HL Deb 24 July 1963 vol 252 cc692-711

2.38 p.m.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD rose to call attention to educational policy; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I rise to call attention to the problems of education. I am afraid I shall detain the House for quite a while, which is all the worse in view of the long list of distinguished speakers to follow. I can plead in extenuation that I was quite brief in speaking last night; but I realise that that is a small consolation to those who are here now and were not here then, so that I am not going to be forgiven a great deal on that account.

There is a natural complexity in a debate of this kind, in which educational and political and social considerations are so much intermingled. I think of education as the art of adapting human beings to the requirements of life; and I think of politics as the art of adapting life to the requirements of human beings. Be that as it may, if educational wisdom were to be found mainly among Ministers of Education, this House would be the most distinguished and enlightened educational body in the world. I believe we have among our membership no fewer than six ex-Ministers of Education. We all miss the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, who is doing such valued work for our country and for peace, and we shall all rejoice if he is able to achieve the great success that seems on the way. That will not, of course, prevent me from commenting in an objective spirit on some of his educational utterances, and he would not wish it otherwise. I am only sorry that he is not here to reply. But we have the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, who I know will look after all the necessary interests.

As regards the other five ex-Ministers of Education, I take it that their views, or at any rate their spirit, will be reproduced by the noble Lord, Lord Eccles. I am sure they will not wish to disown him in any way. I shall have a number of sharp things to say about Conservative policy during recent years, and for quite a part of that time the noble Lord, Lord Eccles, was Minister. But my last thought of him as Minister, shared I believe by a good many others who have been close to education, is that he was the man who pushed his enthusiasm for education to the point where it ended his Ministerial career; and I do not think that any Minister of Education could wish for a better epitaph—I mean, of course, a Ministerial epitaph: I do not want to suggest that his life, or even his active life, is over. There are many others of light and leading who are going to speak—ex-Prime Ministers, Bishops, at least one Vice-Chancellor, the noble Lord, Lord James of Rusholme; and the maiden speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, will of course be a speech of special interest. What a pity that his father, so greatly loved in this House, could not be here to listen to him! But I suppose that that would in fact be one of the few things impossible to happen—impossible even in your Lordships' House.

If we take a long, hard look at the general level of British education to-day, we can arrive at conclusions of many kinds. But two stand out. On the one hand, we may observe that the cost of education has gone up from £414 million in 1951–52 to nearly £1,250 million in 1963–64. The cost has trebled in that period of twelve years. And even if we make an allowance for an increase in prices during that period of nearly 50 per cent., this is indeed a massive augmentation. In the same period the percentage of the national income going to education has increased from about 3.1 per cent. to 4.9 per cent. The increase in the proportion of national income going to public education would have been somewhat less striking if our industrial production had not so dismally stagnated in recent years. The Parliamentary Secretary was perfectly entitled to point out in another place that the "Neddy" plan does not plan for an increase in national income of more than 4 per cent. a year and the expenditure on education in real terms has improved by 5.7 per cent. per annum over the past five years. As I say, the Parliamentary Secretary was perfectly entitled to make that point. In passing, am entitled to call attention to the fact—which does not invalidate his argument—that in the recent report of "Neddy" entitled Conditions Favourable to Faster Growth we are told that With the rising income associated with economic growth, there is likely to be a more than proportionate increase in expenditure on education. So what has happened is not abnormal, but those who wish to defend the record of the last years are fully entitled to point to it.

I hope there are no noble Lords opposite who consider that we have been spending too much on education. I shall be unpleasantly surprised if anybody raises his voice to-day in that sense; but, of course, anything may be said here. But there may be quite a few who argue—and I suppose the Government themselves will argue—that the figures which I have just given will show that we have been spending quite enough. We on this side do not accept the argument that we have been spending enough on education in recent years. We do not accept it, even assuming—which we do not assume—that the Government have spent the money to the best advantage.

