teachers should be better qualified from that point of view. I think there is a certain amount of truth in both those statements. The underlying difficulty occurs where in an ordinary approved school, which should rather rehabilitate boys from the psychological side of the question, we try to cater for the unruly boy who could well do with some more discipline. The classifying schools were designed more or less to try to obviate this difficulty, but in view of the present population bulge I do not think they are able to do their job properly; there are not enough places. I think something might be done in that regard.

The first category of boys, the unruly ones, I feel can be divided into two different types: one what the Report calls a hard core of anti-authority, and the other the persistent absconder. Both these types very much disrupt the running of an approved school and interfere seriously with the rehabilitation of others, who mostly come, may I mention in passing, from broken homes and whose only fault is that the sins of the fathers and mothers are being visited on them. Obviously, a few anti-authority youths in an approved school—and they seem generally to be of a forceful character and to be lacking in self-discipline—can dangerously disrupt and do damage out of all proportion to their numbers. I feel, my Lords, that they should be promptly segregated, as is mentioned in paragraph 12 of the Report, and as nearly promptly removed, as mentioned in paragraph 1. These troublemakers may then either be sent to Borstal, for which purpose the age limit could be lowered to fifteen to receive them, as mentioned in paragraph 2 of the Report, or to a more suitable approved school. I think it unfair to send boys of this nature to a similar type of approved school to the one they have just left, and obviously unfair to the approved schools themselves. I suggest that they be sent to some form of school as is envisaged in paragraph 11 of this Report.

Many who are connected with the running of approved schools, not only in running them themselves but also in sending them customers, feel that paragraph 11 is the most important of all the recommendations in the Report. We from the Midlands have been trying for eighteen months to get something on these lines to deal with just the sort of cases mentioned in the Report, with slight emphasis towards persistent absconders. The persistent absconder class of boys, again, can do damage out of all proportion to their numbers. As things stand at the moment, if a boy who runs away does not commit another offence he is sent straight back to the school from which he came. If he persists, he may be transferred, if a place can be found for him. But further offences are bound to be committed by boys if they are going to stay at large and obtain their objective of getting home. Thus they produce a sort of by-product of running away. Boys in this way can build up a quite horrifying record. The, offences usually are, so far as one can see, taking and driving away, and breaking and entering in search of food, money and clothes. That is hardly conducive to the goodwill of the local neighbourhood. The complaints from local neighbourhoods are certainly not frivolous.

I know that the quoting of statistics is slightly unfashionable, mostly because they can be made to prove anything, but, in spite of that, I will quote some rather staggering figures from an approved school close to my neighbourhood. The figures cover a period of a year from October, 1958, to October, 1959. The school concerned has a maximum number of 90 places. Within that year, 101 people absconded, and, while doing so committed 56 other offences. Action was taken to weed out the worst offenders, and there has now been a great improvement; but I am afraid that this improvement has been achieved at the expense of other approved schools. I was able to follow up only three cases, and in all those three cases the boys concerned ran away within the first fortnight of being at their new schools.

My Lords, we have open prisons and closed prisons; we have open and closed Borstals. I feel sure that your Lordships will agree that it is only logical to have, and that a very good case can be made for having, what, for the want of a better term, I will call open and closed approved schools; or, to be more accurate—and this is the way in which I wrote it down—some form of closed training and educational establishment where security and discipline, whilst not being harsh, is adequate to deal with persistent absconders and those from among the disruptive influence type. The boys for that particular form of school should be those considered not bad enough to be sent to Borstal but who would benefit from some form of modified approved school training. A suggestion I should like to make if such a system were put into force is that the traffic should, so to speak, be two ways: that is, if a boy is sent to a closed type of school he can win his way back to an ordinary one if he mends his ways.

My Lords, I have not mentioned finance—but, then, the Report does not mention finance, either. However, I hope that, as one noble Lord mentioned—and I am afraid I cannot remember who it was—the dead hand of the Treasury will not be allowed to stifle the putting into effect of any of these excellent recommendations. I know there must be a number of causes (and excellent ones at that) competing for a limited amount of money, but I do beg, please, that cheeseparing be not permitted to interfere with this: I think it is far too important. Many of the boys who go to approved schools can be made into very reasonable citizens—some of them, indeed, are of leadership material. I should like to thank your Lordships for being so kind to one making his maiden speech, and for listening so patiently. May I trespass one moment more on your kindness, and ask your Lordships to support me in asking Her Majesty's Government to implement the recommendations in this Report? I beg to move for Papers.

