EDUCATION AND PARENTAL RIGHTS

HL Deb 10 July 1974 vol 353 cc571-676

Debate resumed.

4.3 p.m.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD ELWYN-JONES)

My Lords, while there are some important matters upon which I find myself in disagreement with the noble Lord, Lord Blake, I am sure that the House will be grateful to him for introducing a Motion which will enable your Lordships to review our educational system and to have the review discussed by the several distinguished experts whose names appear in the list of speakers, for education, after all, is a very large national enterprise. There are 35,000 schools and 800 institutions of further and higher education, including 44 universities and 30 polytechnics. Nearly 7 per cent. of our gross national product goes to the educational service, and in Great Britain we spend on education over £4,000 million a year—indeed, more than we spend on Defence. We employ at all stages nearly half a million teachers.

The Motion before the House is in two parts. It refers first to the need to attain the highest standards in education, and secondly to parental rights. On standards, the Government's position is quite clear. It is that the need to attain the highest standards is indeed accepted, and not only for the ablest children but in order that all children should be able to realise their full potential—and I emphasise "all children", for this seems to us to be a crucial part of social justice. If to seek to achieve it is to be condemned as social engineering, we will bear the charge with such equanimity as we can command. We have a special obligation to our children and, if I may say so, to our grandchildren, which is perhaps a more appropriate target for those of my generation to be thinking of in the immediate term. We do not accept, however, that standards in education have been falling. On the contrary, all the measurements of achievement that are usually applied confirm that the trend has been upwards—and in some ways quite remarkably so.

However, there is no room for complacency for, as we all know, there is another side to the picture. The Government are well aware of the public anxiety that exists about indiscipline in schools and about truancy, on which the noble Lord, Lord Blake, spoke in suitably restrained terms. Over the past year or so information about this also has been drawn from various sources. Some of it has been analysed and some is still being investigated. The previous Government gave figures from the schools about violence. This was reported to be neither as frequent nor as widespread as had been thought. But problems of indiscipline undoubtedly do exist, often—and I think this must be faced—reflecting attitudes and behaviour that may, unhappily, be found in society outside the schools. As to truancy, it is hoped soon to publish the results of a Government investigation.

In the schools where these problems exist they add greatly to the professional cares of the hard-working professional staff, and it is right that, for this reason, attention should be drawn to them. But I venture to submit that they should not blind us to the very real, the very substantial and steadily improving standards which we believe are being achieved year by year over the school system as a whole, reflecting the greatest credit both on the pupils and on their teachers. It is the Government's policy that more and more children should be enabled to achieve their best.

As to standards achieved, perhaps we may first look at examinations. Not all children take them, but more do so than only a few years ago. The number of entries at G.C.E. level in 1972 from schools and colleges was 705,000 compared with 434,000 ten years before. At advanced level the increase was from 119,000 to 222,000—almost twice as many. There were also in 1972 over 311,000 entries for the Certificate of Secondary Education. This has extended to many more children the opportunity, when they leave school, of having helpful and recognised national qualifications.

Those are entry figures. If we look at G.C.E. successes we find that the percentage of the age group gaining two or more "A" levels went up in ten years from 7½ per cent. to 14 per cent. School leavers with five or more "O" levels rose from 15½ per cent. to 22½ per cent. One reason for this improved performance is that the transition from selective secondary education to comprehensive education had the excellent result of giving more children the chance to follow examination courses. The development in comprehensive schools is this: in 1963 there were 175, in 1973 there were 1,835. I shall say something about the value that the Government attach to them in a moment.

It is also significant that more young people stay on voluntarily beyond the minimum school leaving age which the law allows. That is a matter for gratification. There is a tendency to condemn this young generation as hopeless and lost; it is a gross defamation. If, for example, we take 17 year-olds we find that 26,000 were still in school in 1953, 57,000 in 1963, 110,000 in 1973—not bad. We hear a good deal about the small number of 15-year-olds who may not have welcomed the raising of the school leaving age to 16. It is sad that in the educational field there is a curious Gresham's Law operating which drives out the good news about our schools and highlights the bad. Noble Lords will see the subject in better perspective against the figures which I have given. Another reason for the improved performance of pupils was that there were more and better qualified teachers. The first point is a simple one of fact: there were 277,000 full-time teachers in the maintained schools in 1963, and 106,000 more than that ten years later, so that despite the large school population there is a much more favourable teacher/pupil ratio, and this again is an important improvement.

As the noble Lord said small classes are not a panacea—and, of course, we do not claim it to be—but excessively large classes are an intolerable burden on teacher and pupil alike, and it is right that we should have taken steps to reduce their number. The graduate proportion of the teaching force has been rising and there has also been a steady building up in the number of teachers taking in-service training courses—14,000 in 1972 compared with 6,000 ten years earlier. During the ten years of its life, the Schools Council has involved over 7,700 schools in all parts of England and Wales in work directed to the improvement of teaching, and 91 projects have been completed over a wide curricular field.

There have been remarkable achievements also in the colleges of further education. Between 1962 and 1972 the number of full-time students in England and Wales (including students spending part of their time in college and part in related employment) increased from 157,000 to 304,000 (nearly twice as much), the increase being mostly in advanced level courses. All told, there were 474,000 students in higher education in Great Britain in 1972 compared with 216,000 ten years before—more than twice as many. I am sorry to inflict so many statistics on the House, but I hope your Lordships may think it useful to have them as a basis for informed debate.

It is only fair to say that teachers, to whom great credit belongs for all these improvements, are themselves concerned to raise standards still further. Many have a particular concern for the children who, for various reasons, are achieving less than they might, and in devising courses adapted to the needs of those at all ages who find schoolwork difficult and, therefore, not entirely to their liking. The Government accept that the first year of the higher school-leaving age raised some special problems. That was to be expected and preparations were made for it. But taking the schools as a whole the change was brought about smoothly. In the Government's view, it would now be a wholly retrograde step to lower the school-leaving age to 15. There seems to be some support for the idea that pupils might leave school in June of their last year once the examination period is over. That would need legislation, but the Government have consulted the local authorities and the teachers' associations and their replies are being considered.

As to achieving higher standards, the Government accept, as a first responsibility of the education service, that we must continue to aim at higher standards, not indeed just for the few but for the many, whatever their background and whatever may be the experience of their early years. For despite the much increased resources which have been put into the education service, the average and less able children have received less benefit than the abler children, and those from better off or more caring homes. It is Government policy to try to rectify this imbalance, and we propose to progress along three lines. The first relates to the teaching force itself, the second to changes in the structure of the system, and the third to overcoming the disabilities from which some children unjustly suffer.

First, there is the need to increase the numbers and improve the professional competence of the teachers. Implicit in this is the belief that teachers, as the noble Lord who introduced the Motion said, must be fairly paid in relation to other income groups. We look forward to having 510,000 teachers by 1981, and we will vary the intake to the training colleges from year to year in the light of the net recruitment to the profession from all sources. During the years when the Labour Government will be in Office that will be carefully done, and that progress will, we trust, take place. This will enable us to reduce class sizes still further and enable more serving teachers to go on courses to raise their professional standards.

My Lords, as far as salaries are concerned, there have been three developments. First, following an initiative by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science the Burnham Committee has reached provisional agreement on the allocation of £10.8 million a year to teachers in areas of social deprivation. Secondly, the Pay Board has recommended substantial increases in London Weighting. These recommendations are being considered by the Burnham Committee.

Finally, and perhaps most important, because this will affect all teachers in Great Britain, we have set up a distinguished Committee, as the noble Lord, Lord Blake, mentioned, under Lord Houghton of Sowerby to examine the pay of teachers outside universities and to make recommendations. We are well aware of the depth of feeling among teachers about the fact that the relative position of their pay in recent years has suffered a serious decline, and we consider it right that their case should be independently assessed now. The Houghton Committee have been asked to look at pay structure as well as the levels of remuneration. It is the Government's wish that as a result of these various measures the salaries of teachers will in the future correspond more closely to the service which they render to the community.