Before being told that our attitude in this respect is merely partisan, may I quote two testimonies from acknowledged pundits, Sir Charles Snow, in a recent lecture delivered at Cambridge, and Sir Geoffrey Crowther, when he was opening the Campaign for Educational Advance in January of this year. The House will no doubt recall that the Leaders of all the Parties and the Church, and in particular the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, have collaborated in that campaign. Sir Charles Snow calls on us to see our education as foreign observers see it; in other words, to take a detached view. He strives hard to be fair, and indeed generous, to our achievements, and he mentions four respects (all of which I will not refer to) in which we in Britain shine. For example, he Quotes a wise American as saying that someone with a really startling specific talent, such as one for mathematics, cannot do better than to be born in England. There are therefore positive advantages for certain people in our particular educational arrangements.

But, speaking broadly, Sir Charles Snow makes this simple statement in summing up his views about our education, and it is one which most of us on the Opposition Benches would endorse: There is too little of it. I will repeat that, because it is the text, so to speak, of so much of what I shall and others will be saying: There is too little of it. It is too narrow, both in spread and concept. It divides us more than any education should. By and large we are doing rather badly, and we don't like ourselves because we are. Again and again he returns to comparisons between this country and the United States and also Soviet Russia. He says: At all levels from 15 upwards we educate so few of our people. This is another point that I am sure will be made repeatedly this afternoon. Then, as regards the future, he says: Whatever we manage to do"— in the next few years— the one certain thing is that it will still be too little. Those are the views of Sir Charles Snow, and I am trying to bring in witnesses who are not regarded as unfairly biased.

Sir Geoffrey Crowther testifies to the same effect: In my opinion, the education we provide"— he means, we in Britain— for our gifted children is as good as, if not better than, that provided by any other country in the world. But we provide for so few"— that is the same point made again. We provide it only for 20–25 per cent. of our children, and even that figure can be sustained only to the tender age of 15. When you get to the higher ages, the high quality education in which we take such pride trickles down to a mere 5 or 3 per cent. We on this side are sure that the general point of view of Sir Charles Snow and Sir Geoffrey Crowther is correct.

Sir Geoffrey and Sir Charles were speaking without reference to any particular Government; they were not showing any Party preference. We on this side cannot be expected to be quite so detached, any more than we can expect Ministers to be so detached. We point out that nineteen years after the passing of the 1944 Act, after twelve years of Conservative rule, four of the main objectives of the Act have not been implemented. All-age schools have not been abolished; over-sized classes are deplorably common; a five-year secondary school course for all has not been introduced; and, in spite of the strong demands of the Crowther Report—and Lord James of Rusholme is better qualified to speak on this than, I suppose, anybody else in this Chamber—we have still not been given a firm date for raising the school-leaving age to 16. And there is no sign of county colleges for young people from 16 to 18. That is where we have got to, nineteen years after the Butler Act and after twelve years of Conservative rule.

One word on the size of classes. I am sure that this House does not need me to tell it that the size of classes is of fundamental importance to the whole quality of teaching. Thirty years ago I myself taught for some months in what would now be called a secondary modern school in the Potteries. It was burnt in on my brain then, and I have never lost consciousness of it, that the most obvious difference between the education received by the children of the working class and the education that I and my friends had lay just here; we had been taught in classes of twelve to fifteen, and in much smaller classes when engaged on scholarship work, and that they had been taught at that time in classes of forty to fifty. That came home to me with overwhelming force when I started to teach in what would now be called a secondary modern school. A large part of the energies of the teachers of working-class children were being used up on an educational sergeant-major function, and the attempt to give individual tuition and individual attention, however heroically persisted in, was terribly frustrated. That was true even though the teachers had had a much more careful preparation than the excellent masters who taught me and my friends in public schools, and, of course, the slower children inevitably were left out. All that was brought home to me 30 years ago, and the change in 30 years in the size of classes is not as remarkable as one would wish.

