ADULT EDUCATION

HL Deb 24 November 1964 vol 261 cc743-812

2.58 p.m.

LORD GREENHILL rose to call attention to the present state of adult education; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I think that we all agree that it is appropriate that a subject of this kind should be discussed in your Lordships' House, because there are so many noble Lords who have been outstanding in the furthering of adult education. If I do not mention them all (although I know who they are) I should like, with your Lordships' permission, to mention just two, unfortunately no longer with us, whose names have stood—throughout the world, indeed—for the furthering of adult education.

One was the late Lord Lindsay of Birker, and the other was the late Archbishop Temple, of this House. Having in my own long connection with adult education known them both, perhaps I may be allowed to add that Lord Lindsay of Birker, when he was Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Glasgow University, was the author and the begetter of the first extra-mural committee that Glasgow University set up. He was a member of the Workers'

Educational Association, and, combing through some old newspaper reports, one reads that when a certain county in Scotland felt itself unable to pay the cost of a tutor to lecture to an adult education class, he, the late Lord Lindsay of Birker, himself went and did the lecturing without any pay at all. In the case of Archbishop Temple, I was present at the 21st birthday celebrations in Oxford at which he presided. Beside him then was the founder of the W.E.A., Albert Mansbridge, by that time, unfortunately, an old and ailing man; and to see that great audience moved by what Archbishop Temple had to say to them, and the support he received, would do anyone's heart good if it could be seen again to-day.

Nor must I forget some Members of your Lordships' House present to-day who have also done a great deal of work on behalf of the adult education movement. I would first mention our noble Leader, Lord Longford, for not only was he himself a tutor of adult classes but his wife (although not then his wife) was also a tutor at adult education classes. I believe I am right in saying that they married, happily as we know, when each of them had worked as a tutor in adult education. Then (although I have not asked his permission), I feel that it would be a serious omission if I did not refer to the long years of work that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, did in the promotion of adult education. Since your Lordships have heard me refer to the W.E.A., an organisation well known in the field of adult education, let me add that for some years Mr. R. A. Butler has been an honorary vice-president, as also was the late and deeply lamented Hugh Gaitskell, and as is to-day our present Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. So that there is a most respectable and influential background of persons behind this movement.

If your Lordships were to ask what prompts me to raise this matter to-day I would give one or two reasons. There is, as your Lordships know, a long history attaching to this, part of which I shall refer to. There is a real upsurge to-day in the demand for adult education: it is greater than it has been for some time, and we are hoping that, certainly under the present Government, there will be no kind of hesitation in satisfying the modest demands that are being made for still further development in the field of adult education. I should perhaps also tell your Lordships that while for many years I have admired the tremendous amount and excellent quality of the work of the lady whom I knew as "Barbara Wootton", it is only since her elevation to your Lordships' House that it has been my privilege to meet her in person.

I have with me a large amount of literature with which I do not intend to bore your Lordships, but I think that some of the titles are worth mentioning for they give some idea of the enormous width of the field which is covered by present-day adult education. When I first came into contact with the movement, now almost half a century ago, it was a very different kind of audience with which we dealt compared with the audience we meet to-day. They were people who were anxious to become acquainted with developments in education, mainly for economic reasons, or because they were unable to take advantage of such educational facilities as there were in those days in the primary schools. Few of them ever aspired to reaching the secondary school, but there was this craving for further knowledge which they wished to have satisfied, and which they could satisfy only through the classes of that kind provided by the W.E.A.

Today it is very different. Again, I repeat that I do not want to go through the whole history of this, but one or two pointers in this development are perhaps not without interest today. There is, for example, in Glasgow, a college—which was at one time a technical college—which men would attend in the evening for lessons and further knowledge in the technologies in which they were engaged. In time the numbers so grew that difficulty was experienced in coping with them. Today that old College, which was known as Anderson College, is now the University of Strathclyde, the second University in Glasgow, of which a Member of your Lordships' House, the noble Lord, Lord Todd, is Chancellor, who is himself a Glasgow-born man and who received his secondary education in Glasgow. That is one development of what began as this move- ment for further education of the uneducated people of our country. believe that we were the first in the world to promote adult education, and I sometimes wonder whether there is another legislative assembly anywhere, even today, which would think it worth while to devote the greater part of an afternoon to discussing problems of this kind.

What is occupying our minds very much indeed today is that, in spite of the advances in publicly-provided education which our young men and women are receiving, there is a still greater demand for advanced education, technical, cultural, non-vocational education, which we cannot supply. There are nowadays residential colleges—one or two in England, only one so far in Scotland—to which go young men and women, who are perhaps rather raw in their background education but who within a very short time do remarkable things in the further education which they seek. I do not wish to mention, and I have not asked permission to do so, the names of any colleagues of my own, but after my noble friend Lord Lawson married he threw up his job as a coal miner for two or three years and went to Ruskin College, Oxford. After he had spent some years there he was asked what he was going to do at the completion of his preliminary period. His answer, as one would expect from him, was that he meant to return to his home and to work. That was all he wanted to do. He wanted the education. but he did not want it to take him out of the class to which he felt he belonged.

Indeed, I was impressed when a few days ago I came across a book on the non-adult education topic of Language Teaching in the New Education, in which the writer in the early part of his book—and I support him—says: We can no longer be content with the philosophy of a minority culture. If there is a culture to be enjoyed, that culture should be enjoyed by every class in the community capable of appreciating that culture. No longer should there be any kind of distinction. I am not advocating anything particularly new. I am simply trying to arouse your Lordships' interest in still further developments of a movement in which we have already seen such great progress.

I should like to give one or two examples from my own personal experience. I happen to be interested in the Scottish Residential College for Adults, known as Newbattle Abbey College. This College was given to us by the late Lord Lothian (not the present one) as a residential College for adult students. We have carried on that work, with a gap during the war since 1937. As one of the tutors in philosophy we had a young man who was born in Clydebank, near Glasgow, whose father worked as a shipyard worker in the yards of John Brown, and whose brother may, I believe, still be in the yards of John Brown in the joinery department. That young man, having shown some ability at school, ultimately found himself at Oxford, where he graduated with a very good degree. After a time he came up to us at Newbattle Abbey College as a tutor.

To speak to him, to look at him, to listen to him, one would never think that he was a product of a family of the once despised working class. He was a typical Oxford graduate, and stayed with us as a tutor in philosophy for nine years. Then the ambitious new University of Strathclyde thought that for their liberal studies they would like a lecturer in philosophy, so they induced away this young man, who had been with us all those years, and our College was in the position of having to find someone else. We did the usual advertising, the usual examining, and cut down our "short-leet" (as we call it in Scotland: that is to say, our short list) to two, one a young man, the other a young woman.

I hope that I do not identify the lady when I say that she seemed to me to be a typical Lancashire mill girl in appearance, dress and manner. She had, in fact, worked as a mill girl in Lancashire, and had attended tutorial classes for three years, at the end of which she attained an honours M.A. degree. Then, presumably finding that an easy thing to do, she thought she would carry on for another two years, and eventually left Manchester University with a Ph.D. degree. We decided that we should give her the appointment, but she explained that she had applied for another appointment and if by chance she got the other appoint- ment she would prefer it. That was because in addition to her tutorial work she would also have the supervision of some of the female students there, and that was the kind of work she wished to add to her ordinary tutorial work. She got the job, and so we were left with applicant No. 2.

Applicant No. 2 was, and is, a young man who had come to Newbattle Abbey College at the age of just over 18, having left what in Scotland is called the junior secondary school at, I think, the age of 16. He had done all sorts of little jobs such as working in a garage and, I think, in a butchery shop, or something of that kind. He had then decided that he would prefer to go back to learning something, and found himself, with the aid of a bursary from Edinburgh Education Committee, at Newbattle Abbey College. He stayed there for a year or more until he obtained his entrance qualifications to Edinburgh University where he obtained his degree, and from there he went to the London School of Economics, where there was no job waiting for him, but he was given some kind of research work to do, which he did.

He applied for the post, as I said, and we told him, "We will take you, No. 2." So to-day our tutor in philosophy is a youngish man still, who might still have been a garage worker if he wished to be. But he is also one of those men who had the brains to pursue an educational course, and from that to become a tutor in philosophy. This is one of a number of examples within my own knowledge which I could give your Lordships in order to show the kind of product one can make by this process of adult education, when one gets people with the necessary desire to make progress.

Therefore, when I speak to your Lordships to-day—and although I have with me an enormous amount of literature it is only a very small part of the total literature available on adult education—I should like you to know the kinds of ends at which we are aiming in order to arouse a still greater interest among the adult population in the subjects that we teach. For example, I have here the current Newbattle Abbey prospectus. What one does not learn from the prospectus itself is the extraordinary increase there has been in demand within the last few years; so much so, that although the building is packed beyond the normal complement of students, nevertheless they continue to come. Therefore to-day we are asking for an extension to Newbattle Abbey to accommodate 80 students in what are called nowadays "study bedrooms", in order to cope with this demand. I am pleased to inform your Lordships that the chairman of the appeal committee to raise the money necessary for this extension is the present Marquess of Lothian, who was until recently a Junior Minister in the previous Government.

I have here a book entitled Science and Labour, writter as long ago as 1924, edited by Mr. Humberstone and Lord Askwith, K.C.B., K.C., gives a foreword to it. These are the names and the standings of some of the men then interested: Sir Richard Gregory, Sir Richard Glaze-brook, the Right Honourable Lord Askwith, Hugo Hirst, Sir Oliver Lodge, C. T. Cramp—a member of the Trades Union Congress—the Right Honourable Lord Ashfield, Miss Margaret Bondfield, M.P., Sir Arthur Newsholme, M.D., K.C.B.—who was, I think, in the Public Health Department—Arthur Greenwood, M.P., and R. H. Tawney.

Among many publications, there were books of permanent value which showed the interest at that time. There was the 1919 Committee under the Ministry of Reconstruction, headed by the then Master of Balliol, who did a thorough survey of the demands of adult education. They reported enthusiastically about the needs and the value of adult education, and were instrumental in the setting up by the Board of Education, as it was then called, of an Adult Education Committee which published booklets such as the one I have here, which is called The Scope and Practice of Adult Education. But, for some reason or other, that Committee has ceased to exist as a body specialising in adult education.

Nuffield College published in 1940 The Further Education of Men and Women. The American organisation, the Fund for Adult Education, has thought it worth while to publish a look by Guy Hunter which is called Some New Developments in British Adult Education. I do not know whether any of your Lordships know Guy Hunter, but he has recently completed a book on adult education in Africa, in some of the new Commonwealth countries. your Lordships will permit me, I will read out the titles of some other publications. There is The W.E.A. and the Early School Leaver, published in 1964; the Workers' Educational Association, Minutes of the National Conference of 1962; Science and Society, a W.E.A. discussion paper; Reflections on the Robbins Report, and The Challenge of Newsom by a Working Party of the Association of Head Mistresses. These publications are not merely praising the work of Robbins and of Newsom, but are critically examining and giving their impressions of it. Then there is Education For a Changing Society: The Rôle of W.E.A. I think I am right in saying that this book, which is as up to date as it can be, is the outcome of the inspiration of Professor Asa Briggs, the present President of the W.E.A., and a professor at one of the southern universities.

There is Higher Education, in which the previous Government approved the contents of the Robbins Report, but so far as I am aware they did not do very much to implement it. I can say, in passing, that the Robbins Report, going outside of the limit of its remit, gave favourable support to the encouragement of adult education and to its results. The Organisation and Finance of Adult Education was a report by Dr. Eric Ashby, as he then was, following upon some complaints that the adult education movement had in connection with what the Government of the time were doing; but it is interesting to me, partly because the author of this Report, assisted by a number of other people, is Ashby, and partly because the Report contains, in reply to a letter from Sir Vincent Tewson (who was then, I think, Secretary of the Trades Union Congress), a letter by Winston Churchill enthusiastically supporting the aims and purposes of adult education, and giving us every encouragement to proceed with our work.

Then, in 1944 the Nuffield College produced a statement, Problems of Scientific and Industrial Research. Further, there are documents here entitled, Who were the Students?; Entrance to Universities—which is by the W.E.A.; Expenditure on Education, also by the W.E.A.; and, very recently indeed, in the last few days, a Report on Adult Education in Northern Ireland by a Committee under the chairmanship of Principal Morris, of Leeds University, in which they speak glowingly of the value and importance of adult education. For those who are willing to read it—I do not want to weary Members—there are references to the position in Scotland and to the position in England of extramural departments and the like, which carry out and recommend the sort of thing we have been doing for some years.

My Lords, if I may, I should like to read, even in her absence, what was written by Lady Wootton of Abinger (as perhaps I should now call her) in March, 1940, at a time when we were all disturbed about the outcome of the war. This is the sort of thing that, with her typically incisive language, she was saying: We have, I think, to recognise a broad distinction here between the job of the politician or man of affairs, and the job of the student. This distinction is additional to, though it is closely connected with, the obvious difference that the politician is obliged to get things done, while the student works under no such pressure. It is a distinction which holds in the field in which both politician and student are"— this is typically Barbara Wootton— (we hope!) thinkers. It has to do with the span of their thought, using that word to cover both the actual time-scale upon which they work, and the range of possibilities which they can take into account. The student is a long-term, long-range, the politician a short-term, short-range, thinker". That may be taken as a compliment or otherwise, as your Lordships feel applies.