The second line of advance is to reform the structure of the service, beginning at the beginning. By this I mean that because the early years are so crucially important for a child's subsequent education, particularly if his own background is impoverished, we must give high priority to establishing a national system of nursery education. Resources have already been allocated for the first stage of building programmes, and these, I am pleased to say, are going ahead. It is the basis of the Government's educational philosophy that all children should have the fullest opportunity that we can devise for discovering what kinds of schooling are most likely to give them what they need. We believe we shall enlarge this opportunity by early beginnings in nursery education, particularly in deprived areas, and later on by a full five-year course of secondary education for all.

But this in itself is not enough. Within the years of required schooling, children should have a range of alternative opportunities available to them. This, we think, they are most likely to get at comprehensive schools; and, by and large, these are proving their worth abundantly. They need not be of massive size to offer a full range of course. Neither need they be what the noble Lord, Lord Blake, described as "vast or factory-like". Some of them may be vast, but I do not accept the description that any of them are factory-like. However, it is clear that they must be large enough to cater for the full ability range and to offer more than a narrowly conceived academic curriculum. The commonest size proposed for new secondary schools is to accommodate between 750 and 900 pupils. This, it is thought, is not so large as to create insuperable tasks of organisation but it is large enough to provide for a variety of educational experience.

The third line of advance is to do more educationally for those who are most in need, and to do this we must be both more systematic and perhaps more sophisticated in our attempts to measure children's attainment. There is clearly much to learn about the techniques for doing this. Every good teacher, of course, has an idea what he should expect, or be able to expect, from his pupils at various stages, and he will measure their progress against those expectations. But as soon as we try to make comparisons between children in different circumstances so that judgments can be made about the allocation of educational resources, we find the need to have some substitute for, or a better guide than, teachers' impressions. The formal examinations tend to come too late for this, and in any event they are not taken by all children. Some work has already been done—for example, on reading ability—and the Education Department is exploring what scope there may be for further developments.

My Lords, so much for standards. I now turn (and briefly, as I have already taken a good deal of your Lordships' time) to the subject of parental rights, with which my noble friend Lady Birk will be dealing at the end of the debate in the light of the matters which will be raised during the course of it. First, may I remind noble Lords of what the law says on this subject, since the position appears sometimes to be misunderstood. Section 76 of the Education Act of 1944 reads as follows: In the exercise and performance of all powers and duties conferred and imposed on them by this Act the Secretary of State and local education authorities shall have regard to the general principle that, so far as is compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and training and the avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure, pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. The courts have established that Section 76 does not confer any rights on parents, or impose any specific duties on the Secretary of State or the local education authorities. It merely lays down a general principle to which he and they must have regard along with other relevant considerations in each particular case. It will be obvious what some of the other relevant considerations will be. Local authorities cannot over-provide school buildings and teachers in order to provide a wider choice for parents. Choices must be made, and can only reasonably be made, within what it is economical and practicable for the authorities to offer from public funds.

Under a selective system, many parents find their choice confined to secondary modern schools, whose educational aims and resources are limited. We firmly reject the notion that a child should be selected at the age of eleven for a role in his later life, and that he should receive a narrow education to fit him for this. In a comprehensive system there is a genuine range of options, not only for the local education authorities, as the Government's circular made plain, but also for the, pupils themselves. Circular 4/74, which has been criticised, clearly stated some of the forms of organisation of secondary schools that might be chosen, but specifically left the choice to the local authorities in the light of conditions and resources in each area. The Secretary of State, the circular said, regards these considerations as a proper matter for individual local education authorities, after due consultation with local interests, always subject to the overriding need to eliminate all forms of selection". So far as the pupils are concerned, it is now usual to have a largely common curriculum in the first two years, followed by choices in the third year for the main secondary course, developed further in the fourth and fifth years, and culminating in the sixth form on the basis of results achieved and preferences more clearly realised. There is also opportunity, while still at school, to link up with vocational courses at colleges of further education, and also to have experience of actual working conditions in various types of employment. In all this there is genuine and open-ended choice, for the student rather than for the parents, who are nevertheless brought into consultation at each stage.

My Lords, there are parental obligations as well as parental rights, and one of the more important of these is to encourage their children through the years of education. Section 36 of the 1944 Act states in terms: It shall be the duty of the parent of every child of compulsory school age to cause him to receive full-time education. It is important, perhaps, that that should be more widely known and promulgated; and the following section spells out the consequences of a failure to do so. But, important as legal conformity is in the face of truancy, more than that is needed if we arc to succeed in raising educational standards still higher and across the board. It is the right of all children, clearly intended by the legislation of thirty years ago—and it is reassuring to see that the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, is to enlighten us upon some of these matters in the course of the day—to progress as far as their talents will take them. The changes now being brought about in the schools will, we believe, bring that reality closer, and they ought for that reason to secure the sympathetic support of all parents. I strongly applaud the notion, which has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Blake, that parents should identify closely with the work of the schools, and there are many ways in which this can be done in consultation with the teachers.

My Lords, a plea has been entered on behalf of the independent schools. They cater for a few hunderd thousand children, whose interests must of course be considered; and at the end of the debate my noble friend Lady Birk will be dealing with this aspect of the matter with her usual competence and cheerfulness, if she will permit me to say so. My principal concern, however, has been with the millions who attend the maintained schools, and I make no apology for having devoted most of my speech up to this point to them; and the schools and the teachers who are educating them deserve commendation for continuing their efforts so well in the face of difficulties, which include the severe economies which were imposed by the previous Administration. The noble Lord touched upon the financial problems of the universities. I accept that they, too, have suffered severe cuts at the hands of our predecessors, and I regret that because of the economic situation we have had to reaffirm them.

As was said at the opening of the debate, there is no room for alarm in surveying the educational scene. Despite the restrictions on what we should like to do, our educational system offers unprecedented opportunities for the young, whose formal education may now cover 20 years out of a lifetime. It offers variety and, I submit, rising standards, and we must not fall victim to those who undervalue and disparage it. Instead we must proclaim the achievement of our educators and we must all—Government, Parliament, local authorities, parents themselves—help them as much as we possibly can.

4.31 p.m.

LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY

My Lords, your Lordships will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blake, on at least two counts—first, for raising this subject in your Lordships' House to-day and for thus encouraging the long and notable list of speakers whom we are to hear. I should like to say a particular word of welcome to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, who is to make his maiden speech. We look forward very much to hearing him and, as one who was associated in some way with the World Council of Churches during the period when he did such very good work there, I particularly look forward to his speech. Secondly, we must be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blake, for an opening speech of great wisdom and moderation. I hope that the noble Lord will not take it amiss if I do not follow him on many of the points which he is putting forward, because somewhere quite a distance behind the charming and wise facade of the ex-student of Christchurch I detect the shadowy figure of the ex-graduate of Christchurch, Mr. Norman St. John Stevas, and the possibility that at the next Election the question not so much of parents' rights but of parents' choice may become a Conservative battle cry.

My Lords, I should like today, shortly but I hope quite collectedly, to examine what the various choices which we are invited to consider and to battle for really amount to and what are the real choices which we can give to parents and how we should concentrate on them. The first freedom of choice in a non-selective system—and it is going to be one of the planks in the Conservative platform that they will offer us an alternative to the all-through comprehensive system—is the freedom not to send a child to a grammar school if he or she qualifies for one. That is not a very great freedom. If a child does not pass the 11-plus, he cannot be sent to a grammar school anyway, so there is no choice. If he does pass the 11-plus, the child can go to a grammar school, and probably will do so. So the real choice which is being offered is the freedom not to go to a grammar school if one passes the 11-plus.

Secondly, there is the freedom to choose between a single-sex or a coeducational school. I think that this is a valuable freedom in its way, but the number of people who have this opportunity is not very great since the number of schools which are within reach of most parents is very limited indeed and the areas where there is a choice of this kind are few.

Thirdly, there is the freedom to choose a denominational school. Personally, as a firmly believing Christian, I am not very much in favour of denominational schools. I rather go along with Dean Inge who said that we treat Christianity in education as inoculation—we give people a small dose of it in youth so that they shall never catch it seriously when they are grown up. However, that is a personal opinion and I think that parents should have as much right as possible to send their children to denominational schools if they wish to do so. But here again, the freedom does not extend in practice to all that many people because of the limitation of the number of schools of this type.