The number of pupils in a class is not quite the same thing as the ratio of the teachers to the pupils, because a class may be taken by more than one teacher. If we take the pupil—teacher ratio we find that in primary schools at present it is about 1 teacher to 30 pupils; in secondary schools it is 1 to 20. I notice that in an excellent school like Benenden, which we have been reading about with pleasure in the news lately, the ratio appears to be 1 to 8. It may be said that that is a boarding school, and that the comparison may therefore not seem quite valid. But in a good preparatory school which, after all, overlaps the primary—secondary school division at age 11, the ratio to-day (I refer to a good preparatory school, such as many Members of the House would wish to send their sons to, and probably have sent their sons to) would be something between 1 to 12 and 1 to 15. It would be about twice as good as in the schools which are attended by the masses in the country.

What are the facts about overcrowding to-day? They are well-known and quite lamentable. Regulations made under the 1944 Act stipulate that in England and Wales no secondary school class should be larger than 30, and no primary school class larger than 40. Yet to-day, on the Government's own definition, over half the classes in secondary schools are overcrowded, and so are one-fifth of the classes in primary schools, which contain about three-quarters of a million children. Not only are the schools overcrowded: the equipment is often old and poor. As the Government's own White Paper said in 1961: About half our children are attending schools built before the 1914–18 war, many of which provide conditions well below modern standards. The National Union of Teachers' Report told us, in January this year: Well over half the country's primary schools have no separate dining room; nearly half no assembly hall, 43 per cent. have outside lavatories, and one in six has no hot water.

My Lords, in the face of facts like these, there can be no possible excuse for any great satisfaction, and certainly not complacency, in regard to the scale and progress of our educational provision. The case is overwhelming for much larger and much more strenuous effort in the next few years.

What do we, the Labour Party—and I am speaking frankly from the Opposition Front Bench to-day—propose to do about this problem? Before offering some answers to that question, let me mention one or two topics with which I am not personally going to deal. Quite a number of noble Lords heard me in 1957 open a debate on the universities They heard me speak again on that subject, at some length and rather controversially, in 1960; and they heard me open another long debate on it last year. A good many noble Lords will be aware that in my eyes our failure to expand our universities sufficiently is the most obvious of all our educational failings compared with foreign countries. Sir Eric Ashby reminded us only last week that a child born in Toronto has 1 chance in 6 of getting to a university; a child in Australia has 1 chance in 9, a child horn in London has 1 chance in 20. But I must leave that subject to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, partly because any speech of mine would contain a good deal of, "I told you so", which is the most repulsive form of oratory, and partly because Lord Taylor was Chairman of our Labour Party sub-committee which recently produced a report of the utmost significance. I am leaving the public schools to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. We know that he is as devoted as anybody living to his old school, but we know that that devotion has inspired a lifelong service to the working-class children of East London and elsewhere.

I must leave over to-day the whole question of religious education, which is not in controversy, I believe, at the moment; though it may be—or so I hope—that we shall hear more from the Bishops about that issue. I should like, in passing, just to express two convictions. First, in my eyes, the most lasting benefit of the 1944 Act was the compulsory act of worship in every school. Secondly, I should like to record my conviction that no human right is more essential than that of a parent to choose the religious education of his child. I was reading Wesley's diaries not long ago, and he said something to the effect that Papists are bad but an infidel is twice as bad as the most bigoted Papist. Without going the whole way with him in that sentiment, I feel that he has got hold of something which is worth expressing.

I must omit, also, the fundamental question of curriculum, and questions just as fundamental, about how the most enlightened ideas about curricula can be made widely acceptable and generally adopted. I hope that we shall be hearing something about curricula to-day. It is fair to acknowledge that a number of interesting initiatives are being taken at the moment in that field in regard to the teaching of French, where we are shockingly behind-hand. I learn that in Sweden, except in remote country districts, it is compulsory from the age of 11 to take English as a first foreign language. I gather that in practice the position is much the same in Norway; and one can find similar results in Holland and other countries. Personally, I should hope to see at least one foreign language being taught universally here at an age much younger than eleven, and there is a lot of work being done on that. The new Committee on Primary Education, under an admirable Chairman in Lady Plowden, may help in that and many other ways.