I should like next to draw your Lordships' attention to a document issued by the Universities Council for Adult Education and the Workers' Educational Association under the heading, Crisis in Adult Education. Again, my Lords, I do not intend to read the whole of it; I will just read the final part, which says this: It is the contention of the Responsible Bodies, first, that adult education is not merely desirable but an inescapable necessity for a democratic society; secondly, that the present level of provision is ludicrously low; and thirdly, that a vast improvement in provision could be achieved by a very modest, indeed almost insignificant, increase in expenditure. They ask that as the first step towards more adequate provision the present ill-judged and short-sighted attempt at economy will at once be abandoned". There, my Lords, you have the gist of the present trend. I think it would perhaps help to add to the importance of this subject if I were to draw your Lordships' attention to the Report of the Director-General of the International Labour Organisation, Part I of which deals with "Automation and other Technological Developments and Labour and Social Implications". I will read only one paragraph of the chapter headed "More education and training for adults". It reads as follows: Socially and psychologically perhaps the most important impact of an accelerated rate of technological change is on the situation of adult workers. Changes in the occupational and skill structure tend to upset existing social stratifications and relationships in industry and to create a number of problems which, if not properly solved, may lead to personal misfortunes and to serious industrial unrest. This Report, I need hardly say, is from an impartial body concerned with the wellbeing of workers of the world as a whole.

My Lords, I have perhaps trespassed on your time a little too long, but I should like to say this: we are not criticising the past Government, and certainly not the present Government; and we are not raising any controversial issue. We have no reason to think that there is anyone with any social conscience who is prepared to doubt the value and the importance of adult education. We have ample evidence that there is increasingly a demand by adults for work in these classes—we do not ask them—not for vocational reasons, and not for any other reason than a sheer desire to know more and more of the rapid changes in technological, scientific and other developments that are taking place before our eyes, and at a pace with which we can hardly cope, because no sooner do we adapt ourselves to one state of affairs than another one is on the way.

We know that steps are being taken by all kinds of parties all over the world in order to meet this particular problem with which we are faced, and for that reason I have so far made no reference to the developments taking place in radio and in television, by both the B.B.C. and the independent bodies. I have not spoken about the development in programme learning, which we hope will be more and more used as an aid to acquiring an education; and I have not tried to draw a distinction between what might be called the Robbins type of higher education individual and the Newsom type (or, as we say in Scotland, also, the Brunton type) of student, both of whom have their own needs to be catered for.

All that I ask your Lordships to do is to recognise these things: first of all, that it is not extravagant to spend more money upon the development of this kind of adult education; that it is absolutely necessary that some kind of additional accommodation be provided, either by the State or by local education authorities, either alone or in conjunction with other parties, in order to make it possible to have residential colleges as part and parcel of our normal provision of adult education; that, in so far as there are university entrance conditions to be overcome, they should not be conditions which are suitable mainly for the boy or girl who has just passed through secondary school and is trying to get through into university; but that any adult student who shows any kind of ability at all should be given an entrance into the university, as I understand the university of Strathclyde is willing to do to-day. These are the things which, through no revolutionary change in our procedures, through no kind of drastic amendment of our existing laws, can be done, to the immense benefit of the community as a whole; because basically what we are doing here is simply to encourage the growth of a movement which both on economical grounds and, mainly, on social grounds can do nothing but bring good and prosperity to our country. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.31 p.m.

LORD HILL OF LUTON

My Lords, I know your Lordships will extend your usual generosity to one who addresses your Lordship's Home for the first time, in the debate for the initiation of which we are greatly indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill. To many of your Lordships, as they do to me, the words "adult education" arouse nostalgic memories of the earlier days of the adult education movement, so strongly inspired, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, made clear to-day, by a strong sense of social purpose. My own recollections go back to the days when, fresh from university, I took W.E.A. and university tutorial classes in biology for some five years, mostly at that famous institution then known as The Morley College for Working Men and Women. Indeed, I remember the apprehension I felt at the periodic visits to my classes of that most remarkable woman, the then Director of Studies of the London University Tutorial Organisation and now the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger. I think she will forgive me if I say in her absence that I was somewhat scared of her in those days—a condition from which I have nearly recovered.

But, my Lords, broadly speaking, the adult education movement of those days, still under the inspiring leadership of Albert Mansbridge, sought to bring education to those who were trying to make up for missed educational opportunities. The formal education of most of the students of my classes had ended at the age of 14, and in some cases at the age of 13; and one swiftly realised the powerful curiosity and capacity of many of the students, and their sensitive nose for the ill-prepared lecture or the woolly generalisation, their distrust of the ex cathedrâ pronouncement or any signs of intellectual superiority, and the great importance in that work (though this may seem a detail) of that most difficult of all exercises, the written essay—a fact of importance when we come to consider the hearing of modern methods of mass communication upon this subject.

No doubt there are many among the 2 million-odd who each year attend local authority evening classes, university extramural and W.E.A. classes to-day who are trying to make up for their lack of educational opportunity; but there is another group of growing size. An increasing proportion of our mature students go in for some form of non-vocational adult education to-day because the education that they have had arouses the appetite for more. In short, one of the tasks to-day is to satisfy the greater demand, the upsurge of demand, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, called it, that educational policies of the last twenty years have helped to create.

Of course, social efficiency, in the sense of productivity, comes into the argument. The annual rate of growth of knowledge is certainly in excess of the much-disputed 4 per cent. Indeed, such is the growth, that nowadays no man can claim his professional education was completed with the last qualification he took. There, of course, lies the case for refresher courses for professionals in a wide variety of fields, to say nothing of instruction in management, which your Lordships were discussing last week, in retraining, and a host of other applications to industry as well as to the professions.

Then again, my Lords, there is the increased demand for educational opportunities for married women. With the fall in the age of marriage and the tendency to have the family at an earlier age, we are seing quite a new pattern. Whereas at the beginning of this century when a mother had finished bringing up her much larger family she was much older, and there was little time and energy left for developing new interests or reawakening old interests, nowadays this phase lasts very much longer and mothers no longer give up the intellectual ghost. This lies behind the new pattern of women in employment. Forty years ago one-tenth of married women went to work; now it is one-third. But so much for the demand, the greatly increased demand.

No one can ignore the effect or importance of mass communication including television, if I may be forgiven for saying a word on this subject, speaking only for myself. By its means, by means of radio, and in particular of television, more than ever people are being made aware of the variety and change in the world of to-day. As one of Her Majesty's Ministers, Miss Jennie Lee, puts it in the current issue of T.V. Times: Television has made millions of people more aware of what is going on in the world than they have ever been before. This is one effect of television, and a most important one. Another is obviously to divert. Diversion, indeed, is what most people demand first and foremost from television. And who is to say that diversion is not a proper rôle for television? However, what is less clear is its ability to educate. As Cardinal Newman put it, We must carefully distinguish between the mere diversion of the mind and its real education. Indeed, let it be said that the awakened sense of awareness aroused by radio and television may even give rise to bewilderment. We need to recognise, I suggest, this limitation of present-day radio and television in a modern community. They blaze a trail which they cannot easily follow. Incidentally, one should empha- sise the tremendous value of television in combating illiteracy, for it has the power visually to stimulate and inform in advance of literacy. But, by and large, modern mass communications, while they may increase the interest and wonder and titillate the imagination, are not adult education in the sense in which the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, introduced the subject, or indeed, in the normal use of the words, though they may be a preparation for it.

Over and above the arousing of interest, there is, I believe, a need of formal disciplined programmes planned in series and designed to contribute to the progressive mastery of some skill or body of knowledge to quote the words which govern these adult educational programmes on television. But this, I believe, is the nub of the matter. Can television through these adult education programmes provide the whole of what is needed?

Of course, a good deal is being done by the B.B.C. and the I.T.A. to-day—for example, language programmes, Physics for Teachers, the Science of Man, a series on the law, Towards 2000, and one which interests me particularly, the medical postgraduate refresher course first put out in Glasgow. And, if I may say so, well worth the mention, though not strictly adult education in the sense of this debate, are those superbly given talks by Dr. A. J. P. Taylor. There have been experiments, too, in co-operation with the local education authorities and the responsible bodies, such as the course in English Literature, put out in I.T.V's Southern area, and the Economics course, in the Midland area, linked with a correspondence course and designed by the Extra-Mural Department of Nottingham University.

It is on this point that I want to rest for a moment. I believe that this is of the greatest interest and importance. This is an exciting attempt to bring to television teaching that form of participation by the student which is involved in written work, including the essay. Many noble Lords will recall the days when we knew from experience it was only when notes were taken at a lecture, whatever the fate of those notes thereafter, that there was a reasonable chance of a proportion of the pearls cast at us really hitting the mark. This kind of experiment, of television plus student participation has not been done before on any large scale.

I know that it is tempting to think that, because the transmitting apparatus is available, because a channel can be found, because the television screen can be, as it were, a blackboard in millions of homes, all that is necessary is to find a first-class teacher and the best visual material—do that and the problem is solved. But it is not so simple as that. Television, yes, is a great awakener, a stimulator of new interest. It can be invaluable where there is a desire for instruction already present, as for refresher courses. It can bring more specialism to the specialist. It can stimulate those whose educational interests are slight or dormant. It can evoke in us interests which we just did not know we could cultivate. It can be a prodder, a galvaniser a stimulator. It can provide, too, the routine, factually informative lecture by the best available expert. But I submit that other means are needed to provide the judgment and independent thought about the facts, as. for example, in the tutorial seminar or discussion group.

For this purpose, I believe that we need television-plus. Can television organise these other means? Can the "plus" be added? This is the test. I believe and hope that the Nottingham experiment will help to supply an answer. But the incontrovertible point I put to your Lordships is that those who want adult education in the strictest sense, in the sense in which the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, has opened this debate, must undergo a disciplined study under the guidance of a competent teacher. Television can play a part in providing this disciplined study only if other links can be created between the teacher and the taught. This can never be easy, but it is well worth trying—trying to take the fullest advantage of an immensely powerful medium of mass communication without ever forgetting that the personality and the power of the teacher are essential and the need for a relationship between the teacher and the taught.

3.45 p.m.

BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD

My Lords, it seems almost superfluous to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, who has just sat down, on his maiden speech. I can remember when once, if not twice, a week his voice was familiar to all of us as that of the Radio Doctor; and I also recall, as I am sure all noble Lords do, his long service in another place and the many speeches he made there and outside. But it is customary to congratulate noble Lords the first time they speak in this House, and I do so on behalf of your Lordships with very great pleasure.

It is very interesting for all of us to hear from him, because of his new and important position as Chairman of the Independent Television Authority, the kind of approach that the Authority are taking towards adult education. I was fascinated by what he had to say, and I hope that the programme he has outlined and the work which I.T.A. are planning to do in adult education will be immensely successful. I hope that from time to time we shall hear from the noble Lord how this approach to adult education on television is progressing. I am sure that we shall all listen, when opportunity offers, to these programmes. Again I congratulate the noble Lord on the great interest of his maiden speech.

I am always interested in listening to the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, who is an expert on this subject and has spent much of his life in helping adult education. To-day, in his long and interesting account of the historical background to adult education, no one could have given us more information. The only thing I would add, although perhaps it is unnecessary, is a word about the enormous amount of help given to adult education in Scotland, not only by the Government, because that goes without saying, but also by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, which, for example, gave a large sum of money to start Newbattle College and which always supports adult education in a generous manner. I am glad that the money spent has borne much fruit and that the work done at Newbattle is still a useful and important part of adult education in Scotland.

I apologise to your Lordships for speaking so soon after the long speech which I made on the subject of the Consumer Council's Report. I intervene to-day because I am anxious to introduce into the programme of adult education, as one of its important matters, the subject of consumer education or consumer enlightenment. If I may, I would say a few words on this. The approach to the consumer through adult education is important. What both noble Lords, Lord Greenhill and Lord Hill of Luton, have said enter into the picture. Lord Hill of Luton has spoken particularly of the encouragement of classes for adult education in the new media.

On June 9, your Lordships had a debate on the Council of Industrial Design and another, the week before last, on the Consumer Council. In both these debates, we discussed the question of choice—the choice of design and the choice of quality. I think that the problem of choice and of informing the consumer, so that the consumer can choose wisely and appreciate the best standards and designs, are matters which come into education of the consumer.

Our conception of adult education has in the past perhaps been rather chained to the traditional lines or the traditional subjects. Now I should like to suggest to the adult education organisations that they should approach it from a rather more modern point of view or, at any rate, introduce some modern ideas into the various classes which are provided. I should like the people who are interested in this subject to study the most interesting pamphlet on consumer education which came out recently, published by the Research Institute for Consumer Affairs. There is in this pamphlet an excellent chapter which shows that there are exciting possibilities for a fusion of adult education and consumer education. It shows how, starting from everyday issues arising from quite practical considerations, adult education and consumer education can play a part in creating the informed, self-respecting, concerned persons whose influence can be so great on the mind of the society we live in.

Here I should like to pay a tribute to the work done by some of the well-known colleges of adult education, and by the Co-operative Movement, in their college at Loughborough, at which I was privileged to speak quite recently. All these places have done a great deal of work on consumer education in their adult education groups. Organisations like the women's institutes and the townswomen's guilds, and quite a number of other women's organisations, have now developed a considerable interest in providing a type of class or discussion group concerned with consumer affairs. I very much hope that local education authorities, in so far as they are introducing into their classes new subjects, will also consider more of these subjects.