Of course, there is also the situation that the building of comprehensive schools and the production of the comprehensive system, as long as it does not lead to the building of enormous schools, thus very seriously restricting the number of schools, does not in any way restrict the choice in either the field of co-educational or single-sex schools or of denominational or non-demoninational schools. It is true that, when everybody believed that comprehensive schools had to be enormous in order to succeed, that was the case because of the narrowing of the number of schools, but I was delighted to hear what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor had to say about the present feeling about the building of comprehensive schools. It is also true that the adaptation of old schools and old systems can frequently produce units which are even smaller and which are viable with the help of the higher school-leaving age and of sixth form colleges and arrangements with colleges of further education and so on.

As I say, these freedoms are all basically governed by circumstances which can be more or less manipulated, but usually less. In a remote country area there is often no choice at all between schools, and that applies to a large number of children. The resources available—or any resources conceivably available in a sane society—could only produce one school. In a city area parental choice between five or six schools, if well administered, can end up with over 70 per cent. of parents getting their first choice school and over 90 per cent. getting their first or second choice. Anything more ambitious than this is prob-bably totally impracticable, not just within our present system of education, but in any conceivable system of education this side of Utopia.

There will be talk about voucher systems. I sincerely hope that some noble Lords will speak to-day about voucher systems. I think they can possibly work. There was at least one interesting experiment in the United States along these lines. However, I speak only of voucher systems which work without supplementary payment. Voucher systems which work with supplementary payment seem to me to be an absolute guarantee of a system which would more firmly stratify society than anything we have at present.

The fourth freedom which at present either exists or can exist in an open society is the freedom for the parents to opt out of the State system. This can take one of two different forms: First, there are the genuinely charitable schools like Christ's Hospital, for which we must all have an immense admiration, and, secondly, there are the schools in the independent sector which, although they may have been founded as charitable foundations, no longer perform that function at all. I believe that these schools should be made to look at the purposes for which they were originally founded and to do something about the matter.

This second option—the main independent system—is of course the more normal. It is an option which is open to the small minority who can afford to opt out of the State system into the fee-paying schools. I and my Party believe that they have a right to do so. I do so myself and I admit it. I believe that they and I should have that right. But that right is only important as a matter of principle. As the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor pointed out, it is very marginal to the whole question of education in this country. It is a marginal right that we are talking about, another, a fourth, marginal parents' choice. We are told that more children than ever are going to these schools. But, looking around the economic scene, I do not believe that that will last for very long.

These then are the freedoms: the freedom of the parents of a clever child not to send their child to a grammar school; the freedom to choose a single-sex or denominational school in such areas as that freedom exists because there is choice; and the freedom to choose independent schools. All, I firmly believe, to be defended so far as possible, but all absolutely marginal to the real educational problem in this country. What about the real freedoms? What about the real parental rights as opposed to parental choice? I am delighted that the Motion refers to parental rights and not to parental choice—which is what we are hearing more of.

I should like to digress here if I may for a moment from the broad argument that I am deploying to remind your Lordships of the necessity of bearing in our minds the difficulty of keeping the appropriate balance between parents' rights and children's rights. The general principle in a free democratic society is that we allow people to decide for themselves most things in life—including, thanks to your Lordships, whether or not to wear seat belts. However, we make exceptions in the case of people who we regard as being incapable of making a meaningful choice, such as people in mental hospitals or people under a certain age—and that covers most children. The age, incidentally, is entirely arbitrary as everyone knows, and is merely a method to average out children's abilities to make decisions for themselves. Under that age society normally gives power to the parents or, if you like, parents retain the power and do not give it to society. But even here in many cases—and it is important that we remember this fact—the State claims power to protect children from the parents.

There are plenty of examples of this practice, the most obvious one is to do with the child's safety—such as putting children into care or ordering blood transfusions against a parent's religious beliefs. We also care for morals. It is a criminal offence knowingly to allow your child under 16 to have sexual intercourse even if your cultural or religious background should contain no objection. We also interfere with parents' rights in the education of children in the broad and the narrow sense. In the broad sense, for instance, if I see a good film which I think my children ought to see and it has an "X" certificate, I am not allowed by the law to take them to it—something which, incidentally, I bitterly resent. In the narrow sense of education, we interfere all the time with parents' rights. Children have to go to school, and in very few cases have children's parents been able to persuade the courts that they can educate their children at home. Basically, we say that they have to go to school. Secondly, for economic reasons most of them have to go to one of two or three schools. In many cases, they have no choice at all because there is only one school to go to. Thirdly, parents have no choice in what is learned except the power of withdrawal from religious classes.

I am not saying that all these things are bad or that they are good, but I am merely trying to puncture the myth which is prevalent in some quarters that society as a whole allows or grants to parents very wide-ranging rights over their children. In case after case and over a great deal of a child's life it enforces the rights of society over the parents for better or worse, for good or evil. That is a fact under Conservative Governments or under Labour Governments, as indeed it was under Liberal Governments and will be so again. We are doing nothing new if as a society, through our elected representatives at local or national level, we decide that one form of education, however uniform it may appear, gives more diversity of education to children than any other form. That is the freedom which so many of us believe that comprehensive education gives; the freedom to study at the same time Latin and cooking, or what have you, and not to be classed as academic or non-academic. It is this freedom which my Party has firmly supported and it has (if I may say so) supported it before the Labour Party did.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blake, when he says that we are taking a gamble with an educational system and with the lives of children if we enforce this altogether. I believe that the case for comprehensive education is proven and I welcome the independent survey which will be undertaken under the aegis of Mr. Stevas, because I believe it will come out with answers that I will welcome. That is the first freedom, the freedom to give children the maximum choice of their education.

The second important freedom which we can expand and are expanding, is the freedom for all parents to influence their children's education. We want parent power. I was delighted to hear the suggestions made by the noble Lord. Lord Blake, about the far greater representation of parents on governing bodies and managing bodies. Over the last two years, my Party has been conducting a local campaign in this matter in many parts of the country and it has borne much fruit. I was slightly disappointed that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor took that point up with some slight delicacy and appeared actually not to promise us much in real encouragement of parental power. A rather vague kind of reference to identification was all that we had. This is important and much more important than the power to choose between schools or the power to opt out of the system. Incidentally, that gives no parental power at all. The independent sector will be the last home of the autocratic headmaster for a very long time. The power to influence schools and the place where your children are brought up, the power of a community over its schools working through parents and teachers, and indeed through the students themselves, is very important, and I hope that the moves towards it in society to-day will rapidly become stronger.

The cause of education is not advanced by shouting slogans. The cause of education is not even much advanced by legislation. We have not had a serious piece of educational legislation since the Act of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden. Yet, in that time, education has changed out of all recognition throughout the country. It is a question less of what we do in these Houses as of what society and teachers learn to believe. These are the important changes. I think that it is important that we should examine the areas where we can expand freedom; although a case can be made out with a catchword of more parental choice, it, in fact, conceals something rather empty underneath.

The views of my Party on educational legislation are possibly of more than academic interest these days, and I have tried to outline the way in which my Party as a whole has approached this problem: why we are in favour of comprehensive education and will do our best to support it in all circumstances; why we will not vote in favour of the abolition of the independent sector, or of anybody's right in the last resort, if they can exercise it, to choose more diversity than the State system as such can offer them.

I think this is a very important question that we are discussing this afternoon, and it is very important that we should not tie ourselves down too much to the battle cries of Parliamentary and Party warfare. We should instead work out a system of diversity which will permit the maximum freedom of choice for children and the maximum exercise of parental and society's influence on the schools of this country. If we do that, we shall not be doing badly.

4.50 p.m.

LORD BUTLER OF SAFFRON WALDEN

My Lords, I am sure we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Blake. The quotation he made from Disraeli was put by myself at the top of the White Paper on educational reform 31 years ago, in 1943. Therefore, my noble friend is at last catching up, and we are all agreed that it was quite a good and sensible, although perhaps rather trite, quotation. I have had a lifetime's interest in education, which I am afraid latterly has kept me away from this House—at any rate, it has prevented my speaking very often in it, because I am really very busy where I am, still sticking to education at a somewhat advanced age! I must explain to the noble Baroness that those duties may take me away before the end of the debate, which of course is very rude. If that is so, I hope she will excuse me. It will depend upon the time factor, and so I shall not delay your Lordships too long now. I was very impressed by what I might describe as the treatise of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. I am very glad that under previous Governments there has, as he showed in his dated figures, been a considerable improvement in standards, in G.C.E.'s and in other ways. The noble and learned Lord also mentioned the staggering figure of £4,000 million expenditure and 7 per cent. of the gross national product which is being spent on education.