That said, my Lords, what do the Labour Party propose to do? In the first place, we are completely committed to a policy of reducing all classes to 30, both in primary and in secondary schools. Obviously, this involves a large increase in the number of teachers, and I shall be asked, naturally and reasonably, why we imagine that we in the Labour Party, or in the Labour Government, should be more likely to succeed in securing the teachers than the Conservatives have proved. In the first place, we shall make sure that the teachers are adequately paid, and to make this possible without putting too heavy a burden on the local rates, the Exchequer will carry a heavier responsibility than at the present time. In the second place, we shall avoid the ghastly mistake that the present Minister has made in antagonising and infuriating the great majority of the teaching profession. I say that quite deliberately, but with much regret, because I have known the present Minister in our own village in Sussex since he was a small boy and I was grown up; and I esteem him, both for his ability and character, as I esteem few other men in public life.

Thirdly, we are well aware, as the present Minister is—and I know the noble Lord, Lord Eccles, is, from an interesting speech he made the other day—that far greater efforts are necessary than ever before to persuade married women to return to teaching. At the present moment there are as many married women teachers who are not teaching, and who are trained to teach, as married women teachers who are trained and who are teaching. Obviously, exceptional efforts must be made there.

Fourthly, we believe that we shall organise the training of new teachers with more imagination and foresight than the Government have done. It would hardly be possible, I am afraid, to do it with less. It is true that this year the Government announced a programme of providing 80,000 places in the training colleges by 1970, which is far more ambitious than anything in their previous thinking. But even that is certainly not enough, and it will leave a serious gap. Still, it is a sign of belated grace.

Taking the Government's record in respect of teacher provision as a whole the story is the old and unhappy one of, "Much too little, and much too late". In 1958, the Government reduced from 16,000 to 12,000 the number of new places recommended by their own advisory committee. By March, 1960, when we in this House debated the Crowther Report—a debate in which the noble Lord, Lord James of Rusholme, took an active part, as did other noble Lords who are to speak to-day—the Government realised that they had underestimated requirements. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, told us—and this was in 1960, three years ago—that by 1965 the capacity of the training colleges would be raised by 47,000 as compared with the existing figure of 23,000. These figures are somewhat puzzling because, through nobody's fault, they are not on comparable bases. To make them comparable with the present target of 80,000 by 1970, one ought to add, I believe, 3,000 or 4,000 to allow for certain colleges which were not included in the earlier calculations, and also for certain calculations about overcrowding. So it would be simpler to talk of the figures as being raised from, say, 28,000 in 1960 to 51,000. Now, we are told, the Government are aiming at 80,000 by means of a lot more new building and still more intensive use—in other words, overcrowding. As I say, even that is certainly not enough. It may be said, "Better late than never!"—and that, of course, is always the charitable comment. But if we are told that we are desperately short of teachers at the present time, and are likely to remain so for a few years to come, we do not have to look far for the culprits. The figures I have given present a very stark indictment of Conservative policy over these years.

I may be told that we must not blame the Government too much; that they have been let down by the actuaries or the Registrar General, who underestimated the increase in the birth rate; or by the parents, who insisted on having a lot of tiresome children, and that all this upset the Government's plans. I certainly concede—indeed, it is obvious—that the population prophets have had a difficult time of it. The total number of births in England and Wales (I am not talking about the birth rate, but the total number of births per year) fell steadily from 1903 to 1941. At about that time a Royal Commission was set up to inquire into the dangerous decline, and, sure enough, as so often happens in life, the population started to increase again and went on increasing rapidly from 1941 to 1947. Then, for no predictable reason, it once again started going down. I would not say the population, but the total number of births each year went steadily down from 1947 to 1955, when, lo! and behold! another turn round occurred; and from 1955 to the present day there has been a steady increase in the number of births. It is estimated that the increase will continue until at least 1985, but of course, as experience shows, nobody can really tell.