2.53 p.m.

LORD PAKENHAM

My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will wish me to congratulate the noble Earl on a most effective and very charming maiden speech. I only wish that he had spoken twice as long: certainly the House would have listened with great pleasure to a much longer speech. He revealed great knowledge of his subject, and spoke to us in a most pleasant and lucid way; and I know that everyone will hope to hear from him often in the future.

We must all agree that the noble Earl has done a real service in raising the Report of the Inquiry by Mr. Durand into the disturbances at Carlton Approved School—and, in effect, raising at the same time the whole situation in our approved schools. If I may say so without disrespect to the whole House, I think the noble Earl was perhaps almost too flattering to your Lordships in suggesting that all of us have an intimate knowledge of approved schools. We have all been to schools that were admired, I suppose, but not approved. I am afraid that if I asked how many noble Lords could claim to have any first-hand knowledge of the approved schools in this country, I should hardly expect to see a forest of hands arise from the Benches. I feel that this is very much a neglected corner of the social field.

Indeed, I think that we are all too much inclined to take approved schools for granted. We have a dim awareness that there are a lot of disturbed or awkward boys tucked away there, and as long as no trouble impinges on the outside world we seldom remember to give much credit to those who are looking after them. But, of course, if anything goes wrong and hits the headlines, the Press descend on the scene in a big way, and we are very quick to look for scapegoats, whether among individuals or in the nature of the system. Without any disrespect to a devoted band of officials, I cannot pretend that the Home Office, collectively speaking, have done much to educate us in recent times. Nothing could exceed their kindness and courtesy if one seeks, as I and other noble Lords have done recently, to visit these schools; but, by and large, we, the general public, are left pretty much in the dark about what is going on there. For example, the Home Office publish no annual report on the work of the Children's Department, under which the approved schools come. The latest Report was published in November, 1955; and, although another Report is, I believe, in process of publication, the date when it will appear is not known.

May I say, in passing, that if one goes back to the 1955 Report it is not easy to find much evidence of progress. There are certain ideas—and one has been mentioned to-day in the form of "closed facilities." That is one of those euphemistic terms meaning a place from which it is very difficult to escape. But the idea that there should be closed approved schools has been knocking about for the best part of ten years, and not a lot of progress has hitherto been made with it. Again, if we take No. 15 of the recommendations of the Durand Committee, we find a suggestion that an official handbook should be available for individual managers, giving them information about the approved school service, their duties as managers, and so on. It seems to me a rather shocking fact that a recommendation of this kind should be necessary: that apparently to-day an approved school manager has no authoritative source to which he can go for information about his duties. I am afraid it seems to me rather typical of the obscurity in which this whole subject has been allowed to languish, and of the very low priority given it in our official thinking. I am not exonerating anybody, and least of all myself, for if there has been insufficient interest in our approved schools there should no doubt be plenty of blame going for all of us, but the Home Office can certainly not escape their share of it—and I say that, well aware that there are individuals in the Home Office who have worked themselves to the bone in trying to help these schools in recent years.

I shall have some critical things to say in these remarks: but not only I, but I feel all Members of this House who have any interest in approved schools—and, in the last resort, I think that is all of us—will wish to pay a strong and wholehearted tribute to the work which is being done there, and to the devoted men and women who give up their lives without much material reward to this great work of redemption. The whole Carlton episode, with its attendant publicity, has been a very distressing experience for all those in the world of approved schools, and I hope and believe that a clear vote of reassurance will go out from your Lordships this afternoon.

EARL WINTERTON

Hear, hear!

LORD PAKENHAM

I know that the noble Earl, Lord Winterton, is leading the general opinion when he supports that hope with his friendly gestures.