The first question I want to ask the Minister, through the noble Baroness, is this: is there really enough money to do everything that is necessary in education? When I was at the Ministry, that was my main problem and I believe it has been the main problem for every Education Minister since. What, in fact, are the priorities and what is to suffer?—because I do not believe that the Minister has the money to put through in toto the State comprehensive scheme which he has advertised to be his intention. If he has the money, perhaps the noble Baroness will reassure us.

I was pleased about the point raised by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor himself, when he declared from the side of the Woolsack, where he so tactfully stood, that we have enough money to fulfil the nursery school programme. I hope that that will also be confirmed at the end of the debate, because I was obliged to tell my right honourable friend, Mrs. Thatcher, that every detail and every comma of her Statement on nursery, schools is included verbatim in the Education Act 1944. There is not a word that is new; everything is laid down in that Act for the development of nursery education, and I personally think it is a shame that so many Governments since 1944–30 years now—have not so far carried out the programme. I was thankful to hear the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor say to-day on behalf of the Government that the programme will be carried through, because I believe that nursery education is of particular importance in our national life, including as it does the care of the young and the beginning of life for the young person. If the nursery education scheme is to go through. I for one shall be very gratified by the result of this debate.

What is happening, of course, is that another reform which H. A. L. Fisher, who was by no means a second-class sort of fellow, brought in in 1918 and which I repeated in the Act of 1944—namely, continued education for adolescents on leaving school—has never been carried out by any Government; nor has any attempt been made to carry out the Rugby experiment, which is really the only one ever made under the Fisher Act or under my Act. I re-enacted the Fisher proposals and I am relieved to hear from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor certain better figures concerning further education. If I were to say that a new Act was in any way necessary, it would be to deal with the adolescents. Personally, I do not believe that a new Education Act is necessary. I believe that this Act, as drafted—not by myself but by Sir Granville Ram, the famous lawyer—can do anything. I therefore believe that a little more attention should be paid to adolescents on leaving school and on release from industry, because it seems to me there is a gap there in the educational system.

I have not very much to say about higher education, except that I am not quite as complacement as my noble friend, Lord Blake. I do not believe that the University of Cambridge has ever been shorter of funds or in bigger financial straits than it is at the present time. It is quite impossible to do any new development, and it is also impossible to carry out a good many programmes. I will not delay your Lordships on that point, however, because the situation is not entirely due to this present Government but has been building up. This shortage of money for the universities is very serious.

I am rather distressed about one point. I am grateful to the Government for improving the student grants—that was absolutely vital—but I cannot understand why the Government and the University Grants Committee have decided to abolish the Oxford and Cambridge differential. The original grants were as follows: London University—which is always very well treated—£520 a year per undergraduate; Oxford and Cambridge, £520 a year; and elsewhere £485. The new grants are as follows: London gets a large advance to £665, and Cambridge is reduced to the level of all the other universities.

I am not talking here as a snob who happens to be at Oxford or Cambridge, nor am I talking about an archaic vestige arising from more elaborate arrangements made previously. What I am saying is that the local authority rates paid by the colleges in respect of their student accommodation are met at Oxford and Cambridge out of accommodation charges paid by the students from their maintenance grants, whereas in other universities—and I am Chancellor of two of them (Sheffield and Essex) so I can speak from knowledge of other universities—the entire rate burden for the halls of residence is met by the U.G.C. grant. In the same way the kitchen and accommodation arrangements in other universities are met by a U.G.C. grant and at Oxford and Cambridge by the students themselves. So I really fail to see why the differential should be taken away from Oxford and Cambridge, when there are such good reasons for its being kept because of the completely different payments which the students have to make.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, will the noble Lord forgive me for interrupting? The point is a very interesting one. Is it not within the power of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge to remedy this themselves?

LORD BUTLER OF SAFFRON WALDEN

No, my Lords, I am afraid it is entirely within the power of the University Grants Committee under moneys provided by the Government.

LORD ANNAN

My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that it would be possible at Oxford and Cambridge to use the money endowed for scholarships and exhibitions, which was originally given by pious benefactors to help poor students, to supplement the means of those students who are now in need for one reason or another, instead of giving this money, as is done at present, for a splendid prize for those who do well in examinations?

LORD BUTLER of SAFFRON WALDEN

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord, who has spent a lot of his time in Cambridge, knows perfectly well that both his late College where he was Provost and my own College where I am Master, and any other college, would look after poorer students. I can give him an assurance on that point. I think he shows a little audacity in rising from his place when it has been decided that the London students shall get £665 and Cambridge students will get only £605. I consider that the expenses at Oxford and Cambridge are greater than those in London. I hope that is a sufficient answer to the noble Lord. I do not want to delay the House further on that point, because I want to get on to some of the points which were raised by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and by others in the debate.

The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor referred to Section 76. I drafted that section myself and, if I may say so, the Lord Chancellor read it out correctly, without any mistakes. Section 76 of the Education Act is much quoted to-day. It is perfectly true that it was very carefully drafted, because in my opinion it must be said, if one speaks honestly on this matter, that you cannot absolutely assure to every parent in the country exactly the education he wants for his child owing very often to circumstances of where the parents live, which authority they may be in, to what school they may have proximity and so forth. Therefore the words were brought out, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor quoted so carefully, that we had to have regard to the parent's wishes. That is as far as any legislation can possibly go.

The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was also perfectly right to say that the parents have an obligation; namely, to send their children to school, and that they will get into trouble if they do not do so. The origin of Section 76 was rather different from what some people imagine. It originated in the first place out of what was known as the religious settlement of the Act of 1944, which took me three years to negotiate. The object of that settlement and of Section 76 was to give to Roman Catholic and Anglican parents a choice of school. This was done by providing aided schools and special Roman Catholic schools where the tenets of the particular faith could be taught, and where the parents would therefore not be offended. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, on the subject of religious education. It is of the utmost importance for young children to be taught the tenets of the faith when they are young. They can then make up their minds later what their decision about their own lives is going to be.

I have heard from many parents how grateful they are for the religious provisions of the 1944 Act. I do not believe that there is any strong movement in the country to overturn them—at least, I hope not. At any rate, that part of Section 76 is being made more complicated by the introduction of comprehensive schools. On the lay side, the non-religious side, of Section 76, it will be much more difficult to give parents a real freedom of choice if a State system of comprehensive education is introduced. It will be easier if the matter is left to local education authorities. It will be easier for parents to move nearer a school which suits them, and if the noble Baroness could give me any assurance that her words in regard to local authorities have any meaning in that respect it will help me in interpreting that Act and Section 76 of it.

I attach the greatest importance to preserving the independence of our schools and the right of parents to choose the education for the children that they desire. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights pledged its signatories (which includes this country) to undertake to have respect for the liberty of the parents to choose for their children schools other than those established by the public authorities, and to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions. Recently, figures have been given by the UNESCO World Survey of Education, volume 5, 1971, which shows the enormous degree of independent schools there are in other countries. It is said that some 20 per cent. of children in France have that advantage. In Denmark, the figure is 6 per cent. In Norway, the figure is 3.8 per cent. which is about the same as ours; that is, between 2 per cent. and 3 per cent. If you take countries such as Australia, 22 per cent. of children are in independent fee-paying secondary schools. In Canada, it is about 3 per cent.; in New Zealand, some 15 per cent.; and in the United States of America, some 11 per cent. So we are in good company, although the proportion of our children in independent schools is usually grossly exaggerated in comparison to the vast number in the State system. Therefore, it is in the State system that one should particularly take an interest.

In the White Paper of 1943 (which introduced the Education Act of 1944) I purposely included a sentence which foresaw, that three types of education, grammar, modern and technical, could be established under one roof. That did not happen when the Act was first brought in, but although the Act does not specify these different types of education, owing to the Norwood and Spens Reports, for some years education was divided up into these different sections. This has proved unpopular and parents object to the examination at 11 years of age. Therefore I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, that the comprehensive system has come to stay. I was very relieved by the Lord Chancellor's mention of size. I have been round many comprehensive schools to keep myself in training for education, because I like to feel I am athletic and up to date. I regard the Holland Park School as far too big; I regard the Wandsworth School as one of the best in the country. It is a comprehensive school with a fine sixth form. I know of many others which are excellent. What the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said this afternoon is most important: if the number of pupils could be kept to between 700 and 800 it would make a great deal of difference to the attitude of people to comprehensive schools.