Not long ago I addressed a conference of heads of commercial colleges and technical institutes, and I was most interested in what they told me about the kind of class they were organising: non-vocational classes, and classes of a technical character, too. The thing that struck me, in conversation with the heads of these institutes, was that they were, on the whole, trying to lay on what I call a course of six, eight or ten lectures on a subject to do with consumer education, and they were rather surprised when they found that many of the students could not stay the course. I urged them not to make of this subject something in the nature of six, eight, ten or twelve consecutive lectures, but to make a more imaginative approach to the subject which would be interesting because of the variety of different subjects covered.

I was most interested to find in the National Institute of Adult Education publication, which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, knows well, an account of the kind of adult education of which I am thinking, and which could be applied to many other subjects. I should like to refer to one example given: it is a course which took place in Birmingham on house purchase for adults, pointing out that such a course would be valuable if it did no more than give practical information about buying houses. But such a course could in fact go on to consider other issues. How well do estate agents do their jobs? Is estate agency an efficient system for bringing together people who want somewhere to live and people with houses to sell or let? Should houses be a marketable commodity? How can the housing shortage be overcome? Has any other country ever solved its housing problem? I can think of a number of subjects which could be used in that way in adult education classes and in adult education establishments. But one would need to think of the subjects that affect people in their everyday lives and translate them into courses—perhaps "courses" is the wrong word, since I am net thinking in terms of long courses on a particular subject, but of simple courses on subjects which interest consumers. This is a matter which I should like to see brought into the adult education field. I think the television authorities, if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, could well help in this way, since the type of subject I am thinking about is one which would greatly interest viewers.

The number of people who attend adult education classes is quite large, and much larger than I thought until I read some of the information with which I was supplied before this debate. There are one million men and women who take non-vocational courses in evening institutes and technical colleges to-day; and the majority of these are women. Therefore, I think there is an opportunity for those who are devising lectures and courses to bring out the consumer emphasis.

Many of your Lordships may be, and no doubt are, listening to the current series of Reith Lectures which are being given by Sir Leon Eagrit, and are absolutely fascinating. In the last lecture, on Sunday evening, this great expert on automation spoke quite simply about the effects that automation is going to have on our society. stressing the enormous need there will be for the increase in support of every subject—I was going to say other than automation. He stressed that the time people will have at their disposal in an automated society will be so great that all the liberal arts that we are interested in and want to support—music, literature, discussion, the development of museums, libraries and so on—are going to be far more important in future than they are to-day. He was urging us (and this is the man who is talking all the time about the new automated society) to spend more and more money, and give more and more support to the liberal artistic education in and through what I think I can call the category of adult education.

I therefore feel that the need for adult education in our technical and social environment to-day even more important than it was in the past. As the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, has pointed out, in the past adult education was largely a supplement to the education of people who had not the opportunity that is available to-day of staying at school and going to universities. But to-day we have this other problem to face—I do not even like to call it a problem, because, although it is sometimes so considered, I hope it will be something of enormous pleasure and benefit: I refer to the best way we can use our leisure and employ the hours we are given by the inventions of the 20th century. Following on those inventions, I think this question of adult education, training people to use their leisure to the best advantage, is of enormous importance.

So I would suggest to those noble Lords who are interested in adult education, and in education generally, that there is a need in this field for an approach to what I have called a consumer education, or consumer enlightenment—something which would be of great advantage, not only to those who are taking the classes and the courses, but also to those who are giving them, since we shall have a much more enlightened public which will help the manufacturers and the producers and the services which are provided for the public, by making people more discriminating in the way they use these services. We need the opportunity to learn new skills, to think new thoughts, and to discover new horizons if we are to make our contribution as consumers and to make wise decisions. Consumer education is only a part of adult education, but I believe it to be an important part. I should like to emphasise that this is a new approach to this subject, or rather a new subject with an old approach, and to urge it upon those people who are concerned with, and interested in, education.

I cannot help quoting, at the end of my speech, the last paragraph of a letter which appears in this interesting, but now rather old, Report on the Organisation and Finance of Adult Education—a Report made to my noble friend Lady Horsbrugh, who was Minister of Education at the time, and which contains this remarkable letter from Sir Winston Churchill. In the last paragraph of his letter to Sir Vincent Tewson of the Trades Union Congress, he says: I have no doubt myself that a man or woman earnestly seeking in grown-up life to be guided to wide and suggestive knowledge in its largest and most uplifted sphere will make the best of all the pupils in this age of clatter and buzz, of gape and gloat. The appetite of adults to be shown the foundations and processes of thought will never he denied by a British Administration cherishing the continuity of our Island life; I recommend those words to the members of the Government—that we all of us cherish the continuity of our Island life, and I hope that adult education is one of the subjects which will continue and flourish under whatever Government governs this country.

4.3 p.m.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, I hope the noble Lady who has just resumed her seat will forgive me if I do not follow her in the very interesting discussion which she has given us on education in the consumer movement—not that I do not entirely agree that it is very important and that obviously much attention should be given to it. I have been a member of the Consumers' Association since it started, although not the noble Lady's organisation. Its founder was a student of mine at the London School of Economics and one of my students of whom I am most proud, Mr. Michael Young. The noble Lady will realise that if I do not follow her, it is not because I do not think that what she was saying was important.

The whole subject, of course, is one of great importance, and I should like to add my tribute to the noble Lady's on the maiden speech of the noble Lord who sits on the Cross Benches. It was an enlightened and progressive speech—I can understand why he sat on the Cross Benches—with much thought in it, and with almost all of which I agree. To some of the things he said I hope to come back at a later stage in my speech. So far as the speaking goes, up to now I think it might almost be said that this was a debate among ex-teachers in Colleges of Adult Education. We all seem to have been mixed up in it to a greater or lesser extent, and I plead guilty to having been mixed up in it, perhaps to a rather less extent than some others but still to some extent. It has outside and generally in Parliament been too much assumed that education is a discipline for young people and something, so to speak, to be got through; and that when it has been got through it lasts you the rest of your life and there is not very much need for anything further, at any rate in the nature of disciplined education.

I dare say that in the past there was a good deal of truth in that. In stable societies, in which very little change took place and there was very little progress, that may well have been so; but it is emphatically no longer true in the sort of society which now exists throughout the civilized world—the modern, dynamic sort of society in which change is going on the whole time. A great deal of that change is fundamental in character. The world has changed more during the years since many of us in this Chamber were schoolboys than it changed in the whole of the previous 2,000 years. The education which we received in the early years of the present century no longer enables us to understand in any real sense of the term a great deal of the scientific and other basic work on which modern society, not only on its economic and business side but on a great deal of its cultural side, now depends. Therefore, it is very important that all of us, and not only the people who have been only to elementary schools until they were 14 or 15, should not only have the advantage of adult education but, in effect, in one way or another, be induced or even driven into it, because we really need it enormously.

Society now is altogether different from what it was, and it has been well said that no man will die in the society into which he was born". In spite of this, it remains true, I think, generally speaking, in Parliament and outside, that all the emphasis of recent years has been on training and education for youth. You can read through the Crowther Report from end to end, you can read through the Newsom Report from end to end, and you can read through the Albemarle Report from end to end, and you will not find much about adult education. You can read through the Robbins Report. In that Report, as Sir Ben Bowen Thomas said in his stimulating recent address to the Adult Education Institute, there are "two pages of kind words", and a reference to an Appendix to be produced, in which there are three or four pages of rather colourless statistics which do not carry us very much further.

I should like to take this opportunity of paying a tribute to the work of Sir Ben Bowen Thomas. Many of the great leaders in the adult education world have been justly praised this afternoon. Sir Ben, over the years since the end of the war, has been a great force in adult education. Anybody who knows what is going on in the adult education world must realise that he has perhaps been the greatest force. As adviser to the Ministry of Education he has been a most stimulating influence there. The Ministry of Education has not been as forthcoming as I think it should have been in regard to the recognition and encouragement of adult education. It is a naturally conservative institution, and it has approached this problem on rather conventional lines. Sir Ben Bowen Thomas has succeeded—and, his success has perhaps become evident during the last two or three years—in instilling a great deal more interest and activity in that institution than it previously had.

As my noble friend Lord Greenhill has said—and I should like to thank him very much for giving us the opportunity this afternoon of discussing this subject—we have in this country a creditable history in the way of adult education. I think he was perhaps a little too adulatory of this, because I believe adult education started in Denmark rather than in this country. On the agricultural side, the work of Grundvig and others, which goes back to quite early years in the last century, undoubtedly has been the basis of the astonishing prosperity of Denmark as an agricultural country. They were able to get the rural working population of Denmark educated to such a pitch that they were enabled to raise agriculture to a higher and better standard than in any other part of Europe. That is very real evidence of what can be done by an advanced adult education movement.

In this country as a young man I had the great happiness of teaching—and I would say that my own life work as a teacher started there—at the Working Men's College, which is the last surviving monument of the Christian Socialist Movement, of Frederick Dennison Maurice and that little band of men he gathered around him. Only a few years ago, the centenary of the foundation of the Working Men's College, which still exists and carries on its work in Mornington Crescent, was celebrated. This is the oldest of the adult educational colleges which still exist in this country and was, I think, the second to be formed. That is a long time ago. It was for a long time one of the few institutions of this kind to be carrying on the work of providing a liberal education, and many eminent men have passed through its classrooms. If one had the time it would be nice to dilate upon it, but obviously one has not.

Then we come to the foundation of the Workers' Educational Association, whose name is now a household word. I remember a struggling period before the First World War, and it is nice to hear that dynamic personality Albert Mansbridge recognised in your Lordships' House this afternoon. He came from the ranks of the working people, and joined forces with Harry Tawney, one of the friends on whom I look back with the greatest affection and esteem, in getting this wonderful work of adult education going among working people. Everybody must recognise what has been done by it.

The work of the W.E.A. in the interwar years really kept adult education of a liberal character going in this country, although from time to time it was confronted with real difficulties. It became obvious during the war years, when the Government themselves realised that the Armed Forces needed a great deal of education, that in the post-war years there would be great opportunities in the world of adult education and that great demands would be made. I confess that I do not really feel that we have quite lived up to those opportunities or answered those great demands.

In the Association of University Teachers, with which I have been happy to be associated for a very long time, this was realised and we had committees working on educational problems in the post-war period. I think that I can congratulate my colleagues on this, for, if you were to go back to what was published by the Association in 1944–45, before the end of the war, in regard to higher education generally, you would find that it very much foreshadowed the Robbins Report. At that time its fruition was a long way away and nobody paid a great deal of attention to it, but there is not really much in the Robbins Report that was not foreshadowed in the publications of the Association.

In the same way we produced what I think was a very valuable assessment of the position and needs in adult education, in which we pictured the university as the focus for regional education and development in the adult world. We foresaw many ways in which the university could help and, of course, to some extent that has been carried out, in that the extra-mural departments in the universities are playing a considerable part in the work of adult education at the present time. No doubt eventually this report of the Association of University Teachers in which the university is the focus of regional education will receive the same sort of recognition from the Government and from the community as a whole that the Robbins Report received very nearly twenty years later.

If one looks at this problem of adult education, one finds there are four aspects which require attention. Naturally at this stage I do not propose to develop all of them at length. First of all, there is the rather obvious one of the evening institutes, which go back a very long way; the evening schools for technical education, education for commerce, education of the kind which if a boy or girl had stayed at school a little longer he or she might well have received there. This has been the most successful part of adult education in this country.

The value of the work done by local education authorities in these institutes has hardly had the recognition that it deserves. When I was working for the Civil Defence movement during the war, I had a great deal to do with the selecting of men for officer rank in the National Fire Service and in the general service of Civil Defence, and it was astonishing how many of the men who presented themselves for promotion and were obviously well equipped for these positions had attended technical and commercial schools and colleges with great success. What we should have done without those men who had given up some years of early working life, not only working through the day in factories, workshops and offices but in the evenings in the technical schools, I shudder to think. This work will go forward, I do not think it needs very much encouragement from your Lordships' House.

Then there are the refresher courses. This sort of work in the evening institutes leads on to the refresher courses which are becoming more and more evident in the professions, and in the higher forms of scientific production and elsewhere, but in which there is still enormous scope for development. It is on this aspect of adult education that Robbins devotes most of the "two encouraging pages" to which I have already referred. Undoubtedly this is a very important aspect of adult education and one which will become more and more important, because in so many ways the men on whom we shall rely for the future economic and industrial progress of this country, especially in what one might call the "non-commissioned-officer ranks", will have to go through a great deal more education of this kind, partly in special colleges and partly in the colleges which already exist.

We then have the third group, the one on which there has been most comment this afternoon, the movement to bring the adult population as a whole up to date in regard to the knowledge without which the modern world is really incomprehensible and without which the adult citizen cannot really take his place in the modern world. This, I think, has never been better brought out than in the Memorial which was addressed by the Institute of Adult Education to the Minister of Education some time ago, and if your Lordships will allow me I should like to quote very shortly from what was said there: The quality of society depends on personal self-respect and the willingness to accept obligations in adult life. This is what adult education promotes, and that is why the Government is largely responsible for assisting it. They then go on to set out five aspects of this matter. I wish to draw only one of these to your Lordships' attention, but it is, I think, particularly important in the context of what I have just been saying. It is this: The present level of economic prosperity is associated with the continued acceleration in the rate of change. At whatever level of intelligence, no education that ends in early life will in future be enough to maintain responsible understanding of the current of change, nor will it prepare people to make the personal adaptation in middle life that may be required of them. This seems to me to be of very great importance, and it is obviously here that the modern movement for adult education can play an increasingly important rôle.