I do not wish to dwell on the events at Carlton except in so far as they throw light on the general problems of our approved schools. I agree entirely with the noble Earl, Lord Aylesford, as I do in so many other respects, that this is an excellent Report. It is a Report of great ability—as one would expect, of course —and authority; and, may I add, of great charity. Some would think that it was almost too charitable, but that surely is always a mistake in the right direction; and I have no grounds for disputing any of the verdicts reached by Mr. Durand in relation to the disturbances themselves. Some of the gentlemen involved there on different levels must have long since bitterly regretted the failures on their part to which the Report calls attention, and I have no desire—I think few of us will have much desire—this afternoon to rub further salt into the wounds of those whose sense of duty and public spirit can hardly be disputed.

The facts however are unmistakable. Between the evening of August 28 and the evening of August 30 last year, at a time when the headmaster, through no fault of his own, was absent on annual leave, there were prolonged acts of defiance which culminated in a mass absconding by all but 4 of the 95 boys present in the school. Afterwards there were various court cases, and some of the boys were found guilty of various offences. Mr. Durand concludes, in paragraph 146 of his Report: The continuation of the school as a satisfactory training establishment for senior boys is in my view dependent also on a removal forthwith of blemishes disclosed at the inquiry. He then lists a number of blemishes—and it is a considerable list. I do not propose to run through them all, but I will mention two in particular. There is, first: the headmaster's resort (shown in two cases) to the use of force in physical control in a form inconsistent with the dignity of a headmaster or with the setting of good example to staff and boys. Then there is: the resort to irregular punishment on occasion by certain members of the staff. … This, apparently, mostly took the form of slapping. I have never yet seen people slapped in a big way, and I do not quite know what kind of picture that conjures up; but, at any rate, there were a number of activities under the name of "slapping", and all that is strictly against the rules.

From the widest point of view, it is particularly striking that certain of the recommendations made following the Home Office inspection of October and November, 1957, had not been carried out by August, 1959; that is to say, nearly two years later certain vital recommendations following this inspection had not been carried out. To use a phrase that occurs in the Report: Little or nothing has been done to implement them. That applied to five recommendations, but it applied to two in particular: first, that the manager should take a closer interest in the licensing of each boy; and secondly, that the headmaster should hold full staff meetings at regular intervals. In those two cases, and in others the recommendations of nearly two years before were virtually ignored. There were two other signal failures, though here I think it would be unfair to blame individuals connected with the school. There was the failure to obtain a visiting psychiatrist—and a visiting psychiatrist is somehow or other obtained in the most progressive schools; and there was also the failure, in spite of advertisement, to obtain a second housemaster.

I gather that the recommendations made by Mr. Durand, which he calls "specific to Carlton School", are likely to be carried out; and so far as that particular school is concerned, I think that most of us would be prepared to leave it there: I do not think that any of us wishes to hound to destruction the gentlemen in any way involved. But what light—and this surely is the main interest this afternoon—does the story throw on the approved school situation generally? Mr. Durand divides his recommendations into those not requiring legislation—which the Home Secretary appears to have largely accepted—and those requiring legislation—which I gather the Home Secretary is still considering. And it may or may not be possible for the noble Earl, Lord Bathurst, to say anything further about it this afternoon.

In Recommendation (8) Mr. Durand calls for urgent consideration of the housemaster's scale of remuneration in the light of the inability of approved schools to recruit sufficient suitable people on the present terms.… It seems to me essential that the housemaster should be much better paid. The housemaster is supposed to be under the headmaster and the master with the most direct personal responsibility for the care, as distinct from the teaching, of the boys. His present remuneration, which runs on a scale of £575 to £845, is ludicrously low, and he should certainly be paid on the same scale as qualified teachers, who receive the Burnham scale with certain additions. I would add that a further part of that recommendation seems to me equally essential—namely, that the housemaster should receive some special course of training. I am not sure whether the noble Earl who is to reply has had notice of this point, but I would lay before the Government the suggestion that, in view of the difficulties of the work, all who teach in approved schools, whether they be housemasters or teachers, should undergo a short course of training—perhaps for three months or six months.