I have been to comprehensive schools where the clattering down the passage of the children, the rushing out of the classrooms of the teachers, the con-cidence of these two streams—like the Rhone and the Saone quoted by the Earl of Chatham in this House—have made such a terrific rush and noise that it is impossible to think of education at all. Therefore, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has done us a great service in saying that there is a belief that in the new development the schools will be smaller. Fortunately the State system is producing better education as we go on. It should be this competition which the public schools should face rather than their own destruction.

I do not want to keep your Lordships too long, but we must not forget the direct grant schools. The withdrawal of the grant will not mean the abolition of these schools. If the Government think so they are making a mistake. The majority of the direct grant schools will reluctantly be forced to become fully independent and thus the gap between independent and maintained schools will be widened. That is not a great reform. If the grant goes, an important area of parental choice goes, because with a system of graded tuition fees no parent with a moderately able child is prevented from choosing a direct grant school. Thirdly, in many areas comprehensive schools exist happily alongside direct grant schools. I am thinking particularly of the Bristol area which I have visited. In the Bristol area the schools are altogether different and varied in type and work very happily together. For example, if a comprehensive child does not find the sixth form sufficient to get "A" Levels to go to university, he can be moved over to a sixth form college. The Bristol experiment is working extremely happily. I do not want the direct grant side of it reduced or destroyed.

The direct grant schools play an important part in meeting the problem of boarding education. This was brought out in The limes on March 5 and 13 which claimed that one Serviceman's child in three at the boarding schools that they provide is the son or daughter of a non-commissioned officer. I believe that boarding education must not be forgotten in a debate on education. When I read the report in The Times of the education debate in another place on July 3, I noted that the sub-editor put the following heading: "Improvement in academic standards linked to comprehensive organisation". That is precisely what we want to see.

I must give an example from my own college, which is the largest in either Oxford or Cambridge, in which we have about a thousand people. We are entirely open to merit; there is no "old boy" network left, which is very sad. The boat on the river suffers enormously from this. We no longer choose scholars who are necessarily good "oars"; and we disappoint many parents who are not of the highest intellectual ability by not taking their sons. We are now beginning, I am glad to say, to get scholars from comprehensive schools. I only wish we could get more. What I want to stress is that if you are going to have a comprehensive education, as I mentioned, like Wandsworth, you must have the academic background given by the grammar school which was previously amalgamated with it. Then you will have a chance of a sixth form which can really do some good and which will bring a good result in the final examinations.

I will conclude by wishing the Minister well. I do not entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Blake, that education need always be controversial. When I brought my proposals to Winston Churchill, he reminded me of the Act of 1902. He said he had never enjoyed a controversy more. It was the most controversial Bill and Lord Balfour had to take charge of the Bill himself. The Minister was not regarded as competent to do it, so the Prime Minister came in and took over the Bill. In my case, and Fisher's case, we were luckier. I was helped by a very strong Labour assistant, Chuter Ede—whose Memoirs I hope we may shortly be able to read, when they are released, because they will be very revealing about that period. I still hope and think that we can make a lot of co-operation in education, and I hope this debate will help to do so. But we shall certainly not do so, if I may say so quite bluntly, if speeches are made like Mr. Hattersley's to the Preparatory Schools Association, a poor and rather small body, about the complete destruction of independent schools. I am glad to say that the present Minister appears to have avoided that rather stupid mistake, because I do not think that independent schools will be destroyed. There are 3,500 more boys in public schools this year than last, and 5,900 more boys in preparatory schools. I do not want them to go on for ever without merging in some way with the public system. I did my best with the Report which I published during my period as Minister to bring them together with the public system. I was trying to do that as a governor at Felstead, and succeeded fairly well in bringing in people from the Essex education authority. I believe in all these things myself, but they will take time to come, and they must be looked forward to.

What I should like to conclude by saying is that if education can be made a great national issue it will be something like the words Thomas Carlyle said in Sartor Resort us about the object of education. It is not something to make a social society; it is to bring out the best in a child. He said: To each is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment of fortune. To each by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum of capability. But the hardest problem were ever the first, to find by study of yourself and what ground you stand on, what your combined inward and outward capability is. For also each young soul is all budding with capabilities and we see not yet which is the true and main one. That, my Lords, is the object of education.

5.4 p.m.

BARONESS BIRK

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, as he was kind enough to tell me he probably would not be here later to hear the reply, I wonder whether I might put just one point to him on one of the many valuable points he made. He was on a crucial point when he put the straight question: Are there enough money and resources to put through the comprehensive and nursery schools programmes? May I say to him that of course in the situation in which we are at the moment it would be quite wrong for me to say—and certainly my right honourable friend has never said so—that there are enough resources. There are never enough resources for education. But in the circular my right honourable friend quite clearly spells out that, in spite of lack of resources, he is convinced that authorities and voluntary school governors can expedite the transformation of many existing schools. Thus, one does not need to wait on new buildings. I hope the noble Lord will also agree how important it is to embark on the nursery school programme, starting right at the bottom. Moreover, as a great educational reformer himself I am sure he will agree with me that you do not wait until you have every penny or new penny needed in your purse before you start on educational reform.

5.16

THE LORD BISHOP OF MANCHESTER

My Lords, I am grateful for the kind words of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, and I ask the indulgence of your Lordships for a maiden speech in which the fallibility both of the speaker and of the parent is likely to be evident. "Parental choice in education" is a phrase likely to provoke some cynicism in a society where such choice has so often been determined by sheer financial capacity. Nevertheless, recent events have shown that parents who have no such financial options before them are no less concerned for the standards of their children's education. This is surely a healthy sign and one which demands the encouraging attention of Her Majesty's Government.

Briefly, it seems that the main causes of discontent are three: first, that the place of residence should matter so greatly so far as variation in quality of education is concerned even within the comprehensive system; secondly, that conditions within the teaching profession seem to necessitate the frequent removal of teachers from one school and from one area to another, so that the continuity and stability required by children for their proper education has become hard to find; thirdly, and most important of all, that education has become so much of a political, not to say an ideological, issue that its actual content often seems to have fallen into the background as a rather minor consideration. Of any such debasement of the intellectual and spiritual currency ordinary people and their children sooner or later become aware. There used to be an adage: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." Perhaps this should now be further developed to read:" Those who can, teach: those who can't, administer."

It may be said that for a representative of the Church to criticise ideological influences in education is a case of "the pot calling the kettle black", for it is commonly assumed that the chief interest of each Church is to protect its own corner of the field, so to speak. It cannot of course be denied that in a situation where religious education often goes by default or is even dismissed in advance as unworthy of serious attention, the Churches are bound to declare a strong position to the contrary. In this respect and in the accompanying effort to improve their own training facilities, they are, I believe, upholding the cause of all parents and children who hold to the importance of the religious dimension in life—and I speak as Bishop of a diocese in which at least one Church school has a high proportion of Moslem children on its roll.

Nevertheless, the concern of the Churches in general, and of the Church of England in particular, goes far beyond the sectional one to which popular imagination would sometimes reduce it. What is needed is a resentment of the fact that Christianity and humanism—two words so often falsely disjoined—belong together. Christian humanism at its best has spelt rationality, freedom, tolerance and a respect for human dignity. It is bound to set itself in opposition to slogans as a substitute of Truth. Its concern is with the destiny of each human being and it must therefore resist any tendency to reduce education to a "battery hen" system for producing certain immediate results. In this endeavour it is bound to take with great seriousness the influences of home and family which, as every teacher is aware, so often prove determinative in the development of the child, whether for good or ill.

In my judgment, it would be a great misfortune if the present campaign for parental rights in education were turned merely to Party advantage—if parents as a class were to be pitted against teachers, local authorities or Government. What is needed is maximum co-operation for the improvement and the stabilisation of our national education, because education is far more than a technical process, a career structure or a political issue. As various noble Lords have reminded us in this debate, it is concerned with excellence in every aspect of human life.

5.21 p.m.