Then, of course, we have what one might call the general cultural education, which was referred to particularly by the noble Baroness—music, the arts, literature. The "two cultures" goes back a long way beyond Lord Snow's famous lecture. The problem was realised by my colleagues in the Committee to which I have referred. The great service that Lord Snow has doze, of course, is to put it so attractively, so epigrammatically and in such a way as to bring it home to us all. We were waiting for somebody with his grasp and his literary ability to bring it home to the nation. This cultural aspect of adult education, obviously, is a very important matter, and it is here—just as much here as in the old universities, such as Cambridge, where Lord Snow was for a number of years on the staff—that it is important for the life of the community.

The problem, of course, bristles with difficulties. The question of facilities has been referred to—the grossly inadequate premises in. which a great deal of this work goes on, often in the evenings, in schools which have been used all day; in buildings which are thoroughly airless and often out of date, and where it is extremely difficult for the wretched students—and, indeed, for the teacher himself—to keep really awake. Then there is the problem over recruitment of staff, who are miserably paid, so that jobs often have to be taken by people who have already done a hard day's work and are not in the sort of state to stimulate their students.

I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, said, about the fact that adult education requires proper teaching. The B.B.C. and the Independent Television, and the newspapers, do a great work of stimulation. But stimulation is not education, unless it can drive people on and induce people to enter classes where they actually come into personal con tact with the teacher, where they have to use their own minds, where they do not just sit and absorb the well-expressed passages from the talk; where, indeed, they have to take their notes home, and work on them and produce some homework for the teacher. Unless there is this side, anybody who has been engaged in much teaching will tell you that the permanent effect will amount to very little.

It has been said, I know—and there is a good deal of truth in it—that the only well-educated man is the self-educated man. But the number of men who have succeeded in educating themselves well, entirely by their own efforts, is very small. The number who have failed is enormously larger. The number who might have succeeded if they had had real guidance and help as to how to get on with the work of educating themselves would be very large indeed.

One of our difficulties is that we do not know a great deal in a scientific way about what happens. The noble Baroness gave us a figure of one million people engaged in the evenings in all sorts of different classes of adult education. It would be a good thing to know in considerable detail what they are doing, how far they are going. This is an area of education of which, despite all the work that has been going on in recent years in general educational research, very little concrete is yet known. I would appeal to the new Minister of Education, and those who are working with him, to give attention to the essential need for research in this particular field.

One of the aspects of the matter to which they might address especial attention is that of inducing people into adult education. We tend to assume, as Sir Ben Bowen Thomas says in his interesting address, to which I have already referred more than once, that "people ought to be involved in adult education on terms already formulated for them by others". We want to know a great deal more about what they really need. We are living in a world in which people are being enticed in all sorts of directions by all sorts of interests with axes to grind. A young man—or a middle-aged man, for that matter—may start the winter months by determining that he will go through a course in a college of adult education, but within a few weeks he has been lured away by something gaudy and attractive, meretricious but of no real value. How can one expect him to resist this sort of blandishment and enticement? What we want, and what I should like the Ministry of Education to concentrate on, is the exploration of methods by which people can be induced to provide a real demand, not just a lackadaisical up-and-down demand, of the kind which starts quite strongly in October but has petered out by Easter, which, as everybody who has been much in the adult educational world knows, is one of the great dangers there.

Of course in a real Socialist country this would be very much easier. There are all sorts of inducements that could be held out to people. It is very difficult to get into the National Theatre: since the Old Vic became the National Theatre, I have hardly ever succeeded in getting seats. You could hold out, as they would at the Bolshoi, in Moscow, the possibility of giving what I might call most-favoured-nation treatment to people who did well in the adult education classes round the corner at Morley College. That would be one sort of inducement for people to come into adult education. It seems to me that this is an aspect of the matter which it is very important we should study, and into which research should be conducted. Because we have to get a very much larger number of the ordinary people of the country, who are involved in this dynamic society in which we all live, into this movement, so that they do not cease their education at the age of fifteen—or, as it is going to be, sixteen—but take it right through their whole lives, so that, when they come to retire, they will have a real basis of educational knowledge on which they can enjoy fruitfully the last few years of their lives.

4.30 p.m.

LORD FRANCIS-WILLIAMS

My Lords, I must confess to your Lordships that I found myself a little daunted this week-end when brooding about this debate. I picked up a copy of The Times Educational Supplement and found embedded in a book review the magisterial utterance: The truth is that adult education, though eminently worthy of respect, is not inherently an exciting subject. I hope that the debate to-day, so far as it has already gone, will permeate into Printing House Square and persuade them that this is not the case. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, introducing the debate, and also the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, whom I congratulate on a most able and graceful maiden speech; I hope we are going to hear him a great deal, as he has an immense talent for the dissemination of knowledge of all kinds, and it would be a great pity, I think, if it were, so to speak, to be entirely decentralised in administrative activities. I hope he will come and join us often.

I was delighted to hear both of them paying the tributes they did to the W.E.A. Anybody on this side of the House, or anybody who has been in any way connected with the Labour Movement, whether political or industrial, will be well aware that one of the great influences in bringing the Labour Movement to maturity in this country has been the W.E.A.: the stimulation of ideas, the search for knowledge that it helped to form—helped, I must admit, from time to time by Eton, Winchester, Haileybury and Wirral Grammar School. Nevertheless, this surge of working-class education, which was perhaps at its peak in many ways in the early part of this century and which made an immense impact, along with the Nonconformist Church and other institutions, upon the thinking of an enormous mass of people seeking out new frontiers to capture for themselves and others was of the greatest importance.

I find it regrettable, not only because of its past but because of its present, that in the Year Book of the National Institute of Adult Education the W.E.A. should feel compelled to note that the restriction of its teaching grant to about 75 per cent. and the recent freezing of class activity are inhibiting the kind of pilot developments in new educational methods that it would like to undertake. I greatly hope that when he comes to speak later in this debate, my noble friend Lord Bowden, speaking from the Front Bench, will be able to tell us that, despite the other economic problems and difficulties that manifestly confront us, the present Government are taking a new look at this problem of adult education and of the finance that is necessary to make it operate successfully, and will take advantage of the great opportunities of all kinds that exist for its expansion.

If the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, will not think that I am poaching upon his preserves, I want to glance particularly at the extent to which the new techniques of television and radio can, so to speak, marry and be synthesised with the old techniques of the lecture room and the tutorial class to make a great advance in adult education. It seems to me that the problem, if it is a problem—though one prefers to think of it as an opportunity—falls into four main groups. There is first the demand, the sense, the feeling of a great number of people that in some way they wish to extend their liberal education, to have opened upon the world not only new windows but new doors through which they can enter into a whole corridor of rooms, each with its own riches and diversities.

It is, I think, the case that much of television and radio, even when not in any way professedly educational, has done a great deal to help that liberal education of ordinary people. In the criticism that is often made of television, frequently by people who regard. themselves as of a superior education, it should never be forgotten that in a great number of programmes, weekly affairs programmes, discussion programmes, documentaries, professedly cultural programmes and programmes which have nothing to do professedly with culture, radio and television, whether B.B.C. or Independent Television, have for immense numbers of people, enormously increased both the opportunities for knowledge and the capacity to enjoy knowledge.

Anybody who has spent some part of his time appearing on television and radio programmes and who has had people come up to him in the street to talk about those programmes, cannot but be aware of the extent to which many such programmes, although they have aimed quite properly to entertain, have also greatly broadened the frontiers of knowledge. If we are, as I believe we are, a much better educated community than we were, a community less surrounded by the narrow walls of prejudice and so on, then I think, along with the whole process of education, television and radio has a great deal of credit due to it on that account. I say that, as it seems to me, the first aspect of adult education is this provision, whether directly and ostensibly or almost by accident, of a liberal education which broadens the mind and widens the outlook; and although more cot ld always be done, I think that that is being done to a considerable degree by the instruments of mass communication which we now have at our command.

Then there is what I regard as the second aspect of this matter: those who, having been compelled to specialise from early in their youth, feel, as they leave school and get into other jobs, the need to explore educational opportunities, subjects which, so to speak, were put outside the bounds when they were working hard to pass examinations. We all should realise that although the need to pass an examination may be an essential purpose in an educational system, an essential qualification of proficiency in many professions and industries, and increasingly so, yet the degree of specialisation which is now so often insisted upon in sixth forms, and often below the sixth form, can carry with it the immense danger of creating a people of narrower skills and narrow knowledge, people who have "missed out" on a great deal of the infinite variety of exciting subjects and exciting material that is available to those who have enjoyed a wider education and who have been able to look at the world in human terms and with a humanitarian tradition.

I think it is a substantial purpose of adult education to provide the means whereby those who have been required to specialise in order to acquire the professional or trade qualifications necessary for earning a living and getting on in their career, shall, at a later stage in their lives, be able to go back to the well of knowledge and imbibe deeply in ways that they were not able to do when their noses were pressed to the grindstone of an examination system. Those people may not need an educational system, educational techniques which lead up to any kind of diploma or examination, or even the kind of written work that both Lord Hill of Luton and Lord Chorley have referred to and which I agree is essential if you are to have a goal of actual achievement which can be examined and recognised at the end of it. But what they need is not only an occasional programme which will open a window or a door, but carefully considered structures of programmes which will lead them on from a beginning to a middle, and later to a much higher stage of education in subjects which appeal to them—and I stress "which appeal to them".

Although I agree with a great deal of what my noble friend Lord Chorley had to say, I discerned here and there a trace of a feeling that somehow people ought to be given the education that was good for them, and that if they would not take it that way then they ought in some way to be bribed into accepting it, either by tickets for the National Theatre or in some other way. I do not really believe that, having once escaped the domination of the schoolmaster, the ordinary adult can be either bullied or bribed into an education for which he does not himself feel an inner urge. It is to inspire that kind of inner urge that I believe the instruments of mass communication could be immensely valuable. But there are, of course, those who need further education for explicit purposes, sometimes leading to diplomas and degrees, in order to prepare them for more skilled and responsible work in their vocations.

I looked back on what I thought was one of the most brilliant maiden speeches made in this House, that made by my noble friend Lord Bowden on the subject of business education, aware as he is—more aware than most people—of the immense national need that many millions of people in trade, in industry, and in the professions shall be able to improve their education technologically and in other respects, in order that we shall be able to take full advantage of opportunities of expansion in this country. I very much hope that he will be able to tell us, when he speaks towards the end of this debate, whether he has yet had time to impress even more fully upon the Government—and I know that many members of the Government are aware of it—the need for developing this kind of education and for using all the new techniques of teaching in making it possible to reach a mass audience.

All Governments—all new Governments—have to grapple with the problem of priorities. There are, manifestly, other immediate problems and issues which have to come before those of developing adult education, but I hope we shall receive an assurance that this, at any rate, is among the high priorities of this Government, not only because of the need to expand the horizons of our people, but also because, failing it, we shall fall behind in that advance of technology, of industrial expansion, upon which the well-being and survival of our country depends.

Fourthly, of course—and this has already been done to some extent—is the need in adult education for refresher courses for those who are already engaged in some profession who may have reached their middle period, or even be past it, and who are very busy and occupied, yet need to have means provided whereby they can keep up with the latest developments, the latest knowledge, learning and skills in their professions. It seems to me that in this matter television and radio, which can go right into the home of the busy professional man, provide an immense opportunity for the refresher course, as is already being done to some extent, as the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, mentioned, in Scottish Television, which has had a refresher course for general practitioners.

Considering these various aspects of this problem, as I see it, I asked myself how we ought to bend our minds best to grapple with it. There was a good deal of talk at one time, although the Pilkington Committee rather turned it down, of the idea of a fourth television channel which would be entirely educational. Quite frankly, I am in two minds on this. I do not believe, as the Pilkington Committee seemed to believe, that if an educational channel were established it would mean that the other television companies and organisations—the B.B.C., but particularly, thought the Pilkington Committee, the independent television companies—would use it as an excuse for dropping their present number of serious programmes. I do not believe that to be the case at all. When I say that I am in two minds about it, it is in part because so much of the education of this country has been locally based. has been inspired by the knowledge of local needs and local conditions, that I sometimes feel a certain revulsion of horror at the idea of a supreme body which would be completely in control of education by television, and perhaps also by radio, operating from the centre.

When I was for a time at the University of California, in Berkeley, briefly occupying a position beyond my educational station as a visiting professor, I was much impressed at being approached and asked if I should be agreeable to a course of post-graduate seminars being televised in order that they could go into an educational station. I agreed, and immediately it had a powerful impact on the students who were participating in my post-graduate seminars. The girls appeared before me infinitely better dressed and smarter than they had been before, and the young men had obviously spent the night before brushing up their knowledge. After the first slight inhibitions provided by the know ledge that they were all on the screen, they did in fact forget, as people who are on television do forget, all about the medium, and we conducted what was in essence exactly the same kind of post-graduate seminar as we should normally have conducted.