I venture to think that the whole problem of the housemaster should be looked at again. Since the Reynolds Report (as it is called) of 1946 these officers have been conceived as being a somewhat different race from the ordinary masters, the teachers; they are supposed to be possessed of social service training—and that is a matter that we have discussed in various connections in this House. On the other hand, some successful approved schools, unable to obtain housemasters of this kind, have used for this purpose ordinary teachers of proved ability and worth. I must say that I cannot help feeling that many schoolmasters, particularly if they had had this short course of training, would make perfectly good housemasters. I cannot believe that there is this necessary distinction between the two types. Most of us with experience of our own schools will remember housemasters who had not had social service training. My own housemaster—and I regard him as the greatest of all—was a wonderful classics scholar and an equally good cricketer—and at the age of 89 he is in better form than ever. I feel that there are many housemasters, from many schools, who would be able to do this kind of job of housemaster in an approved school without being, so to speak, segregated. In any case, I do not think we shall get the housemasters of this peculiar kind if we insist that the work can be done only by them. So I hope that the whole question of the line between the housemasters and teachers will be looked at carefully again.

Among the other recommendations of the Report not requiring legislation are the establishment of one or more schools with "closed" facilities; that is to say, with premises from which it is impossible to escape easily. Attention is also called to the desirability of having one or two secure rooms for boys who suddenly become very troublesome. I think that proposals of this kind are hard to resist if the members of the profession, those who have the keenest and most direct responsibility, regard them as absolutely necessary. But they certainly need careful thought when they are being implemented.

The Carlton Report, as was mentioned by the noble Earl, lays great stress on the emergence in the last two years or so, not only at Carlton but in approved schools generally, of a greater proportion of difficult, disturbed and intractable boys; and the most important of Mr. Durand's general recommendations are aimed primarily at dealing with the problem of this relatively small number of exceptionally difficult boys. Those I have spoken to in the Approved Schools' Service do not dispute the urgency of this problem, but they are all very anxious that the whole tradition of the approved school should not be undermined by any steps taken in the light of this new situation. The whole tradition of the approved school has relied increasingly on the idea of co-operation, with coercion in the last resort in the background. I asked one headmaster on Monday what he would say if he were speaking in this debate, and he replied: "I should tell the House of Lords that our approved schools in recent times have undergone a revolution in a Christian direction"—that is the gist of what he said'; and when I say "Christian" I do not forget that some of the finest work in this field has been done by the Jewish community.

The Carlton Report itself refers to the work of approved schools as non-penal training; and the Report of the Select Committee on the Estimates of 1948–49 contains this passage: It cannot be too widely known that children are not sent to approved school as a punishment. They are committed to the care of the school managers in order to give them a chance to make a new start in life. I am sure that those who are actually looking after these boys would feel that it was a tragedy if the underlying ideas of the whole approved school system were to be undermined by anything which made these institutions less like schools and more like prisons.

The best suggestion that I can arrive at seems to be this—and I think this kind of thing was in the mind of the noble Earl, if not exactly in this form. It seems to me that you ought to start with one school—not altogether a closed school, but with a considerable closed wing. I realise that there is a small experiment already going on, but nothing on this scale. Use a large closed wing for boys who are not so hopeless from the approved schools' point of view that they ought to go to Borstal, but who are too disturbed and disturbing to be allowed to remain in open conditions. Bring them from other schools if necessary. In view of the limited amount of psychological training at this school, train on them a full battery of psychiatrists and psychologists. I agree with the noble Earl that we should not keep the boys there longer than needed. Give them the inducement to make use of what he calls the "two-way" movement.

I turn for a moment to the general recommendations which require legislation. I appreciate that in this connection the Home Secretary may be waiting for the Ingleby Report and, maybe, other studies. The first recommendation requiring legislation calls for a statutory provision to facilitate the prompt temporary removal from an approved school by the police of unruly or subversive youths when it is necessary to avoid a serious threat to discipline. It might be supposed—I think some well-informed people do suppose—that such a power exists already if there is something resembling a minor mutiny, but I gather that there is in fact some doubt about it. I gather that Mr. Durand, an eminent man of the law, felt that there was some doubt as to whether the police could be called in when acts of disorder occurred on the school premises. If there is any doubt at all, and if that is the point of the recommendation, I quite agree that a recommendation of this sort should be implemented as quickly as possible, but with emphasis clearly on the temporary removal by the police with, I suppose, court proceedings to follow.