However, it is right, when criticising the Government, to show oneself at least aware of the fact that there have been, in the last sixty years, four distinct movements, two up and two down; and it has undoubtedly made things very difficult for anyone trying to calculate them. But that defence will hardly wash if we look carefully into the arguments presented by the Government in the debate of 1960. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham (I have given Ministers notice that I proposed to refer to these speeches; I am sorry that the noble Viscount is absent), was strongly pressed at that time to accept the findings of the Crowther Committee. He was strongly pressed to commit the Government to raising the school-leaving age by the end of the 1960's. He refused, on behalf of the Government, to do so on the grounds that raising the school-leaving age might conflict with reducing the size of classes. Both objectives—the reduction in the size of classes and the raising of the school-leaving age—are, he said, limited by the supply of teachers and neither by the supply of money.

Later, in the course of the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Chichester, the noble Viscount, now Leader of the House, intervened to say this—and I am quoting from the OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 222, col. 220: The limiting factor is neither in buildings nor in the availability of potential recruits, although I am not saying that the supply of either of them is unlimited. The limiting factor is the size of the plant for producing teachers … That is the limiting factor. I am quoting from the key passage in the noble Viscount's speech in 1960. So, three years ago, the Government were clearly refusing to commit themselves to raising the school-leaving age by a certain date on the ground that the teachers simply could not be produced, or, at any rate, that there was no certainty that they could be produced. Now, at last, they have realised that the teachers must be produced. They seem to conclude that at any irate a great many more teachers can be produced, and one can only ask, "Why was it all left until now?". With all suitable modesty, we would say, since we are asked whether we could do any better, that we are confident that we could hardly fail to improve considerably on that dismal record.

I am not sure that the performance over school building is not worse, if anything, as a result of the cuts of July, 1961, which I have no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Eccles, fought with might and main; the special measures to deal with the so-called crisis. As a result of those cuts, those special measures, the amount on school building in 1963 to 1964, will be reduced. At the time of all this expansion, the amount on school building—I am referring only to schools here—will be reduced by nearly one-fifth compared with the starts in 1961–62. That is, it will be reduced to £55 million. That was going to be the figure for 1964–65, but the Minister has recently announced that the figure for 1964–65 will be increased by £5 million. But, even so, the figure authorised for 1964–65 will be less than the figure for school building started in 1961–62 and 1962–63. So you can see that we are still being tied by the shoelace.

Moreover, the £300 million foreshadowed in the White Paper, Secondary Education for All, in 1958, while it will indeed be spent during the five years, will be worth a lot less because of the higher prices than when the pledge was made in 1958. Indeed, the Minister has admitted that this figure of £300 million, which was launched in 1958, would have to be increased by over £40 million to take account of rising prices if the original value was to be provided. So, on school building the cuts and restrictions have been severe. The deeper lesson, which we have certainly taken to heart—and I hope the Government have, although I do not think there are any signs of it—is the hopelessness of settling these figures from year to year, with a substantial cut every time the economic situation looks a bit murky. A planned programme for several years ahead at a time is clearly vital and must be stuck to. I should hope that the House is aware—but I must emphasise it again—that we in the Labour Party are absolutely committed to raising the school-leaving age to 16 by the late 1960's. The present inadequate and means-tested maintenance allowances will be abolished and will be replaced by higher family allowances rising with age; and there will be a particularly steep rise in these allowances for those who stay on at school after the statutory school-leaving age has been passed.