I was enormously interested at the number of letters which later flooded into me from all kinds of people—from housewives, technical workers, office workers—people who had viewed those programmes, who had followed the seminars right through, and gave me for a period more or less a full-time job in answering the queries which they wrote to me in their letters. I wonder whether we could not contemplate perhaps more carefully than we have done so far whether we could not develop both local radio and local television linked to the universities, and particularly perhaps to the new universities. I think particularly of the University of Sussex because I happen to know something about it. It is at present conducting, so I am told, a most fascinating research into the social aspects and implications of certain kinds of mass communication, particularly the Press, on which it wrote to me about a number of points.

These new universities might join with the local education authorities, with the local adult education associations like the W.E.A. and, I should also think, with some of the existing correspondence colleges. Some of the correspondence colleges are extremely good; some of them, I am told, are rather bad; but perhaps we have reached the stage where they ought to be examined and registered as schools are by the Ministry of Education, in order that we and their pupils may know what their merits or demerits are. One thinks of a consortium of the university, the adult educational institute, the local authority and the correspondence college, planning courses of adult education, both of a liberal arts kind and of a technological and scientific kind, using and having made available to them local radio stations and, if possible—and I do not believe that it is impossible—local television outlets.

I believe, after spending many years in this field in one way and another, that there is an immense amount of nonsense talked about the expense of television programmes. Of course great spectaculars or international documentaries cost a tremendous amount of money. But a television programme aimed at a particular audience for a particular educational purpose, handled by a producer with knowledge, who knows that he does not have an immense budget to fall back on, can be produced—I know, because I have helped to do it—for very little money indeed. I believe that if we could have this amalgam, this synthesis, of these various agencies of either actual or potential adult education, then indeed we might find ways of using the new technique open to us in a way which would really take advantage of the opportunities that now exist. That we must take advantage of those opportunities I am convinced, because upon whether we do or not will depend not only the efficiency of our society, but its quality.

4.53 p.m.

BARONESS GAITSKELL

My Lords, this debate has so far been conducted on such a gentle note that I hesitate to ruffle the atmosphere by a slightly controversial speech. I think that the biggest indictment of the late Government is not so much the present economic crisis—for we seem to have a chronic balance-of-payments problem which flares up periodically—as the inadequate state of all our education to-clay after thirteen years of Conservative rule. There are certain phrases used by politicians which catch on and are accepted without any questioning. Such a phrase was the time-worn, "You've never had it so good." It planted a seed of complacency that has taken root and spread like a weed, and I think it had an effect on the moral climate of this country. I hasten to add, in case your Lordships should misunderstand me, that I use the word "moral" not in its sexual sense, but in its spiritual meaning; and I use the word "spiritual" not in its religious sense, but with its intellectual connotation.

How else can one explain the apathetic attitude to education generally which has prevailed in the last ten years? I know that we have had inquiries, reports, articles and discussions galore. They have all come to one conclusion; that we must have more and better education. Each branch, primary, secondary, university and adult, has claimed to be the Cinderella of the education services; but adult education is the poorest of them all. How can we have been so deluded about our national well-being when, in comparison with the Soviet Union and America, after allowances for differences in population, the Robbins Report has stated that, if we compare published plans for future development in education many other countries are far ahead of us?

This is all the more serious because we know that we can neither hold our own nor compete unless we have a highly educated population to give us the many skilled people of whom we are so short now and who are essential to our progress. How can any society to-day be complacent with such a grave shortage of teachers as we have? Judging by the Robbins Report, we shall need a quarter of a million more teachers in 1980 for higher education. Last year, 5,000 students who had qualified for the universities could not find places, for they did not exist. And it looks as if next year the figure will be still higher. This in itself makes the need for adult education greater than ever. A great deal of money will have to be spent, and used wisely and fairly as between the different sections of education.

As I have said, my Lords, adult education is the youngest and the most neglected child of them all. I have a special interest in adult education, and I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if for a moment I am a little personal. My husband, Hugh Gaitskell, as my noble friend Lord Greenhill has said, after having the best education that money can buy in this country became a university extra-mural tutor at Nottingham. His first job was with the Workers' Educational Association in the Nottingham district, teaching economics to a class of unemployed miners. He taught these miners in various villages; and he learned a great deal from them, too. It was because of his great interest in them that he had an association with the mining industry which he valued and maintained throughout his life. He was Vice-President of the W.E.A. from 1952 until his death. This partnership which existed in the East Midlands between the W.E.A. and the University led to a great expansion of the courses throughout the towns and villages; and this, in turn, led to all kinds of experiments which have given a new look to adult education.

The most successful new development is the one with industry. Day-release courses for mineworkers and industrial workers are an important feature. Many of the courses are held in factories immediately after work ends, and both public and privately owned industries support this scheme. Since 1951, however, many restrictions have been placed on adult education, which have frustrated the work and prevented advantage being taken of the great and growing demand for it. It is the same theme song: shortage of staff, shortage of education, and shortage of funds. Where local authorities have been able to provide suitable centres, there has been a dramatic increase in student numbers.

The total national expenditure on education, so often quoted, is £1,000 million: the Government's total estimated aid up to date to responsible bodies in adult education is under £1 million—less than the cost of one mile of motorway. In 1952, grants to the extra-mural departments of universities and the W.E.A. were limited, and this restrictive policy was continued, except for brief periods of relaxation. By 1962, only 1 per cent. of the adult population, 200,000, were taking part in adult education. Sir Edward Boyle granted a small increase in the direct grants in order to provide some more full-time tutors, as distinct from part-time. There is a growing need to-day for these. The universities asked for 62, and they were given 15: the W.E.A. asked for 13, and they were given 5. At present, there is a standstill: there is no provision for any increase.

The argument is that we cannot advance simultaneously on all fronts. But, as I have said, the fact that so many young people cannot get into a university, in spite of being qualified to do so, makes the need for adult education really pressing. In this particular field a modest increase in expenditure can produce a vast improvement. The benefits of tutor-student, person-to-person teaching simply cannot be exaggerated. It is the most valuable method of all.

Of late, there has been much talk about a University of the Air—and here may I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, for a really exceptional maiden speech? I think he was almost too modest about the experiments and the ventures of I.T.V. in this field of a University of the Air. The National Extension College, as it is called, has got off the ground after some very interesting experiments and research conducted by the Advisory Centre of Education, in conjunction with Cambridge University and I.T.V.

At first, I was somewhat sceptical about the practical future of this venture. I know how much the Russians are said to use this method, but I thought that it was from necessity and not from choice. But the results of the series of programmes put out by "Dawn University" from Cambridge, combined with correspondence courses and occasional residential courses, have been absolutely spectacular. The public have been left with a great appetite for more. This success is remarkable. The most outstanding and brilliant lectures have been used, and this is certainly a way to bridge the gulf between the ordinary citizen and the specialist in the sciences and the arts. Science, particularly, is absolutely incomprehensible to the ordinary citizen, and if we do not make some greater effort at communication soon there will not be just many accents but two separate languages; that of the specialist and that of the man in the street, with never the twain meeting.

The University of the Air is still in embryo, and to be properly effective it must be combined with correspondence courses, as I have said, and high-standard examinations. It can be an important way of equipping and enticing married women teachers back into the profession, where they are so badly needed. We have 160,000 qualified women teachers in this country: 40,000 of them are not at work. Part-time teachers could easily be drawn back by these refresher methods. The broadcasting techniques are still pretty imperfect, I am told, and not very polished: but when these have been perfected, and links between different universities established, a University of the Air can be as well equipped as any university on the ground and can reach a vastly greater number of students.

Other ideas have been put forward, my Lords—some more original than practical. Dr. Beeching has had a proposal for a travelling classroom on trains for commuters. One can go on ad absurdum. Why not an observatory on top of the Hilton Hotel, or of the Shell building? The imagination boggles at the opportunities opening up to-day for adult education. But if we dismiss this as nonsense, let us remember that a television-based teaching time from 6.30 to 8.30 has had a successful rehearsal at university level. I hope that the Government will promote all practical innovations, especially for extra-mural and W.E.A. projects, because, as I have already said, a small increase in expenditure will yield very big results.

Perhaps we are so accustomed to our democratic way of life that we do not pause to think that it is by no means universal. Perhaps we do not cherish our democracy enough. Adult education is a good and easy way to mix people from every walk of life; and it is a way to give those who have missed their opportunity a second chance, or even a last chance, to educate themselves. When one contemplates a growing democracy, there is only one thing that is slightly depressing, and that is a growing uneducated democracy. I hope that the Government will put adult education high on the list of priorities in education generally.

5.8 p.m.

LORD GEDDES OF EPSOM

My Lords, I am always diffident when intervening in a debate at this point, because repetition is wearisome; nevertheless, it seems to me unavoidable. The first point I want to make—and I have a reason for making it—is that the Trades Union Congress and the trade unions make a very considerable contribution in the adult education field. I make this point because I am often being asked, "Why don't the trade unions educate their members?". It is not generally known that the contribution of the trade unions to adult education is something like £300,000 a year. This may not be a very great sum in relation to the total spent, but it is nevertheless a not inconsiderable sum; and the Trades Union Congress allocates about 20 to 25 per cent. of its total income to educating its members.

Of course, one of the reasons why the question is asked is that the questioner really means, "Why don't the trade unions educate their members to accept all that the employers say?" This is an assumption, you know: that if the pupil knows as much as the master, then agreement is inevitable. I do not accept that at all: I think it is a false assumption. I think it is at this point that controversy really starts. It may be better informed, but, in my view, it is often much more bitter. But I want to concentrate, if I may, on just two aspects of adult education. The first is education for the young adult, and the other is television and radio, to which reference has already been made, particularly in the splendid maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton. He certainly knows far more about it than I do; but perhaps I shall be a little more critical than one would expect him to be in looking at television's contribution in one particular aspect to which I hope to refer.

My Lords, when talking about education for the young. we are undoubtedly raising the question of education for leisure. In this group we have those people who, by their ability and inclinations, are well-fitted to enjoy the benefits of the affluent society. We need to worry little about these. The far larger group, among whom we find the vandals, the "Mods" and the "Rockers", will never be appealed to by our present approaches to adult education. These are the people who, as the working week becomes shorter (and this it seems to me is inevitable) are creating our most serious problems in adult education.

No one seems to have found a successful recipe for occupying the leisure time of the less intellectually able members of the community, and we have only the sketchiest notions of motivation for group anti-social behaviour like the Margate and Brighton occurrences and the vandalism of the football trains. Glib explanations, that they have too much money, or glib cures, that we should bring back the birch, are not likely to get us anywhere. I have few helpful ideas; but I should like to put these forward, whether they are acceptable or not. First, we should take a less academic view of some of the features of adult education and allow our public expenditure to flow more easily into activities such as games—and this is meant to cover a wide range of entertaining activities usually outside the scope of culture. This would mean taking the Albemarle Report seriously and giving more substantial support to youth activity generally.

Secondly, we should link adult education for the less intellectual with some of the social service activities. For dealing with the anti-social part of the population we should ensure that we encourage recruitment of able and sympathetic people by adequate status and rewards; and I think your Lordships would agree with me that the Probation Service has suffered in recent years from poor monetary rewards. Third, we should encourage more research into the causes of anti-social behaviour. Much research of this type is carried out on a shoe-string; but until recently there have been no formal mechanisms for support by Government analogous with that for physical science. Until we have some understanding of why people behave anti-socially, we shall be floundering around in trying to abate bad behaviour by providing alternative attractions; and we certainly have not succeeded yet.

This might be a little startling, but as my fourth suggestion I would say that we might consider the possibility of nonmilitary National Service which could cover, under disciplined procedures, many facets of social service, such as aid to the old, hospital service, service in underdeveloped countries, agriculture, et cetera. I appreciate that this concentrates rather on the anti-social and delinquent, because this is where the most serious problem lies. Far from removing sources of trouble, affluence and leisure will aggravate the problem. Therefore, I think it necessary that we should consider it very seriously indeed.

My Lords, turning to radio and television, I would remark that it is reported that the Centre for Educational Television Overseas is holding a conference in London this week. This will concentrate on education in newly-developing countries. But what about this country? In the Year Book of the National Institute of Adult Education the following statement is made: Television adds tin exciting new dimension to Adult Education. This is not merely because its techniques, if properly directed, can enliven the study of subjects as different as art and international relations, but because of its social hold as a medium. Is it properly directed, and does it promote international relations? I have profound doubt about this. Attempts to educate through plays with the colour bar as their theme seldom educate the public in this difficult question. The "antis" become more "anti" and the "pros" more confirmed and bitter. Programmes on youth and their trials and tribulations do little or nothing to relieve their burdens or to increase the sympathy of the "squares" with youth's strange desire to "get with it." Documentaries about small coloured religious sects performing ritual dances only increase one's bewilderment. They do nothing to create a greater understanding between the races; and publicity about strange religious bigots does nothing to increase respect for the Christian doctrine. The one overwhelming need to-day is for greater understanding as a prelude to tolerance. Knowledge may breed prejudice; but deep understanding seldom does.

Cannot the two broadcasting authorities set up a joint study group to consider the type of programme which will bring greater understanding among the peoples of the world? if they cannot, or will not, cannot the Government set up such a Committee? There is an imperative need for understanding the causes of distrust which arise from a complete lack of comprehension of the problems of other people. Why, for example, in starving India does the population increase at such a rate? Let us see a day in the life of an Indian family, in a small Indian village community—not made entertaining by village dances and women carrying water on their heads, but rather how they live (if that is the correct description) from dawn to dusk of a very ordinary day.