What are much more controversial are the second and third recommendations. One of them facilitates removal from an approved school to Borstal, and the other empowers the courts in the first instance to leave it to the Secretary of State, after a report from the classifying school, to decide whether boys should be sent in the first place to an approved school or to Borstal. Speaking generally, we can say that these were rather controversial recommendations, facilitating the movement as between approved school and Borstal. On the face of it, there is everything to be said for holding Borstal as a readily available sanction for those who misbehave in approved schools. Without, however, disparaging the training outlook of the Borstal establishments—I do not want something I said earlier to suggest that Borstals are like prisons, because there is a great gulf between them—one must point out that the Borstal housemasters are members of the Prison Service, though some of them (and maybe quite a number) would have had some experience of teaching before they went there. They are not schoolmasters like the authorities in an approved school. A boy who is moved from an approved school to Borstal has been moved half way to prison and, at the very least, before that is done it seems to me that he should be sent back for further study to a classifying school, and it may be that psychiatric aid could be given him there. Others feel that before a step of that kind is taken—before one is removed from an approved school to Borstal—the courts should be brought into the picture.

Assuming it to be a fact that there is a higher proportion of intractable boys than there were two or three years ago, one may ask, "What is the explanation?" I will not accept the view that our youth generally is getting worse. I am not quite sure whether I should be quite so wholehearted as the noble Earl who said that our youth are first-class. They are first-class only in the sense that we are all first-class, and in the sense that we are none of us first-class. The same is true of youth. I do not think they are better than their fathers, but I am not prepared to say that they are worse. There are vast numbers of magnificent potentialities. I agree that this does not, in itself, provide an explanation. We cannot say that our youth are getting worse and, therefore, that a lot of these difficult boys are arriving at approved schools. I am not sure about the explanation which was offered me recently, that our very skill in identifying awkward customers is tending to bring them increasingly together; that we are spotting them and concentrating them. That may be so, but I am not too sure.

I incline to the view that, at any rate in a psychological sense—at any rate in their own eyes—our young people are maturing earlier, so that a rather rebellious young man of seventeen is a good deal harder to deal with than his father would have been at the same age, particularly under conditions of confinement. It seems to me that this earlier psychological maturity is probably the explanation we are looking for. It may be suggested that as time passes we shall find it necessary to reduce the maximum age at which our young people should be admitted to approved schools. I would feel, on the whole, that that would be a retrogressive step. But if approved schools are to retain and enhance their co-operative educational character, it may be that boys who some years ago would have been sent to approved schools will in future have to be sent to Borstal. It may be that the conditions of admission will have to be tightened up. I do not want to talk as though sending them to Borstal is like sending them to the gallows, and on other occasions we shall have to discuss what we can do for them.

But there is one point where I am sure the Durand Report is wrong—this is apart from the terminological point, where I agree about the change of name. It seems to me that it would be a great mistake to lower the Borstal age from sixteen to fifteen in the case of these young people. I am sure that that would be a mistake, and the best opinion I have been able to consult in the world of approved schools is strongly against that suggestion.

I offer one personal suggestion which I do not think will be accepted by the House this afternoon, but, with great diffidence, I hope that it will at least be considered. It has the support of my noble friend Lady Wootton of Abinger, who has had a great deal of experience with this problem and who is unfortunately not with us this afternoon. It seems to me that if we tend to blur in the way suggested the line between approved schools and Borstals, the whole educational ethos of the approved schools may be threatened. For this, and other reasons, I believe that the approved schools should be transferred from the care of the Home Office to that of the Ministry which looks after other schools, the Ministry of Education. I know that if the noble Earl had to say anything to that, he would say, "No"; but I hope that at any rate he will say that he will think it over and place those thoughts before his right honourable friend.

Is that all that I have in mind to say? It is not quite all. There is one very disquieting thing about the Carlton Report. It is all the more disquieting if we accept, as I am perfectly prepared to, the tributes to the excellent characters and intentions of the managers and leading masters. Why did they break the rules in this persistent way? Why did they fail to carry out the recommendations of the inspectors? How did they come to fail to secure a visiting psychiatrist or a second housemaster? We are told that Carlton is very remote. I suppose you could get there in an hour from London, and it is not exactly the back of beyond. I would give my own surmise in a sentence. The managers and the masters were left too much on their own. They lacked sufficient support from the Home Office, and they lacked sufficient supervision from the same quarter. As regards support, I can hardly doubt that if the Home Office had really thrown themselves into it, they could have helped Carlton to acquire an extra housemaster, or teacher converted into a housemaster. I can hardly believe that it would have been impossible to secure, if the Home Office had really put their backs into that, the services of a visiting psychiatrist. I say that, well aware that in recent years the Home Office have bestirred themselves in a very helpful way to equip the schools with more psychiatrists than hitherto.