So, my Lords, I approach the last part of my observations—but this part is certainly at least as important as any other. We shall, if returned to power, abolish selection at 11-plus and reorganise the State schools on comprehensive lines. No one can doubt—I hope no one in this House doubts—the present shattering waste of talent. It occurs throughout, but most obviously, perhaps, at the three turning points—11, 15 and, say, 18. At the age of 10, nearly half a million children have the course of their lives decided by a single examination. Thousands of children (no one can say precisely how many thousands) are clearly denied the education of which they are fully capable. At the time of the Crowther Report it was reckoned that half the most able boys, and a still higher proportion of the most able girls—that is, the boys and girls in the top ability groups—were leaving school at 15 when clearly they had the talent to stay on much longer. Since then the number staying on voluntarily, in all groups, has shown a remarkably satisfactory increase. But, taking children in maintained schools as a whole—and not just those in the special groups—only 32 per cent. stayed in for as long as their 16th birthday.

That is the situation to-day. In spite of the improvement the proportion staying on is just under one-third. Only one in 22 of the whole population ever reaches university, including only 1 per cent. of the unskilled workers' sons and daughters. Yet in a recent candid and thoughtful speech the present Minister of Education, Sir Edward Boyle, said: I do not, repeat not, start from the assumption that potential intelligence and ability are distributed very unevenly among different sections of the community. On the contrary I start from the assumption that there is still very much potential reserve of ability among young people. It is not tapped to anything like the full. That was well and bravely said. The Minister, no doubt, was aware that it would be used against him in arguments like this, but it did not prevent him from saying it; and it will not prevent me from using it—for the argument is too serious.

If we want a slightly lighter view we should turn to to-day's Daily Express where we find the columnist William Hickey, writing to-day under the heading, "Not all rich men's sons are dim, says the Yank at Eton". The "Yank at Eton" is an American master who has just completed a period of teaching there. Referring to Eton, a school for which I have an undying affection, as have many others of your Lordships, he says: 'The pupils aren't as bright as one would expect', he said judicially. I was surprised at the standard at Eton, but then intelligence is equally divided among all social classes. Not all rich men's sons are dim'. He went on to say other things; but whether we take the lighter view of this gentleman or the more serious arguments of the Minister, we are now beginning to agree that intelligence is widely spread; but once that is accepted then the case for the 11-plus has gone for ever.

In a debate in this House four years ago initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I said—and others said the same thing in different words—that the 11-plus examination was already utterly discredited: first, because of the strain it imposes on the children; secondly, because of the fallibility of the test in regard to the child's capacity—and it has been proved particularly and cruelly unfair to working class children; and thirdly, because of the social evils of separating the sheep and the goats. These objections against the policy denounced by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, under the heading of the segregation and division of our children into first and second class children, are clearer than ever to me now, and I think they are widely accepted. The Government themselves have not stayed still in their own philosophy.

In referring to the 11-plus I am not denouncing merely this one particular method, the examination method, of sorting out children, though that may be far from the best: I am objecting to the whole idea that this sorting is necessary. I must object to that even though the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said: If the proposed abolition of the eleven plus means that there is to be no sorting of pupils at the phase between primary and secondary education, I say that the proposition is a fraud. In spite of that rebuke, I object to the whole sorting idea. The truth is that the philosophy of the Government in 1959 was still based on an educational theory now discredited: the theory that only a minority of the children in this country are able to benefit from a grammar school education.

The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, in that debate, himself referred to what he called "the minority of children able to benefit from grammar school education". He said, "the minority of children". He went on to say: … the whole burden of my argument this afternoon is that the normal child requires a different kind of course. I would say that Sir Edward Boyle has moved a long way from that point of view, and I quote him: Let me assure you that neither I nor my colleagues in the Government are wedded to any particular pattern of secondary school organisation. None of us believes in pre-war terms"— This is worth marking for those who will defend the 11-plus— that children can be sharply differentiated into various types or levels of ability.… This is a great change from the philosophy of the 1959 debate. He went on: I certainly would not wish to advance the view that the bipartite system, as it is often called, should be regarded as the right and usual way of organising secondary education compared with which everything else must be stigmatised as experimental. It would be untrue to claim that Sir Edward Boyle has publicly thrown over the system advocated by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, on behalf of the Government in 1959; but he has taken a major step in that direction. But I must not pursue this argument between Ministers of a dying Government; I must leave them to refute one another. I must return to the Labour Party policy.