Surely much more can be done without too much interference with the entertainment value of present programmes. Instead of pleasant commentaries by pleasant and clever young men about the modern miracle of rubber production, let us see the life of one family whose only crop is rubber and let us see how they live for five years on the £90 which they receive for changing over to more productive trees. What sort of education do their children get? What food do they eat? What luxuries do they have? Let us share their miseries for a change. There is plenty of misery in the world to make many such programmes. This may not be entertainment; but it would be excellent education for the Western affluent society.

I expect to be told that this could not be done; that the public would not stand for it. But we might be surprised how much the public would welcome being educated away from the antics and petty doings of the residents in "Coronary Thrombosis Street". At the worst it would be a change, and at the best, adult education of the most worthy kind. Let the B.B.C. take their courage in their hands; and if the sponsors of soap powder advertisements will not stand for it, let the Government make a grant. They can, and do, spend money on less worthy objects.

5.19 p.m.

LORD DARWEN

My Lords, I should like to follow in some respects the noble Lord who has just sat down. I feel that his plea that we should look at adult education in a rather wider way is, perhaps, a right one, and at one point in these brief remarks I should like to look at that. I think it is true to say that adult education was founded on inequality of opportunities in school education. This state of affairs is one which is changing, and consequently it is necessary that the people who are concerned with adult education should look again at the aims and means of adult education.

One of the most pressing tasks facing the present Government is the advancement of technological education. I think very few noble Lords would disagree with that. If we do not create a great many more scientists and technicians, it is recognised that our economy will suffer immensely and that we as a nation will no longer have an important rôle in the councils of the world. These phrases are useful for the legislator and the economist, but they lack a certain personal dimension. The ideas they represent are, of course, as we all know, very much concerned with persons. If the economy suffers, people are thrown out of work and those who have work are paid less. Not only does their relative affluence disappear, but poverty and the fight to stay alive draw a step nearer. Again, if we lose our place in the councils of the world, the world may become a most hostile place and we may lose our freedom to speak as we think.

I should like to push a little further this question of why we consider technological education to be important. Technology gives us power, wealth and, although it does not appear yet, fewer hours in which we must work. But power, wealth and fewer hours each poses its own question. Power for what? Wealth for what? Leisure for what? To this last question, "Leisure for what?", as indeed to the others, the relevance of education is obvious. We need to think about education for leisure because leisure is one of the principal fruits of the technological age, and the fruitful use of leisure can, in its turn, reflect a new quality into technological thinking. One can enrich the other.

Adult education is voluntary education. It is an aspect of a free society, having the aim of enabling people to decide for themselves. As we have heard during the course of this debate, adult education in this country has been most effectively represented by the university extra-mural classes and by the W.E.A. It would not be my wish in any way to belittle the tremendous achievement of these two main agencies. The discipline of these two organisations was well founded and it has enabled them to survive, because their standards are essentially in the best tradition of scholarship. But there are a great many other organisations which provide classes and recreational activi- ties of all kinds—Townswomen's Guilds, with over 200,000 members, and with classes in social studies, crafts and drama; the Women's Institutes; the National Association of Women's Clubs; the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A.; and the residential colleges run by a variety of bodies, including local education authorities and, in some cases, universities. Besides these, there are, of course, all the classes and courses which are provided by the local education authorities themselves.

Nearly twenty years ago, I was appointed a warden of an adult education settlement. There were classes in clay modelling, needlework, orchestral music, drama, poetry interpretation, art, ballroom dancing, philosophy and a great many more subjects. At that time I had two ideas, and I am inclined to think that they were both just a little wrong. The first was that classes of the more academic type were much more valuable than recreational classes. I think that I probably thought in the wrong terms. I should have thought that they were more educational rather than more valuable. One can see that recreational activities can play an important rôle in emotional adjustments, in domestic upheavals and so forth and, in general, in making life more enjoyable.

The other idea I had was that the personal touch was extremely important. But the personal touch depends on the person and on just precisely what one means by it. The responsibility for the personal touch lay rather heavily upon me, and I remember an early social evening at which I did my best to get round, shaking hands and saying a few words to everyone I had not already met. Towards the end of the evening I saw a young man who was new to me. I went up to him, greeted him and said that I hoped I should see him again before very long. His reply was withering: "I gathered that. This is the third time you have told me so this evening."

The question of whether personal participation has an interaction between teacher and taught, between student and student, is one which deserves far more attention than it has had. I had very much hoped that I should be able to bring to your Lordships some data of research into this subject, but I have been singularly unsuccessful in discovering any. But, in view of the power of television and radio as means of providing both formal and informal education, this is a subject which ought to have the attention of a suitable research investigation. The best I have been able to do is to find a brief passage in a "Pelican", by W. J. H. Sprott, with the title, Human Groups. On page 157 the author mentions the work of Kurt Lewin, a German psychologist who did his most important work in the United States. Lewin was interested in the way in which people were influenced by various methods of persuasion. This is not adult education, of course, because adult education, as I have said, aims at enabling people to make their own decisions. Nevertheless, the results of Lewin's experiments seem to me relevant, and I should like to read a few sentences. He says: During World War II it was felt necessary to persuade housewives in America to serve offal to their husbands. To those who are only too glad to get hold of sweetbreads and kidneys, this will seem odd, but the fact remains that to the American housewife 'intestinals' were looked upon askance. Two techniques were used: attractive lectures on the nutritional value of such foods, and group discussions leading to a group decision. A follow-up survey showed that the latter method was overwhelmingly more successful. The same thing was done to induce mothers to get their families to consume more milk and their babies to consume more orange juice. There is certainly a place in adult education for people who are getting on in years and perhaps are dreading the thought of retirement. Yesterday I heard of a man who went along to a city literary institution to take a course for retirement. During the course it was impressed upon those attending that they should try to get some interest, to take up a hobby. The suggestion was put to this man that perhaps he might like to take one of the courses at the institute. But he protested that he had no intellectual pretensions, that he was an ordinary working man and was not equipped to enter upon such courses. In the end he agreed to take up painting. A year later, the lecturer who had suggested that he should take such a course met him in the corridor and asked him how he was getting on. The man said that he was in rather a hurry because lie was late for his class, but at least he could say this: as a result of taking the painting course that year he had seen spring for the first time. Employers who send their apprentices to W.E.A. group classes may appear to be taking a very long view; but there is no doubt that, from the point of view of the community, such group discussions vitalise members. They are perhaps less tractable, but they are certainly more interesting and have more to contribute.

A good deal has been said about the effect of television. I do not want to be repetitious, and I will say only a little about this, although I had intended to develop it at some length. Even if the programmes are not thought of in terms of education, there is no doubt that most factual programmes, many discussion programmes and programmes about art, dance music and the theatre all help people to be more discerning. Above all, they make for an awareness of the possibilities within and outside a person. As one viewer put it, "Television has the advantage of blessed anonymity". I particularly remember Dr. Bronowski's splendid lectures on science. I believe the B.M.A. were clearly doubtful about the idea of televising operations and the treatment of various ailments, but, as the series progressed, they became convinced of the value of such programmes. This is clearly an attempt to persuade people to adopt a better attitude to certain diseases and forms of treatment. It is probably valuable, but it is not adult education, as defined.

So I come back to my belief that the best kind of learning involves an interaction—this has been stressed by many people—between teacher and taught. The noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, in his able maiden speech referred to the successful course under the auspices of A.T.V. and Nottingham University. The only thing I would add to what has been said about this is that I understand the results were that 1,500 people paid the 10s. enrolment fee and another 1,500 paid for the handbook. This is perhaps a curious way of deciding upon the success of a course, but it is not so much below the cost which is paid for the more traditional type of class.

In conclusion, my Lords, I would express the hope that the Government will provide whatever small sum may be needed—and, relatively speaking, it is a small sum—in order that some centrally organised body, such as the National Institute of Adult Education, or any other body, may take a good hard look at what has been done in other countries, and, above all, do some long overdue research into the conditions in which adult education can most effectively be carried out.

5.39 p.m.

LORD ABERDARE

My Lords, I feel that we all owe a great debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, for this opportunity to debate the subject of adult education. He began his speech with a most graceful tribute to other noble Lords, both past and present, who had contributed much to the cause of adult education; but I am sure we all feel that he himself is deserving of inclusion in this category, as he has given a great deal of service to adult education in Scotland. The noble Lord introduced a debate on the same subject, as I remember, in March, 1960. I had the pleasure of taking part in that debate, and the one thing I remember about the occasion is the noble Earl who is now the Leader of the House recollecting some very pleasant experiences he had when he was a member of the Conservative Party.

I should also like to join with other noble Lords who have expressed their admiration of the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton. I hope that it is not presumptuous of me, being a recently new appearer at this Dispatch Box, to say how much I enjoyed listening to his speech, and how much we all hope he will address us on many future occasions.

I feel that this debate on adult education has rather completed a cycle of debates that we have had in this House on various aspects of education as a whole. We have now had debates on primary education, secondary education and further education. Last week we were debating education for management, and now this debate seems to round off the cycle. Since your Lordships' last debate on this subject, that initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, in 1960, we have had the publication of the Robbins Report, which has been referred to to-day. And I must say that I personally found the Appendix to that Report, which was criticised by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, most useful and helpful, for it summarises the different bodies involved in adult education and gives some useful facts and figures about them. The noble Lord, Lord Darwen, mentioned some of these bodies, but I think there is no harm in reminding ourselves of what these various agencies are.

There are the evening institutes run by the local education authorities, at which some 700,000 people over 21 were registered in 1963. There are the major establishments, the technical colleges and colleges of art, and other colleges, which may be providing further education courses during the day. It is estimated that there are some 200,000 enrolments in these colleges. There are the colleges of adult education, maintained or assisted by the local education authorities, of which 28 are running short residential courses.

Then there are the bodies of which we have perhaps heard most in this debate to-day, the so-called responsible bodies, which included the Workers' Educational Association, the Extra-Mural Departments of Universities, the Cornwall Adult Education Joint Committee, and the Welsh Council of Y.M.C.A.s. There are also the voluntary organisations, particularly referred to by my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood, in her interesting remarks, which included the subject of consumer education; and there are the residential colleges, of which there are seven in England and Wales, running courses of up to two years in length.

The other interesting thing, to me, which emerges from the Robbins Report, and which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Darwen, is the fact that there are, in broad terms, two different types of student who are making use of adult education. First, there are those who have been educated beyond the minimum school leaving age and who, for various reasons, want to continue their education or to learn subjects which they did not study at school. The significant thing about this category is that it accounts for the majority of students attending classes in adult education. Secondly, there are those mainly employed in manual or routine clerical occupations, who are in a minority as a whole yet form the majority in the long-term residential colleges. It seems to me likely that, as educational facilities improve, this tendency will increase; and whereas adult education organisations have done excellent work in the past in filling the deficiencies in the educational system, we now face a new situation in which they will have to provide more and more, for those who have already had a formal education up to the age of fifteen or later. It is significant in this connection that there is no reduction in demand. In fact, there is an increase, but it is of a different nature from that to which we were accustomed in the past.

Now I should like to come to the subject of Government grants to adult education. I do nor want to debate with the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, the subject of education as a whole. We have had plenty of opportunities in the past of differing in our views of what may or may not have been done in education, but I do not think that this is the time or the place to start a debate on that subject. I am sure we shall have plenty of opportunity on future occasions. Suffice it to say that those of us who sit on this side of the House could not possibly agree with her that the educational programme of the late Government was other than a great success. All of us are aware that there are difficulties, that there are shortages of teachers, and that we may still not have enough schools. But these are problems with which I have no doubt noble Lords opposite are now having to wrestle and scratch their heads about.

I should like new to say something about the Government grants to adult education. These are grants to those responsible bodies towards their teaching costs; grants to voluntary organisations towards their administrative expenses—not their teaching costs; and grants to five of the seven residential colleges. Of course, there always arise difficulties of priority when it comes to allocating money. However, it is worthy of notice that in ten years, from 1954–55 to 1964–65, the amount of money made available in grants to adult education increased by over double, from a figure of £390,000 to a figure of £34,000-odd, and that in the same period the number of full-time posts was increased from 254 to 311.

I am sure that none of us who are interested in adult education will ever think that enough money is devoted to it. Nevertheless, there are priorities, and all we can do is to press the present Government to increase their expenditure; and I am sure we shall look forward to hearing from the noble Lord who is to reply to-day that they are going to do so. I am as keen as anybody to increase these grants, and I must confess that I have a personal interest. I am President of the Welsh Council of Y.M.C.A.s, which is one of the responsible bodies. I will only say to the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, that after I spoke last, in March, 1960, our grant was increased from £700 to £1,000, and it has not been increased since—so perhaps he may take the hint.

There is an ever-increasing demand in Wales for adult education. The number of lectures constantly rises, and in the last year there were some 3,000 students, as against some 2,700 in the previous year. We have also commenced a new experiment by appointing a full-time organiser to work with discussion groups in industry. This experiment has had a remarkable response, and in the year 1963–64 the gentleman concerned made over 350 visits to the thirteen participating firms, and conducted an average of 70 group meetings each month. We were very grateful to the Carnegie Trust for a grant to get this work started, and although the grant has now come to an end I am glad to say that industry has been sufficiently impressed by the work done to meet the costs of continuing it. We are very grateful, too, to the Glamorgan Education Authority, who are also contributing. We also continue in Wales to run the college of Coleg y Fro at Rhoose, where the courses are mainly of a residential nature. This, too, is expanding, and we have plans for extensions to the college, but, once again, we are in need of increased financial support.