As regards supervision, the breaches of the rules and the failure to carry out the recommendations of the inspectorate involve a responsibility which certainly lies fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the managers. But the Home Office must take their share of that responsibility. They ought to have known what was going on, and still more obviously they ought to have seen, when they did know something and recommended something, that those recommendations were carried out. Take, for example, page 42, paragraph 149, of the Report. It states: The managing body was, over the period investigated, inclined to leave too much to the sole discretion of the headmaster. The managers delegated virtually all their statutory responsibilities for the licensing of boys at Carlton School to the headmaster. If this in fact was so and it was clearly wrong to be so, surely it was the responsibility of the Home Office Children's Department Inspectorate to discover these facts and place them before the Secretary of State, and to oblige the managers either to keep to the rules or resign. The Home Office it seems slides out of this, in paragraph 60, by not knowing what was going on or not knowing the whole truth. Do we need more inspectors or more inspectors with greater experience? Where is the corresponding recommendation in the Report that deals with this aspect of the failure? If it is said that the Home Office found out all that was necessary, why were their recommendations not enforced? There was a gap of nearly two years between the inspectorate's inspection and this very unhappy outbreak.

Let us take a final and still broader look (and I am now about to close) at the system as a whole, including the strange, invidious position in which the managers find themselves, many of them self-co-opting bodies responsible to no one and carrying very onerous responsibilties. Certain obvious remedies spring to mind, and some of them, which I myself would not support, in their entirety at least, would cut at the root of the whole voluntary system of approved schools. At the present moment, I would tell the House that there are 25 schools which come directly under local authorities; there are 41 which come under charitable organisations, many of them the organisations of leading churches; and there are 52—and Carlton is one of these—where the managers are a committee, so to speak, responsible to no one. It is certainly an odd set-up. As Mr. Durand points out; There is no Home Office control over the appointment, removal, or selection of managers of approved schools". A little earlier he reminds us that Virtually the whole cost of the service is met from public funds". It is tempting to suggest that the voluntary system has shot its bolt and that all the schools should be brought directly under the local authorities. I myself should feel that that was much too drastic a development. Certainly there is no justification—and I am speaking for many in the schools—for panic measures as a result of the Carlton Report alone. The all-Party Select Committee of 1948–49 did not recommend any major change in the present system of dual management, but they were of the opinion that greater efficiency would result if there were local government representation on all voluntary management boards. For some reason or other that recommendtaion has not been carried out. As was pointed out at that time by the Committee, boards of voluntary managers are mostly composed of people who take a great interest in child welfare and who often dedicate themselves in a noble way to the care of these schools. Frequently there is a religious background and there is a spirit in many of these schools which few of us would wish to see in any way diminished. It might, however, be possible to distinguish—and I throw out this idea, not aware that it has been canvassed widely hitherto—between those voluntary schools which are run by recognised charitable organisations, something over 40, and the rather larger number which like Carlton, are run by local committees who, so to speak, hang in the air and are responsible to no one. It might be possible for the latter, those completely unrepresentative committees, but not for the former, not the committees acting under large charitable organisations, to be brought entirely under the control of the local authorities. In any case it seems that there is a need for a closer watch and stronger backing at the centre.

Some of these are tentative thoughts. My own Party is still considering the matter and it would be wrong to talk as though the Labour Party was already committed to some particular line. But we can all be at one, I am sure, quite irrespective of Party, in the reflection that the Carlton episode will have done more good than harm if it stirs all of us up, including the Home Office, to take more interest than hitherto in the problems of the approved schools; and for that reason we have every cause to be grateful to the noble Earl who introduced this Motion. We should do all we can to study and share the problems of the managers and staffs and boys and girls, who, after all, are our own flesh and blood and have their own lives ahead of them, in which as fellow citizens and fellow Christians we are all inextricably involved.

3.28 p.m.