There are more ways than one of giving effect to the comprehensive principle—I hope the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, intends to take part in the debate; but if the noble Earl intends to contribute only by laughing, then I feel that this will be below his general level. As I was saying, there are more ways than one of giving effect to the comprehensive principle. There is the London County Council method, which has blazed the trail, or there is the Leicestershire method, with division into junior and senior comprehensive schools; and there are the plans at Manchester which have not yet been completed. I will not discuss these different variations now, but I want to make it plain what in our view is the double failure of the Government: There is a failure in the quantity of education, which affects the quality; and a failure in the system through which it is provided. These two failures are not unconnected.

There is a great difference between our approach and that of the Party opposite. We try to ask ourselves, as regards the extent and organisation of national education, this question: "Would we accept and approve of these arrangements if they were applied to our own children?" The Conservative Party have clung for years—and certainly in previous debates—to the idea that only a minority of children in this country can benefit from the kind of education they think essential for their own children and which we ourselves think is essential for all our children, unless they are very backward. The social philosophy which has been shown in the 11-plus or the bipartite or tripartite system is a sop to conscience, a sublime alibi; it is a plausible excuse, both for a segregated system and for a scandalously small provision for the great majority. We reject it utterly. We may be right or we may be wrong, but, apart from the merits of individual Ministers, we are sure that we on these Benches do not mean the same thing in our educational policy as the Conservative Party as a whole.

I hope there will be notable contributions in this debate from the experts, remote from and above Party controversy. But, speaking from the Front Opposition Bench in the first debate we have ever had on education of this scope and magnitude, I must record the deepest of all our convictions in social policy: the conviction that each and every one of us who comes into this world is of equal importance; the conviction that the capacities of the great majority have hitherto never been fully realised, through mental starvation in youth; the conviction that "wisdom can and must be justified", not by a small minority but of all children. It is up to us to make that happen, or perish in the attempt. I beg to move for Papers.

3.20 p.m.

LORD AMULREE

My Lords, I wish to intervene only very briefly in the course of this debate and the few remarks which I propose to address to your Lordships would probably have been better made later on than at the present time, because they deal with rather a special branch of education. But as I explained to the noble Earl who will be replying for the Government, unfortunately I cannot stay until the end of the debate and I am going to make my remarks now, although they do not really apply to what has been said already. I must say that I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for putting down his Motion in such broad terms, so that one can quite easily cover educational progress of all sorts and kinds; and what I propose to devote my few remarks to is the education of doctors in this country at the present time.

In 1957 a Committee was set up under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Willink, a former Minister of Health, who was at the time, and, still is, Master at Magdalene College, Cambridge. That Committee was to consider training the number of medical students which were going to be required in future, and therefore the number of doctors to be required. One of the extraordinary conclusions they came to was that after 1961 a reduced output would suffice, and they recommended that the number of students admitted to medical school should be cut by 10 per cent. In 1955 the total number of doctors on the actual list was in the neighbourhood of 53,000, and that is roughly where we are now. If the total number of students were to be reduced by 10 per cent., this would mean a considerable reduction in those qualified, because in addition to the reduction there is what is rather unfortunately called a natural wastage among medical students, of about 6 per cent. of those starting their courses, and that includes both men and women: wastage because some people find that they are not really suitable for that work; others do not succeed in their examinations, and, in the case of women, some may marry before receiving their final qualification. The number of doctors qualifying at the present time, averaging between 1955 and 1961, is I think 1,855, which includes a certain number qualifying in Northern Ireland at the Queen's University, Belfast.