Several noble Lords mentioned the use of radio and television, and I am sure that we should all agree that in reappraising the whole programme of adult education it is particularly necessary to use modern methods to meet modern needs, and that radio and television are an outstanding example of what can be done in this way. Most of your Lordships spotlighted television but I think it is right that we should pay a tribute to what has been done in sound broadcasting towards adult education. For many years the B.B.C. has run a further education unit and has planned and produced adult education programmes. This activity still continues. The greater part of these programmes is now concentrated in what is called "Study Session", which is broadcast from 6.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. on five nights a week, and the audiences are estimated to vary from about 10,000 to 100,000 on different types of programmes.

I feel sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell will be interested, if she does not already know, that a new programme was started in October under the title "A Second Start"—the noble lady indicates that she does know, and I apologise—which is designed specially to encourage women teachers who have left the schools on marriage to keep in touch with what is going on educationally and to return to the schools in due course. I I am sure all your Lordships who have expressed an interest in the past in increasing the number of teachers and, in particular, in inducing women teachers to return when their family responsibilities allow, will agree that this is a useful initiative.

So far as television is concerned, both the I.T.A. and the B.B.C. have taken quick advantage of the Conservative Government's agreement, when it was in power, to allow them extra hours of broadcasting if they broadcast adult education programmes on an agreed formula. Both organisations have set up their committees to advise them on adult education, and I think it is encouraging to know that Sir John Fulton is chairman of both committees, thereby avoiding any duplication between them, and also that there is a regular exchange of information between their planning staffs, equally to avoid duplication.

On the I.T.A. the main net-work programme is "Sunday Session" on Sunday mornings, for which an audience survey has given an average weekly audience of some three-quarters-of-a-million and also revealed, interestingly enough, that nearly half of those had not availed themselves of any formal course of education since leaving school. Another regional project conducted by I.T.A., for which I think they deserve our warm congratulations, is a programme entitled "The Full Man", which was a session of twelve thirty-minute programmes on English Literature transmitted at a peak hour on Tuesdays.

The B.B.C. in the year 1963–64 conducted nine series of adult education programmes on television on Saturday and Sunday mornings, with some repeats on weekdays after 11 p.m. Most of them were supported by illustrated pamphlets, and one of them, "Learning Italian", by two pronounciation records. The B.B.C. also has had the advantage of the coming into existence of B.B.C.2, and has devoted a major proportion of peak time on Tuesday evenings mainly to adult education; but, of course, B.B.C.2 does not yet enjoy national coverage.

I should like, in conclusion, to mention two of the main problems that seem to me to face the use of television for adult education. The first difficulty is that of the available time. Although audiences for these programmes are substantial in absolute terms, they are relatively small, and no television station can really afford to broadcast the programmes too often in peak viewing hours. But, of course, it is in these peak viewing hours that most of the people who want to see adult education programmes want to look-in. I mentioned the programme "The Full Man", courageously put on by Southern Television, and the B.B.C. programmes on B.B.C.2; but even B.B.C.2 has to compete with B.B.C.1 and the independent programmes, and as in most homes there is only one television set, there may well be a considerable difference of opinion among the family as to who is going to see what; and I should imagine that the adult who wanted to see the adult education programme on B.B.C.2 might find it difficult to substantiate his claim.

I should like to mention, though, in this connection, a most interesting experiment conducted by the Islington librarian who made viewing facilities available in his reading rooms so that local adults who were interested in following an adult education programme could go there and look in on their own. This suggests to one's mind that this service would not only overcome the difficulty of competition in looking at the set, but would also enable further instruction and more personal guidance to be carried on at the same time.

This is the second problem that I would mention—this question of "follow-up", as it is called in educational programmes. The noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, spoke eloquently on this subject. He called it "T.V. plus" and stressed the great importance in any kind of adult education through television of having this little extra personal supervision and follow-through at the end of the programme. I think other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, also voiced their support to this view. I am sure that this can best be done by working through the existing adult education organisations. There is a tremendous job of organisation to be done, but one that will be well worth doing.

The noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, both mentioned the possibility of a fourth educational channel. I feel that we want to look at this suggestion most carefully. It has many attractions at first sight, but ii also has its difficulties. It is undoubtedly something that would be expensive to provide, and it would be a pity if a lot of money and effort were wasted with disappointing results. Such a channel would, of course, again run up against the difficulty of having to compete with other channels and would also perhaps be in difficulties over the follow-up unless this were carefully organised.

I would draw your Lordships' attention to a very good leading article on this subject in The Times Educational Supplement of November 20, drawing some attention to the difficulties that may arise and asking whether it might not be a better investment, from the point of view of money and effort, to concentrate on the development of closed circuit television, which certainly solves the problem of peak hours and also makes it easier to give this extra guidance and the follow-through which is important. The writer also goes on to suggest that there is further advantage in trying to develop a cheap and efficient way of producing, Video-tapes which would then be easily available at all times, both in schools and for adult education. Much is being done in ways, old and new, in this field, and we have heard an impressive list of speakers all urging that more should be done. It is therefore with great anticipation of hearing all the good things that the Government are going to do to help adult education that we look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Bowden.

6.0 p.m.

THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (LORD BOWDEN)

My Lords, I must begin, I am afraid, by disappointing you to this extent: much as we appreciate the importance of this work, much as we realise the necessity to expand it, we have not, I am afraid, formulated plans in detail. Although I hope to be able to answer some of the questions which have been propounded, it may well be that I shall have to ask your Lordships' indulgence because I do not know the answers to others. It has been, as many speakers have said, an extraordinarily interesting debate, and I had not realised how many noble Lords have themselves been personally associated with the movement of adult education at some time in their lives; some of them still are, and almost all the speakers who have preceded me this afternoon have played a not inconsiderable part in what by any standards is one of the most important parts of the whole educational system of this country. We owe a very great deal to the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, for initiating the debate and I would thank him for the extremely interesting background he gave and the description of the work he himself had been engaged in.

I should like, if I may, to interpolate at this point a few observations about the subject as a whole, many of which are prompted by my own experience in in the field of adult education and television and other things in America. In the first place, it is important to realise that American universities when first established in 1862 by the Morrow Act accepted three obligations as being equally important. They were the teaching of undergraduates, research, and what they generally call extension work. In other words, they are prepared to equate extension—by which they mean adult education—with undergraduate teaching. This, I think, should be a lesson to all of us. They began in the first place by realising, for example, that if agriculture was to be developed it was not only important to discover how to cure, let us say, boll weevils but to make sure that all the farmers understood the technique. From that day forward the American universities have played a very important rôle in this work, and they do so to this day.

I hope that somehow or other we shall be able to slant our own educational thinking on these lines. I must frankly confess that I think it is going to be difficult to do so, but I think it is extremely important that we should attempt it. The Americans are not only conscious that adult education has always been important, but well aware of the fact that it is getting more and more important as time goes on, and this for a whole variety of reasons, most particularly, I think, because they now realise, as we realise it here too, that what I can best call the useful half life of information which a man learns at university is quite short. This is another way of saying that information is accumulating at an extraordinarily rapid rate. It has been said many times, and I think truthfully, that the amount of knowledge in the world on any subject doubles about every ten or fifteen years. Alternatively, one might say a man must be re-educated after a similar time, otherwise half the subject matter will have been invented since he was at school. For this reason, adult education having a vocational slant is bound to become more and more important.

For example, the most spectacular case is the case of medicine. At this moment in two of the medical schools which I happen to know, Harvard and John Hopkins, the number of students in residence at any moment who are at the age of 30 or 40 or 50 having some sort of refresher course in the latest advances in medicine is about twice as great as the number of students in the ordinary medical course taking a first degree in medicine. Of course we have, as we all know, very intensive development of post-graduate medical courses in all our English medical schools, but I think it must be confessed that broadly the scale of our operations is very much less than that found to be necessary in the United States. I take medicine as an extreme case. Similarly, if we come to engineering we find that the number of people in residence at most of the technical universities in term time as undergraduates is not so great as the number of residents in the normal vacation. These men are taking refresher courses. We are doing this kind of thing on a relatively small scale, but I think that we shall have to increase our efforts to a larger scale in the not-too-distant future.

I discovered that this type of education—that is to say, refresher courses; courses which bring people up to date and introduce them to the latest development in their subjects: something that is, of course, difficult to define, very hard to organise, very diffuse and very hard to come to terms with—is now thought in America to be costing about one-third of the total educational bill. This is an order of magnitude different from anything we have here, and it makes me extremely anxious to look into the matter with very great urgency in this country to find out whether these figures are misleading and how great our own effort is to-day.

It is, of course, true that we in this country have a very great deal of adult education. We have run a great many courses, for example, in modern techniques in engineering and modern techniques in medicine. Many of these, as your Lordships know, are the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. But some are not. Some are organised by firms; some are organised by universities on their own; some done by people who club together and enjoy themselves. Precisely the same sort of thing happens everywhere. It is for this reason that reliable statistics are so hard to come by. I believe that this branch of the educational world, which in the United States, at least, is the most rapidly growing part of the whole, and already comparable in cost with any other part of it, is an aspect of the educational system which we must study very intensively. All I can tell your Lordships at this moment is that we are doing what we can to come to grips with it.

Several noble Lords have referred to the fact that there are at this moment schools of business to which people come in middle life and change the mainstream of their endeavour. These schools are, indeed, most important. I like to think of them as a very effective part of the adult education system, because not only do many of the people who come to them tend to be in their 30s or 40s, but quite often the people who engage in research are, similarly, elderly, or at least middle-aged.

I mentioned in this House, on the last occasion on which I addressed it, that we have been doing son- e work in Manchester on organisation of hospitals. I had the privilege of presenting for her doctorate a lady who has done a great deal of work and on the same day presenting her daughter and son-in-law for Bachelors degrees. It brought very much to mind the though that here in this lady, who had been educated years ago and forgotten everything she knew, was immense potential for further development, and her work was good. One must never underestimate the number of people in middle lire who are capable of educating themselves as they never had the opportunity of doing before.

We speak rather proudly of the growth of our universities; but it is important to remember that the people in middle age at this moment in this country went through the university system, or passed by the university system, at a time when the chance of education in it was perhaps 1 in 50 or so—it is perhaps now 1 in 20, or thereabouts. So many people were debarred from university education, by lack of space as much as anything, that there is no doubt at all of the immense potential in the population in middle life for further education, both pedactic and also in the field of research.

I think, too, that one may underestimate the fact that people who have lived a fairly full life, particularly, as noble Lords have said, women who have successfully brought up a family, are probably better equipped to engage in social work than younger people fresh from school who have matriculated more recently and are, perhaps, more familiar with the academic tests so frequently imposed by universities. I think it is also fair to say that our universities have sometimes been a little slow to appreciate the potential contribution which one can expect from people who, having lived their lives, are aware of the problems of social workers. I think, in fact, that not only in matters of vocational education, but also in matters of cultural education and in re-education we have to expect that the future will prove to demand developments such as have hardly been envisaged as yet.

I began just now by referring to the necessity for refresher courses in medicine and in engineering. I think one might go down to the other extreme and refer to the further education of workmen. As I have said to this House previously, workmen need to be educated many times in the course of their lifetime in order to cope with the changes in technique, in modern engineering, in modern science and in modern technology. As I said then, and I repeat, many of these problems are under active study, and particularly they pose considerable problems for the trade unions. But I think that those who are negotiating may be encouraged to know that this very afternoon, I believe for the first time in their long and distinguished history, the Inns of Court have called to the Bar men who are themselves qualified as practising accountants, and are now able, for the first time, to have dual qualification. If the Law is capable of moving in this way, perhaps the trade unions will find it less difficult than they had thought.

Now there are some remarks which have been made in the course of the debate this afternoon to which I should like briefly to refer. I was impressed by Lord Greenhill's remarks about the number of people who have themselves been active in teaching. My own contacts with the adult educational world have tended to be rather on the side of knowing people who have been taught. I like to remember, for example, the editor of the Guardian. Mr. Wadsworth, who was one of the distinguished products of the W.E.A., and I believe that as a youth he was one of the protégés of Archbishop Temple. I like to remember, too, that the present Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University left school on his fourteenth birthday, which was on the Thursday, and started work on the following Monday as a boy in an office. He was able to bring himself out of it by means of the W.E.A., went to Ruskin, read for the Bar and is now, as I say, the Vice-Chancellor of the University. I should like to think of people, of whom there are many, who owe their whole lives and their whole position. everything they are, to the opportunities which were given to them late in life by this quite extraordinary system of ours which we have been discussing this afternoon.

The noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, referred to the problems which were besetting the Newbattle Abbey College extension, with which he has had such a lot to do. I should like to assure him that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland fully supports the ambitions of himself and of the College and hopes to co-operate with the Governors in ensuring that the new extension will meet the needs of the College in modern accommodation, so that it will be able to carry on its important work.

I should like now to refer briefly to the general problems of finance, and in order that I may be sure of getting this matter right, I will refer to my note. First of all, I would say that the Robbins Committee strongly supported the claims of higher education, even if they did so only to the extent of three to four pages. Therefore it was the more regrettable that the last Government found themselves unable to extend their grants for activities in 1964–65 beyond those which had been achieved in 1963–64. This came as something of a blow to the responsible bodies, and we in this Government greatly hope now to see a continued development of adult education, along with the rest of the education service.