LORD RAGLAN

My Lords, it is now some fourteen years since the then Secretary of State did me the honour of asking me to undertake the chairmanship of a newly opened approved school and to appoint my own board of managers, and I have occupied that position ever since. I have, I gather, in the opinion of the noble Lord, been hanging in the air all that time; nevertheless I shall venture to give your Lordships a few observations on the Carlton Report.

I should like to say in the first place that it seems to me not to have been so serious an affair as this long Blue Book, of 60 pages, would suggest. After all, nobody was hurt and very little damage was done. Although it has been very regrettable, your Lordships will see, if you look at the figures on page 16, that up to this time the school had been very successful—and that in spite of the defects which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has mentioned. I do not wish to go in detail into these defects, but there is one point which I think I must make. As the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has said, a number of the staff (I think it was six of them) admitted to having slapped the faces of some of the boys, and the fact that so many of them admitted that is bound to give one the impression that this is a recognised method, in spite of its being contrary to the law, of dealing with insolent boys. I should like to assure your Lordships that, to the best of my knowledge (and I have some knowledge, not only of approved schools but also of Borstals) that sort of thing, which I should have supposed was unthinkable, is certainly extremely rare. I am practically certain that in my school nobody ever slaps a boy; nor in the Borstal of which I have the honour to be a visitor does anybody ever slap a boy. Not only are the orders to obey rule 38, which is mentioned in the Report, but the instructions to members of the staff are that if any boy is insolent or insubordinate they are to report him to the governor or headmaster, as the case may be; and I know that that is very often done.

As the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, also mentioned, the governors of this school at Carlton, and the staff of the school, failed in other ways to conform to the regulations; and Mr. Durand points out that if the regulations had been properly carried out it is at any rate quite likely that no disturbance would have taken place. Yet his recommendations, in so far as they affect Carlton School, which are not very drastic, although they are numerous, propose to alter in a good many respects the whole approved school system. He seems to suppose that the danger of outbreaks of this kind is so great that the whole system at the approved school must be subordinated to the business of taking precautions to prevent outbreaks.

The whole idea of the approved school is, of course, to reform. The boys go to the approved school to be taught to behave properly. If you want people to behave properly—including the noble Viscount who is Leader of the Opposition—you must set them an example. Your Lordships will know that in all good regiments it is taken for granted that orders will be obeyed; it is only in bad regiments that there is any doubt about it. If it is taken for granted that orders will be obeyed, orders are obeyed. The whole idea of a good approved school, like any other good school, is to get an atmosphere in which everybody is expected to do what is right; then, to a large extent, they do do what is right. Most of the recommendations of Mr. Durand in this Report are liable to act in quite an opposite sense. As soon as he gets to the approved school, the boy is to be threatened with the police; he is to be threatened with Borstal; he is to be threatened with solitary confinement. He is to be shown from the start that he is expected to be a bad boy. In consequence, I think he will partly be a bad boy.

I should like to go into these recommendations in a little more detail, in the first place as regards the police. Your Lordships will see from the Report that although the police were sent for to go to Carlton School, they were not actually used. To my mind, it is, and should be, quite unnecessary to call the police to any approved school. If the staff are not competent to deal with an obstreperous boy, they are not fit to be where they are; and to introduce the police in that way would be deliberately to institute a challenge to obstreperous boys to make themselves more obstreperous, so as to have the honour and glory of bringing in the police.

The second matter is Borstal. The noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has said, I think quite correctly, that all the authorities are against lowering the age of admission to Borstal. Now the lower limit for Borstal is sixteen. It is rare for boys under seventeen to be admitted to Borstal. Quite a number of the boys in my Borstal are married. To introduce boys of fifteen into this environment would, I suggest, be quite out of the question. There is further, this question of solitary confinement—what are, I think, called "secure" rooms, where boys can be kept locked up. On one occasion we tried this in my school when we had a persistent absconder. But it does not work, for the reason that an approved school has not the staff available to look after boys in these conditions: somebody has to feed them; somebody has to exercise them; and there are not the people to do it. Then the fact that a persistent absconder was placed in confinement for a time would only make him more likely than previously to abscond, if possible, when he was let out. It simply does not work. These recommendations seem to me not only undesirable in themselves but, taken together, to run counter to the general principles under which approved schools are, and should be, conducted.