LORD FISKE

My Lords, the pleasure falls to me of congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester on his maiden speech. I suppose that a maiden speech comes more easily to a Prelate than to more ordinary mortals who have to face this hurdle; there was no suggestion in the way in which he addressed your Lordships this afternoon that he found it anything of a hurdle and I know that your Lordships' House wishes me to thank the right reverend Prelate for his maiden speech. We hope that we shall hear him putting expositions before us again in his clear and witty way.

Our thanks are due also to the noble Lord, Lord Blake, for bringing this Motion before the House this afternoon. It is the widest ranging debate on education that I have ever had the pleasure of listening to in your Lordships' House. So often we seem to discuss the minutiae—the milk, the meals, the corporal punishment and the bus journeys et cetera, but never the central thesis which underlies the present administration of education. There is little that I can add to those arguments, especially after the wonderful exposition by the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack. Beyond that, it seems to me that there is little to be said. Therefore I can reduce the length of my remarks and concentrate upon only one aspect: the effect of local government administration as more money is spent upon education in the future, because this is of great concern to me.

To-day we see education as the last important power which is administered by local government, ably assisted by the Treasury. Moves are afoot, which we hear about frequently, to take the entire cost of educational administration off the backs of the ratepayers and put it on to the backs of the taxpayers. It seems to me that a large expansion of that expediture is likely to come about in the next year or two because we shall be faced with nursery schools and with a far-ranging inquiry into the professional status and pay of teachers which is bound to result in extra expenditure on education. We shall be faced also with new school building, by an enlarged higher education quota, and so on. If local authorities are to retain their responsibility for education, this expenditure will increase, and it will increase at precisely that point in time when the reorganised local authorities are facing a rates revolt all over the country. In other words, the limits of local expenditure, or the limits of tolerance to which ratepayers are prepared to go, has, in my view, been reached. Any further great strain will be reflected upon a service which becomes a major spender. Nobody says that this problem cannot be solved. Of course it can be solved. However, we need to be aware of it as a problem and as a problem which may face us in the very near future.

There is a small contributory way in which I should like the problem to be considered, but perhaps it is not so small when it is assessed. In spite of the massive work on charities which was carried out by the Nathan Commission 15 or 16 years ago, it is time that we investigated the use of charitable money in education. I say this for a good reason and I should like to take a moment or two of your Lordships' time in order to explain a case which I have met. A voluntary aided grammar school accumulated sufficient funds to buy its own playing field and set about doing so, only to be pulled up in the middle of the proceedings by the Charity Commission who said: You cannot use any of your money for buying a playing field, even though it will be your own property, because that is the responsibility of the local education authority. The school in question was, therefore, denied its own playing field and had to continue the unsatisfactory sharing arrangements which it had with two other schools. In my view, that was not a proper use but a misuse of charitable funds. If there are many millions of pounds which are tied up all over the country in that way, I hope that they will be released for the purpose of assisting education to turn what might be an extremely difficult corner.

I agree with what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has said about the expansion of the comprehensive service. I served on the London County Council from 1946 until its demise in 1965. Therefore I saw to quite a large degree the inauguration, the growth and the expansion of the comprehensive system in London, and I know what it can achieve. We made many mistakes. The biggest mistake, which the successor to the London County Council has not yet managed to remedy, is that it built schools which were too large. That mistake has been mentioned this afternoon. Now the policy is to build schools which are much smaller and I am sure that that is right. However, to have seen the growing and flowering of this campaign and to have seen the opportunities which it has given to children who would never have had much of an opportunity, whatever the parental choice might have been, has indeed been heartening. I have served as a Governor in several of these schools. Therefore, I know about many of their problems and how they overcome them, and I think that the comprehensive system is a success.

While it may need legislation, I think that there ought to be flexibility about the school-leaving age of 16. I remember that before the school-leaving age was raised to 15 a well-known London head-master said: 70 per cent. of my children stay until they are over 16. If there are any who do not want to stay until they are over 16, then it is best that they should leave school and find the kind of job which they will have to do in the world at large. My Lords, there is much to be said for this other point of view: that we keep children who cannot benefit from further education tied to school when they could be contributing usefully to the work of the world. But in regard to the system and the child of to-day I do not think we need have any fear. They are doing all right.

5.30 p.m.

BARONESS BROOKE OF YSTRAD-FELLTE

My Lords, this is a debate about high standards in education and about parents' choice. I want to speak about high standards in secondary education, for that is something I am deeply involved in. I have had the privilege of serving for many years on the governing body of a girls' voluntary-aided grammar school, the Godolphin and Latymer in Hammersmith, and for the past ten years I have been chairman. Indeed, until this year I represented the local education authority as one of its governors, but this year they saw fit to reduce the number to none at all of the minority Party on the local education authority and our clerk received the notice that "Lady Brooke is to continue to serve on the governing body until she is either replaced or reappointed". A month later I was replaced. Fortunately, there was a foundation governor's vacancy, and I understand the governors were very pleased to bring me back in that capacity, so I am still chairman.

This school is maintained by the Inner London Education Authority and the governors have no reason to believe that ILEA is disappointed with the high standard of education and social development to be found there. We have no problems of discipline or truancy among the 660 girls who come to us. We admit from eleven years of age and we have a sixth form of 200 girls who can choose between 21 different "A" level subjects. They are preparing for the universities and the professions, and a considerable number opt for teaching. Our girls come from a wide range of home backgrounds and all of them have something of value to contribute to each other and to the whole. The one common denominator is academic ability, and this is recognised by those who select the children whose parents put our school as their number one choice.

At the end of the report on the last inspection made by Her Majesty's Inspectors for secondary education, two years ago, came the words By any computation this is a very good school". And so would we keep it, but alas! to ILEA the selection of able children for grammar schools, attaining a high standard of academic distinction, is an offence to Ilea's avowed policy of comprehensive education. And so for some years now we have been threatened with extinction unless we conform to ILEA's plan for changing the character of our school.

Recently we have been presented with two plans designed to turn us into a form of comprehensive school. The first envisaged our amalgamating with St. Clement Dane's, a boys' grammar school, and Burlington, a girls' grammar school on the White City site, thereby losing our identity, our school and our playing fields, to become a large, coeducational, Church of England comprehensive school. It was of little importance that we happen to be a non-denominational school. This plan was rejected by all three schools involved and it came to nothing when St. Clement Dane's decided to move out of Ilea's area into Hertfordshire.

The next attempt to end selection came with the proposal that we should amalgamate with Mary Boon School for Girls—a school nearly a mile away from ourselves and involving highly dangerous crossings for both staff and girls. Mary Boon had a great tradition as an excellent school for the teaching of practical crafts until ILEA started to change its composition. It has no academic tradition. The new Ilea scheme envisaged a junior school at Mary Boon and a senior school at Godolphin and Latymer, until such time as it would be possible to create a five-form entry girls' comprehensive school in the present Godolphin and Latymer buildings—any additional classrooms to be built on our playing fields. The disadvantages of this scheme were overwhelming and a meeting of 1,000 parents and teaching staff, held some three weeks ago, voted by a very large majority (there were only eight dissentents) to turn it down. This was also subseqently the decision of the governors. These decisions, with all the highly cogent arguments that led up to them, were sent to the chief education officer, Dr. Briault, together with an assurance that the governors were anxious to continue to play their part in the education of ILEA'S children, and consequently they had set up a working party to try to find a possible alternative which might be acceptable to the local education authority. We are now waiting for ILEA's reply.

At this stage in the negotiations there are some unsolved problems which I should like to present to the noble Baroness who is to wind up this debate for the Government, and I am delighted that we are going to have at least one other woman's voice in this very important debate. I welcome her at the Dispatch Box on a subject which I know she is well qualified to deal with, and I would also like to say that she is really a jewel in the crown of the direct grant schools because I believe she is the product of one of our London direct grant schools and I am sure they are very proud of her.

In the event of a five-form entry comprehensive school being established on the Godolphin and Latymer site, using part of the playing fields, is ILEA allowed to buy the area needed for the additional buildings from the governors, who at present own the freehold? Secondly, in the event of a Section 13 notice being served on the school, to whom do the books, furniture and equipment belong—to Ilea or to the governors? Of those two questions I have given the Minister forward notice; of the third one I am afraid I have not given such notice and I shall be only too happy if she feels inclined to write to me about it afterwards and does not want to deal with it this evening. My third question is this: is ILEA expected to carry out its part of the contract to educate those girls who already have been accepted for education in the school, as the parents are expected to carry out their contract to keep their daughter in the school until her secondary education is completed?