We are at this moment reviewing the building proposals of the residential colleges, and some expansion is also programmed for next year: starting dates are now under consideration. We also believe strongly that the frustration which was produced by some of the cuts last year was most unfortunate and regrettable, because it is clear that if adult education is to be developed in an orderly way the responsible bodies must be able to plan their future appointments of staff for a reasonable period ahead, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has this particular matter under consideration at the present moment.

I should like to refer to the most remarkable maiden speech which was made By the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, whom I think we all still think of, slightly misplaced in this House, as "the Radio Doctor" and who somehow seems to have escaped—I hope he will forgive me for saying this. We all knew him so well at one time, and it is impossible to think of him in anything other than his first guise. Now he comes, as it were, mysteriously associated with the I.T.V. We are extremely pleased to see him, and I congratulate him on his most careful speech, which outlined so clearly for us the problems which confront anyone who is trying to associate television as part of an omnibus service. As he rightly said, there is no doubt that television of itself is insufficient; but television combined with other things, will make it possible to produce an educational machine of immense importance, immense potential, and probably unlimited in its ultimate effect.

Here again, we in this country sadly lag behind the achievements of certain other countries, most notably America, where, as your Lordships know, there have been sunrise seminars for many years, and where it has been a source of great joy, as Lord Francis-Williams said, that lectures which were televised and ordinarily intended for a university audience have attracted the exceptional and enthusiastic support of people whom one might have thought incapable of understanding them, but who often have proved to he their most trenchant critics and the most critical of all the audiences available. The potential that television offers us is unlimited, but I feel strongly that its organisation as part of a system will be difficult and complex, and, I am afraid, may take some time. But we do have the example of the Americans before us, and many of them believe that if a programme which starts late at night in New York attracts a few thousand it is still worth putting out. They know that the Bing Crosby show will attract millions where this attracts hundreds. But they also realise that, small though the audience may be, it is much larger than can possibly be achieved from any ordinary university machinery in which people have to go to classrooms.

Furthermore, they have found by experience that the problem which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, mentioned about the difficulty of adults' having to get their children's permission to listen to the radio in the evening in the peak hours can be got over if the parents have to rise at the unearthly hour of six o'clock in the morning. This seems to be almost as good as having two sets in every bathroom. The contributions which can be made by the B.B.C. and the I.T.V will, I am sure, be made with a real sense of social purpose if the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, is able, as I hope he will be able, to devote himself to this for some time to come.

Several noble Lords have referred to the correspondence courses which have been run by Professor Wiltshire in Nottingham, and also by the I.T.V. in East Anglia, when many people participated in a quite extraordinarily interesting experiment. Beyond doubt it showed that a combination of television correspondence courses and perhaps closed circuit television, which is already used, has an almost unlimited potential. I believe it is important to make the observation that the demand for education at this moment in all spheres of the system is so intense and so insatiable that, unless we are able to exploit modern techniques, we shall never be able to satisfy it. The demand is created by technology and in large measure technology will meet it. I do not believe that one can even cope with the problems of the schools, unless something very remarkable happens, without the use of artificial aids of all kinds. It is essential that we realise that this is a perfectly proper process of applying modern methods to an ancient problem.

The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, referred to the importance of using television as a method for aiding consumer choice; and she may or may not know that next Saturday Keele University is running a one-day course, which is called "Deciding and Choosing" and which includes a session on consumer choice and the assessment of value. This is the kind of thing which is being done in the university for consumers—and apparently the total cost is 12s. 6d.; which includes lunch. So surely no potential consumer will be deterred from attending the course, except by the problem of distance. Beyond doubt adult education for consumers is important. Yet again it is true to say that the problems of choice are made difficult because of the inevitable ignorance of the ordinary members of the public of the niceties which determine the difference between the good and the not-so-good in highly specialised articles of commerce. This is a difficulty which did not beset our grandmothers, who could tell the difference between a good cloth and an indifferent cloth by the feel of it. You cannot do that any more. The problems are extremely vexatious, and the public need; to be protected and helped in its choice. Clearly, the problem posed by the advance of technology will have to be solved, as are many others, by the same technique which brought it about. Furthermore, adult education in this field will obviously be important so long as the housewife has the spending of the family budget. This, think, will be longer than most Members of this House are likely to be interested in the problem.

My noble friend Lord Charley, whom I was very glad to hear speak in his capacity as Chairman of the Association of University Teachers, very properly pointed out how important education is after the end of an ordinary university course. This is the point I was trying to make myself. I think that, beyond doubt, the Danes pioneered it, but other countries, too, most notably America, have developed the system. It is worth remarking that the original drive for the development of the mechanics institutes, as long ago as 1824, came about because of a craving on the part of ordinary men for the opportunity to learn about the scientific principles which underlay the crafts which they practised. This is one of the least appreciated and least sung stories in the whole educational world.

There was a distinguished American visitor who came to England at about the turn of the century, and, after inspecting the entire English education system, he remarked quite firmly that there were only two English academic institutions in which he was interested and which he thought really notable. One was the system of the great public schools; the other was the system of night schools where technical education was possible. He felt that these were far more remarkable in those days (this was sixty or seventy years ago) than anything that our English universities had to offer. So let us not underestimate the contribution which has been made to adult education for many a year by such institutes as were founded in Birkbeck, in Glasgow, and in various other places 140 years ago.

Lady Gaitskell's indictment of the educational system is one with which I find myself very much in agreement. But, of course, as we have been reminded, our problems are those of priorities, and the general sense that more needs to be done is very strongly with all of us. I was particularly interested to hear of the contribution which her husband made to the W.E.A. movement, and one can fairly say that he, like many another man, found that he gained as much as he gave to this remarkable movement.

My noble friend Lord Geddes of Epsom remarked that the B.B.C. and the I.T.A. should set up study groups to explore the service which an adult education can provide. I dare say that he and other noble Lords may already know that both the B.B.C. and the I.T.A. have already set up for their adult educational work advisory councils which are fully representative of those individuals and bodies who are expert in the subject; and I am sure that both these councils will take a note of the noble Lord's suggestion, as I myself have done.

Lord Francis-Williams's most impassioned speech impressed me very much. He, too, seemed aware of the importance of adult education for half a dozen different reasons. It provides opportunities for people to be educated for the first time; to learn something about the extraordinarily interesting world, which may have passed them by in their youth. It provides opportunities for them to refresh themselves and learn more about their speciality; and it provides, most emphatically, an opportunity for people to educate themselves for the 20th century in which they have to live. I can assure noble Lords that the Government are looking at it, as vigorously and as earnestly as we can. Furthermore, his observation that the local needs should be appreciated is acceptable to everybody. It has always been both the glory, and in many ways the greatest trial, of the English educational system that so much is left to the free wishes of local people who will never subject themselves freely to domination from Whitehall—and long may this happy state continue!

That something must be done to study, and perhaps to improve, the correspondence course colleges is clearly necessary. We have the matter under advisement, but I am afraid that we have not as yet got far with it. Your Lordships may remember that a couple of years ago a Bill was introduced in another place by Mr. Boyden. This was talked out, but it is a matter about which we are concerned; and it is anomalous, to say the least, that correspondence colleges should be the last bastion of private enterprise in the educational world. They have done extraordinarily good work, and I think they could do more. Furthermore, I think that they could learn with great advantage from the tremendous successes that have been achieved by other correspondence courses, particularly in America.

I was impressed (and I am afraid that I did not know this fact) by the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Geddes of Epsom, about the immense investment that trade unions are making in adult education. They, too, obviously understand how important it is for everyone to be up to date and capable of appreciating the world around him; and capable, furthermore, of understanding his job sufficiently well to be able to make an effective contribution himself.

I thought the summary of the statistics by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, was very useful, and it is clear that we have—or, shall I say, the educational movement has—very good friends on that side of the House, as well as on this. It would, I think, be quite misleading to give the impression that it is only the Labour movement that has benefited from the W.E.A. It is perhaps true to say that more members of this Party have had no other opportunities than those provided by the W.E.A., but it seems that it has been an instrument of enlightenment, rather than an instrument for the production of members of this particular organisation of ours.

My Lords, I began by saying that this has been an extremely interesting debate. I should like to repeat that we are exceedingly grateful, not only to Lord Greenhill but to other Members of the House, who have told us, as no one else could have done, their own interests and their own experience, and the sense that they have had of participation in a very informal, a very important, and a very much misunderstood part of the educational machine. I said that in other countries the subject is taken at least as seriously as we take it, and I have also said, and will repeat, that in some countries, most notably in America, adult education is the most rapidly growing part of the whole educational machine. Whether it will be true to say again, as it so often is, that in this country we follow behind America perhaps twenty years afterwards, remains to be seen. All I would say is that we, on this side of the House, and the Government, are extremely well aware of the importance of adult education. We realise that it is going to affect all our to-morrows; it is going to have a profound influence on every member of society, and there can be no subject to which the Government are giving more anxious attention.

LORD PEDDLE

My Lords, before my noble friend resumes his seat, may I seek some elucidation of one of the points he made? He made reference—and I am sure the House was glad to hear it—to the fact that it is the intention of the Government to give assistance to building programmes of residential colleges. But building programmes are not confined solely to residential colleges. I am reminded that the Minister in the last Government in August, 1963, said that owing to overriding needs the Government could not place adult educational projects in the major building plans for 1964–65. May I take it from the words of my noble friend that the Government's estimate of assistance to building projects will not be confined exclusively to residential colleges, but will extend to the many other plans that were presented to the last Government but rejected? Am I to take it that there is a reversal of the previous policy?

LORD BOWDEN

My Lords, I must, of course, be extremely careful here. I can simply tell my noble friend that the matter is being looked at again, and if he would care to give me notice of the question I should be very happy to consult with my right honourable friend and define the matter precisely. All I can say is that the matter is under consideration, and I have little doubt that, say, in the spring, or at some time around then, we shall be in a better posit ion than we now are to give a definite answer. But I will take the matter under consideration and let my noble friend have a written reply.

BARONESS SUMMERSKILL

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a question on a subject which has aroused my interest on behalf of the doctors? He rather emphasised the fact—I thought he was rather critical—that whereas in America many doctors were able to have a post-graduate course, in this country the position was really deplorable. May I ask him to interest himself in this matter, particularly because in this country the poor overworked doctor simply cannot have a locum? However much the doctor would like to do what the noble Lord suggests, he simply has no leisure, and his resources are so limited in these days that he just cannot pay for a very expensive locum. If the noble Lord could apply himself to that matter, it would repay the sick people of this country tremendously.

LORD BOWDEN

My Lords, again this is not a matter on which I can speak on behalf of my right honourable friend the Minister of Health, whose responsibility this is, but I will bring it to his attention and I will see what can be done. Refresher courses for professional people in all the disciplines with which we are concerned are, I think, extremely important. I tried to make this point as strongly as I could. I was informed when I was in America recently that they have now reached a point at which promotion of their ordinary teachers is not normally given unless they have taken a certain number of refresher courses. This puts the whole matter in quite a different context, and we shall have to see how far we are able to help in this and in other matters.

6.35 p.m.

LORD GREENHILL

My Lords, it is not my intention to prolong the debate. My purpose in rising is simply to convey my thanks to all those who have contributed to make this debate so extremely interesting and informative. If I may, without creating any invidious distinctions, I should like in particular, first of all, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, on his excellent maiden speech and on the views he expressed in the course of that speech, which give us who are interested in adult education even greater hope than we had.

Secondly, I should like to refer to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, about the contribution that the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust made when Newbattle Abbey was originally established. She will probably know quite well that the then Chairman, the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, is and has been from the very commencement of Newbattle the Chairman of Governors, and that he and another man and myself are the three surviving founder members of Newbattle Abbey College. So I would ask the noble Baroness, if I may, to put in a good word now and again, even for a contribution towards the building fund appeal, which we are now, as your Lordships know, in the process of launching. Although we are not asking for money, I think as a gesture that it would be extremely welcome.

I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on his virginal appearance at the Box, and without any political implications to say I hope he rises in the esteem of his own side to go to greater heights still. I well remember his 1960 intervention in the debate on adult education we had then. I well remember, also, his, if I may say so, enlightened references to the part that the B.B.C. could play in the advance of adult education. I thought his speech extremely impressive, and I see by his contribution this evening that he has not lost his old fervour. I wish him every success.

Finally, may I say in regard to the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, how delighted I am at his being in charge in your Lordships' House of education and science? Apart from his own personal achievements in his particular sphere of work, to have him here as the watchdog and, if you like, the stimulator of an interest in your Lordships' House in adult education is, I think, one of the greatest contributions that have recently been made in the furthering of education generally. I thank all of your Lordships for your part in this very important debate.

May I please repay one debt which I omitted in my somewhat incoherent original remarks? We ought, as a House, to pay our thanks to the American information service in London for their periodical known as Labour News, and particularly for the number of December, 1962, in which there is a special article headed "New Concepts of Education and Training", being the verbatim speech of W. Willard Wirtz, the United States Secretary of Labour at that time. It is an article well worth reading, and, in support of what the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, has said, it gives one an indication of the spirit in which education in the realm of labour is regarded in America.

I thank your Lordships very much for your patience. I am reminded that it is customary to withdraw my request for Papers. I confess I have not the remotest idea what those Papers are, or what they are supposed to mean; but, since it is the custom of the House to ask leave for that withdrawal, I have much pleasure in doing so.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.