Since the Willink Report was published certain changes have occurred. One has been quite a substantial increase in the population of this country. It has also been found in many cases that the number of patients on the lists of general practitioners is too large and should be reduced, and at the same time there has been an increased demand for doctors working in hospitals. So I should have said that instead of the number of doctors we require coining down, it has gone up by a considerable amount since that Report was published in 1957.

What is the best way of dealing with this problem? The present medical schools are pretty nearly working to capacity—I will not say that some of them could not take a few more—and it is extremely important that they should not become too overcrowded because, as the noble Earl has just pointed out education suffers if the number of people a teacher is trying to teach is larger than the teacher can properly cope with. I think that this applies to students in medical school particularly in their final years, because one of the important things is for them to have contact with patients and you cannot alow more than a limited number of students to be in contact with any patient at the same time, and certainly a number of patients do have to be used, if I can put it in that rather crude way, for teaching purposes. Therefore, that is one reason why I think we want to have mare facilities for training medical students. Another point which I think is very important is that if classes are too big the training tends to become a sort of technical education and we get away from anything dealing with the proper feeling a doctor should have for his patients. It is only too easy for the art of medicine to be submerged in the so-called science of medicine, to the great loss of the patients who are going to come up against doctors trained in that kind of way.

Some of your Lordships may have read the wise and sensible speech made the other day by Sir George Pickering, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, in which he expressed a good deal of worry and anxiety that there was taking place the kind of training which was making people turn from those who practise the art of medicine into those practising a greater amount of the science. What can we do about that? There is something which has caused me a good deal of surprise—and perhaps the Minister can tell me if I am wrong—and that is that none of the new universities which are planned for this country seems to be proposing to include a medical school among their departments. Probably some of them would not be very suitable for it, but I believe there are one or two which would be eminently suitable for a medical school. I believe that there are plans going forward for a university at Southampton. That covers an area which has a large population around it, and, furthermore, Southampton is in the one Regional Hospital Board area where at present there is no training medical school—that is, the Wessex Regional Board area. So I should have thought that Southampton would be a very suitable place for a medical school. The same thing would apply to Hull and Nottingham, because I think that we have to have medical schools in places where there will be numbers of people going into hospital, so that students may be taught without the necessity of using patients far more than is proper for them to be used.

I should like to make one final point about the need for more medical schools. I am sure that as time goes along we are going to have more people from emerging or developing countries—call them what you will—who will need to be trained as doctors. They can do a certain amount by themselves. There is a very good medical school in Uganda and one in Nigeria. But the number of doctors required is going to be very large to cover these new countries—and where could they be trained better than in this country? If we do not train them here at the present time, they have two alternatives. One is to go to the Soviet Union, which welcomes them but gives them such courses in Marxist-Leninism at the same time, so that they tend to become tired of that and wish they were taught more medicine and science. We do not want to encourage too many people to go to the Soviet Union.

The other place where they are very welcome indeed is the United States of America, where I think they receive a very good training indeed. But I am not sure that it is good for too many of these young men, from countries which will begin developing quickly, to obtain experience in America, because if money is wanted for a project or for a new building in the American medical schools and hospitals it comes at once from the State or from a rich foundation or from somewhere else; so there is no problem about money. Thus the students get a false idea of what can be done and feel file need to have an enormous amount of money at their backs, and become rather depressed if they cannot get that; whereas, if they come to this country they get a training which is second to none in the world, and they do not feel that you must have a vast amount of money behind you, because most of the hospitals and schools have not that at the present time. Therefore, one would like to see them coming here in numbers as large as possible. I should like to know from the Minister, when he comes to reply, whether he can give encouragement to my plea for more medical schools; and if there are not to be any, I should like him to explain why it is not proposed to establish more in the country at this time.