My Lords, to attain the highest standard throughout the educational system our approach must be free of political cant. At the moment, in the Government's overriding desire to use education for social engineering, emphasis is laid, not on how the highest standards can be achieved but on how quickly children can be given equal opportunity by putting them all into comprehensive schools and by teaching them, for at least three years and in many cases throughout the whole of their secondary schooling, in mixed ability classes. Excessive concentration is given to the under-endowed, and it is hoped and sometimes believed that if they are educated with the above average and the average, they will mysteriously gain the power to reach heights at present denied them.

This practice of putting all kinds of children together is in its infancy in this country, and it should surely be given a much longer trial in much better conditions (particularly smaller classes) before other and more tried methods are abandoned in its favour. Do these much less gifted children thrive in the all-ability range schools? Surely their discontent is evident in increased truancy, in violence resulting from frustration and boredom; in shoplifting and housebreaking and the senseless destruction of property. We know the whole of that list.

In present planning the gifted children seem to be forgotten. It is thought that they will prosper in any circumstances. In the words of the Plowden Report It is assumed that gifted children will be able to do the same things as the others, but better. It is probably true that they could, but they do not. They tend to be less conforming, they may suffer from boredom and set up a habit of daydreaming and escaping. And so they fail to realise their rich potential. Sometimes the gifted child must find herself explaining, like Alice: "I can't help it. I am growing"; and the Secretary of State, like the door-mouse, says: "You have no right to grow here—or at any rate not faster than the others". And as the child looks around her and sees so many who do not want to grow, she becomes frustrated and finally the desire for growth is killed.

If the highest standards are to be achieved by all—and this must manifestly include the gifted children, those gifted in all sorts of ways—then the educational structure must be diversified. The same plan or mould will not be adequate for all. The nation needs high standards and skills of all types; it needs people with discriminating minds, able to argue, to imagine, to think scientifically and to think creatively, to form independent judgments, to be sceptical of fashions in thought, to be wary of propaganda. The nation also needs people who are practical and creative in a non-academic way, who can also form independent judgments and stand up to the mass media, and who have not been bored or discouraged by an over-academic emphasis in their school education. Such different kinds of minds need to be allowed to develop differently if they want to. The very able need the stimulus of other very able people around them to sharpen their wits and to excite their curiosity. Those with less intellectual interests should neither be made to feel inferior because their minds do not work in the same manner as academics, nor should they be (as they very often are in many of the big city schools) in a position to stop the more academic from getting on with what they want to do.

Asking for more time to experiment before sweeping away the remaining schools may seem like asking for a socially unjust system to continue. But surely it is better to allow a measure of injustice (if it is unjust when all children have at least a chance of applying to be educated in a grammar school—or had until many of them were submerged or abolished) than to sweep into a uniform system about the merits of which many people have serious doubts. The word "selection", for different types of schools, has become such a bogey that society has become almost incapable of looking at the problem objectively. But in actuality, in the cases of maintained, voluntary aided and direct grant grammar schools academic selection has meant, and still means, that children of widely different home backgrounds are educated together in an intellectual environment and a reasonably sized community with which they can cope and in which mutual interests and aspirations cut across all so-called class frontiers. Often it is the socially deprived child who benefits most because he or she receives at school the stimulus which is lacking at home, and his or her morale and curiosity are boosted by companions in an atmosphere of mutual discovery.

So grammar schools have been for vast numbers of children of all classes the open door to opportunity of all kinds. They have been effective social mixers, entry to them has not depended on the ability to pay fees. The only way to avoid selection is to make strictly neighbourhood schools and to give no choice to parents. Unless this is done there will always be schools which are more popular than others, and the minute a school is over-subscribed someone has to select entry. Through no fault of the originators of the comprehensive system life in big cities has become so insecure that very big schools are the worst sort of environment for the majority of adolescents. Proof of this is found in the fact that smaller schools are receiving an alarmingly increasing stream of applications for transfer of children who simply cannot cope with life in very large schools. Such applications are nearly always backed by medical or psychiatric reports. While good, secure, established smaller schools, both grammar and modern, still exist it would surely be folly to abolish or greatly enlarge any more of them.

5.45 p.m.

LORD ANNAN

My Lords, we are very much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Blake. I am sure that one of the things for which we are most indebted to him is that a motion of this kind brings the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden down from Cambridge to speak on his famous Act. I do not know whether the right reverend Prelate would agree that when the noble Lord, Lord Butler, does this it is rather like listening to Moses 30 years after he brought the Tablets down from Mount Sinai. It is agreeable indeed to hear some of the comments he makes on those Commandments which he delivered in 1944. Indeed, some of the Commandments are rather like those on which one of the sons of George III had the habit of commenting as they were read out during service. When he came to the Sixth he always said, "Very true, very true, but terribly difficult". This difficulty is also true about education.

One has principles like those the noble Lord, Lord Blake, enunciated in his speech. But the principles depend on money and the noble Lord, Lord Butler, emphasised how much one always has to think of priorities. The question is: how do we spend our money? Do we spend it (which we do not incidentally) on disadvantaged, handicapped children, on nursery schools, on buildings for primary schools many of which are so badly in need of total replacement, or do we spend it as the noble Lord, Lord Blake suggested, on teachers' pay? When it comes to teachers' pay, I wonder whether, in fact, money is the only thing that matters. The noble Lord, Lord Blake, and I know very well that one of the reasons why we do not have teachers in science and mathematics is because so many have been eaten by the expansion of higher education. Indeed, this is one of the troubles, in the expansion of higher education: it has a ripple effect on all the other sectors. Of course, scientists and mathematicians in universities have been eating the seed corn over these many years, and the result is that now you cannot get children to take science and mathematics through to "A" levels because they recognise that the good teachers are not in those fields.

LORD SOMERS

My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend? I wonder why he confines it to science and mathematics. It also applies to a good many other subjects.

LORD ANNAN

If I may say so, I think it applies less to other subjects in that the opportunities for research in the Humanities are very much less than they have been in science. May I say that money has also another effect. I believe that the fact which has been alluded to in your Lordships' House this afternoon—namely, the large size of comprehensive schools, the large 2,000 all through comprehensive schools—was very much the product of an attempt to economise on rare resources, the rare resources in this case being sixth form teachers.

A limited number of teachers can do sixth form work and it was in order to concentrate sixth form studies in schools that the large comprehensive came into being. I entirely agree with the points which have been made. Education is always best in small units, whether in colleges within universities or in small departments. Whatever it may be, the smaller the unit, on the whole, the better because you get more individual attention. It is much better, in my view, to have fewer facilities in the sixth form, that is to say, a limited range of subjects rather than have a full menu and the disadvantages that go with great size.

Another point from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blake, which I want to take up is the great division in education. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that I am by nature a Butskellite. I share his wish that the two sides in education should be brought closer together. Indeed, I spent some years sitting on the ill-fated Public Schools Commission which was meant to try to find a bridge between the independent sector and the State sector, and which later went on to consider the whole question of direct grant schools. It seemed to me perfectly clear at the end of the day that—I do not say we wasted our time—not one single recommendation made by that Commision was acceptable to either side. It was a total disaster if the object was to get something on which one might build.

We have to face the fact there is this great division between those who put at the forefront of their minds the need to postpone irrevocable choices about children for as long as possible, and those who want to preserve the direct grant and grammar schools. This afternoon I have formed in your Lordships' House a somewhat unfortunate impression of what noble Lords believe a comprehensive school to be. A comprehensive school is an attempt not to make irrevocable choices about children until one definitely must do so.

An irrevocable choice used to be made at the age of 11. The revolt against the 11-plus came not merely in Labour-dominated councils in local government; it came in councils which had a Conservative majority. I should have thought there is very strong agreement between both sides that the age of 11 is too early to determine a child's ability. So what does one do? One tries to move the barrier forward to the point when one has to make irrevocable choices. This is so in every country. In the U.S.S.R., for instance, every child goes to a neighbourhood school until the age of 15, but at 15 there is a wide choice of schools that child may go to. Some are highly specialised schools, for instance, for mathematics or for music. These are the specialist schools for which the U.S.S.R. is famous. In the United States there is a break between one grade and the High School grade from which one goes forward to College board.