There is one more recommendation of Mr. Durand which seems to me to be far more serious—namely, that boys should have a statutory right to appeal from the headmaster to the managers. I cannot imagine anything more calculated to ruin the discipline of any school. We have all been to school. We all know that the idea of appealing from our housemaster to the headmaster would never have occurred to us; and as for appealing from the headmaster to the governing body, the idea would have been quite ridiculous. It seems to me that it is even more ridiculous in an approved school than in a public school. Why should these boys, who, after all, are delinquent boys, be given legal rights such as none of us would ask for our own children? Then there is the further disadvantage, that delinquent boys are more likely than others to bring false accusations against members of the staff. It is, I will not say prevalent, but not in the least rare, for boys at approved schools to bring entirely fictitious charges of indecency against members of the staff—so much so that it is now regarded as an occupational risk. If we allow these boys to appeal to the managers if they are dissatisfied with what the headmaster has done, to my mind that is an incentive to them to bring false accusations against members of the staff.

As regards headmasters generally, I would say that the idea that it is the business of the managers to try to teach a headmaster his business is entirely mistaken. The managers should not go questioning the boys about what they think of the headmaster; but they should go about the school and notice the general tone and demeanour of the boys, and speak to them. From that they should be able to see whether anything is seriously wrong. If they do not think that there is anything seriously wrong, they should let the headmaster, who is a trained man, who spends every day there, whereas they are there only once or twice a month, carry on with the staff. If they do not do that the school will not succeed.

The members of the staff at approved schools are really dedicated persons. They have a much more difficult job than have masters at ordinary schools. They are there every day and most of the day. They do not get their evenings or their weekends off, as do masters at ordinary schools. They cannot carry out these difficult duties which are imposed upon them unless they have, and know that they have, the full support of the managers. It is one of the most important duties of any manager to show the boys that the staff, and particularly the headmaster, have his full confidence. I am quite sure that anyone who has the interests of discipline at heart will oppose this proposal that the boys shall have a right of appeal to the managers. I am afraid that at certain approved schools there are managers who enjoy occupying a position of authority and like to fling their weight about, and those managers may approve this proposal; but anyone who really considers the interests of approved schools will, I am sure, be against it. That is the point in this Report and in the recommendations of Mr. Durand about which I feel most strongly.

I have one or two other points to make. The noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, referred to the name of these schools. I agree entirely with them. Mr. Durand proposes that instead of "approved" schools they should be called "registered" schools, or something like that. I have no doubt whatever that in a very short time the word "registered" would come to have the same connotation as "approved" has now. As to the housemasters, I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, said. I think it would be far better if all housemasters were schoolmasters. As it is now, although they are supposed to be in charge of the boys, in fact for most of the day the boys are in the charge of teachers and instructors and not of the housemaster. They are put on to various odd jobs during the day. They do a lot of work—I do not say that they do not; but they have little chance of promotion, and they are really "nobody's children." Their position is a most unsatisfactory one and I do not think it is at all surprising that Carlton School was unable to get its complement of housemasters.

Finally, my Lords, persistent abscondings are a problem which no one has yet succeeded in solving. I believe that there is perhaps a case for having separate schools to which the boys can be sent, but one must always watch the danger that both managers and masters at ordinary schools may jump at the chance of getting rid of boys who are difficult. The good approved schoolmaster prides himself on being able to deal with any boy in his charge. Although he does not always succeed, it is a good thing that he should be allowed to try, so long as it is possible to permit him to do so. As the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has said, there may be there a case which will require careful consideration.

Another point I should like to mention is that Mr. Durand in his Report expresses the hope that the Home Office will restore the grant for sending boys to camp. That was a most valuable provision previously. It was done away with, for motives of economy, I believe, some three or four years ago. A fortnight by the sea did the boys a world of good, physically and morally, and I very much hope that it may be found to be within the power of the Home Office to restore the grant. There is just one more point. I should not like it to be thought that I felt Mr. Durand had done a bad job. He was obviously unfamiliar with approved schools; he could not fail to be otherwise. I believe that he carried out his task and prepared his Report in a very fair and conscientious manner, and I do not wish it to be thought that in expressing disagreement with him I am in any way denigrating the public service he performed in carrying out the inquiry. But I hope that the Home Office will not allow themselves to be stampeded into making quite unnecessary changes in the approved school system.