When talking about comprehensive schools, we have to bear in mind that it is really a question of trying to postpone the irrevocable choice of when one says a child is able or is not able to benefit from higher education. As I shall point out in a moment, there are quite a number of choices open to schools when they join the comprehensive system. I wondered whether the noble Lord, Lord Blake, was trying fortune too high when he said he was sad that the Labour Party adopted the principle in regard to the public schools, in Pope's line: being willing to wound and yet afraid to strike". If I were him, I would rejoice that that is so, and that something much more serious was not in the mind of the Labour Party. The Public Schools Commission considered this matter of what principle one could adopt on independent schools. The Commission came firmly to the conclusion that it would be wrong to abolish them, because we could find no principle on which one could abolish a famous public school but not abolish a school for mentally handicapped children. They are both independent schools. Therefore, I do not think that there is an obligation on those who are not disposed to view favourably the independent sector to do anything they can to help it. It is doing very well by itself. It is enormously supported, as I shall point out in a moment. It seems to me the most their advocates can expect is not to be subjected to direct interference.

My Lords, on the direct grant and the whole question of what should happen to direct grant or local maintained grammar schools, here there were a variety of choices which the Direct Grant Commission put forward. One was that the school could become a Sixth Form college, or a junior college; another was that you could become what was called a "mushroom" school, taking into the Sixth Form far more children from other schools, so that here again you had an enlarged Sixth Form over and above your ordinary entry coming up in the normal way on comprehensive principles. A third choice is to become a comprehensive school for the second tier, from 11 to 16, and another was to meet boarding need. Or one could become a school (or special aptitudes, such as music or, indeed, ballet. There are many options open, It would not be fair to say that schools are having a pistol put at their heads, and that there is no choice open to them except the most odious.

We are bound to face the fact that one of the difficulties when talking about ability is how to judge who are the gifted children. Research on this matter produces a stalemate in the end. I have examined a great deal of material, and there is no satisfactory argument at all on the question of the determination of the gifted child. If you do it on Intelligence Quotients of 125 to 140, one finds, of course, in the end that some of these children do exceptionally well in life after school, and some of them do perfectly ordinarily, just like any other child of much less intelligence, because there are things other than what psychologists call Intelligence Quotients. There is such a thing as character. In fact, character determines whether or not children make the most of their aptitudes. If you then ask, "What do you mean by character? Why use this Aristotlean term?", I can give no answer, except to say that it does correspond to something which I believe most people acknowledge exists in life, and in describing people's personalities. So I am neither much enamoured of studies which try to prove that all gifted people will naturally occupy the very best positions in life after school, nor do I believe studies when they try to prove that if children have been to some of the élite schools and then pass into the élite, then that is an automatic example of a corrupt society. Such studies defeat themselves. I will say only that if one tries to formulate arguments on that basis, one ends in confusion.

My Lords, I am in sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Blake, when he said that he doubted whether social engineering was one of the factors which we ought to take into account when we design our school system. On the whole, research is moving against any belief that this is so. This is the work by certain Americans like Christopher Jencks and others, who are studying how far alterations in the educational system of a country in fact affect social deprivation. The answers coming out are extremely unsatisfactory from those who believe one should change the school system in order to change the social system.

On these matters, it seems to me, one has a systole and diastole. It was inevitable there should have been a strong reaction against the palpable injustice of the 11-plus. It is part of our whole way of looking at society at present to emphasise that differences between different children should be ironed out rather than supinely accepted. However, the pendulum is swinging more these days towards the direction of the noble Lord, Lord Blake, because we are beginning to ask ourselves whether, in fact, we are losing something extremely valuable by the changes that are being made. If I may say so, I think the Conservatives did their cause no good by the bitter defence they made in the 1950s of the 11-plus in its full rigour. But, equally, I think that some Labour councillors in local government do their cause no good in the name of anti-élitism, by associating themselves with anti-intellectualist traditions in the schools. For instance, being opposed to streaming; or, being opposed to examinations; or saying that if there must be examinations they must be examined only within the school, and indeed that there should never be anything but a simple, not even pass or fail, but a universal" and undifferentiated pass.

Let there be no misunderstanding about this. I think every child who goes to school has a major experience, because he immediately comes up against conceptions which in his home he will not have met, conceptions about the world and academic study, though it is academic study in a very simple form. And even if he comes from an academic family, if he comes from a highly intellectual family, he will come up against something which is no less an experience, the experience of mixing with anti-intellectual children. Both these things, it seems to me, are extremely good, are part of a school system. But I think I ought to draw attention to the anti-intellectualist stream of thought which is emerging in some quarters in our schools, and which worries me, because I think this may well be one of the reasons why the independent sector in education is so strong to-day; it is strong because people know very well what they are buying. There was the headmaster of Charterhouse in the 19th century, Mr. Haig-Brown, who was asked by an extremely pompous parent. "Does your school only admit the sons of gentlemen?" The headmaster said, "I do not know about that, but they usually end as gentlemen."

This business of conduct and a mode of behaviour, which is one of the things you learn in school—that is to say, a way of behaving acceptable to society; sometimes a rather stuffy form, sometimes rather a depreciated form of what society at any given time thinks is good conduct—is certainly something which parents hope to buy. The other thing they hope to buy is general competence in, as the noble Lord, Lord Blake, said, numeracy and literacy. So these, it seems to me, are the things we ought to watch.

I myself believe that the neighbourhood school is certainly the mode of the future. I do not believe you should change neighbourhood schools, even though some are bound to be superior to others if you are thinking in terms of academic standards and conduct. I do not believe in bussing from one neighbourhood school to another, as has been done in the United States. It has ended in dire distress and failure. You cannot iron out all social differences from your educational system. But let us, if we can, reduce them; let us, if we can, get the two sides moving gradually nearer to each other rather than have a confrontation between the two.

6.3 p.m.

LORD SNOW

My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Blake, for introducing this debate, which, rather unusually for this House, may have some actual positive value. We are also delighted to have heard the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate, and we have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, which we do far too seldom; that has been a pleasure. For myself, my temperament is not as sunny as most noble Lords; I do not really think that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. So I find myself very much more in sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, and with the last part, but not I think the first part, of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Annan.

I sometimes get the impression that no one in this country has ever heard of another society or has ever been anywhere else. Comprehensive education is nothing new. It has been done in America for generations; they know all about it. Noble Lords who are passionately addicted to it as the bringer of a new heaven and a new earth really ought to hear American intellectuals, American academics in particular, on that. They would say that we are probably with enormous enthusiasm going to commit all the mistakes they have made and get none of their advantages. This would be a typical American statement in high academic society. They cannot understand our extreme intemperance about the entire subject.

Have you ever thought, my Lords, what would happen to you if you had a son or daughter who was as gifted at tennis as Mr. Connors or Miss Evert or, alternatively, a musician who was likely to become a kind of Ashkenazy. I am sure if that good fortune had happened to any of us we should all have felt it a matter of duty, parental and social and everything else, to spend every penny we had in getting them the maximum opportunities to cultivate this great talent. We should certainly do it without the slightest thought. I would have ruined myself for any such talent, and no one in the country would have objected. They would have' thought it was perfectly natural, perfectly right and perfectly human. On the other hand, if one has an exceptionally clever son or daughter, to a large number of people it is entirely monstrous to take special action on his or her part. That seems to me a corruption of values which is very dangerous to us. There is this use of the word "élitism" which even the noble Lord, Lord Annan, used. What does it mean? All countries have élites. All countries must have élites, not only to make the country run, which is quite important, but also to give it a flavour, a sparkle, a distinction without which our common humanity becomes remarkably porage-like.

We must get rid of some of this modish cant. We want an élite. We used to have, and probably still have, the best education in the world for producing an élite. Unless we keep our heads we can lose that within 10 or 15 years, quite easily. It could go with the wind and it would never be recovered in a society like ours. So just for once we have to think. The only other education I know of which was remotely as good as ours used to be for producing an élite was the French. They do it rather differently and much more practically. The grandes ecoles were really designed to run France, and they have done it remarkably well. Those are the only two that have really been successful.

As regards selection, that other dirty word, that is a method by which you obtain that élite. There is nothing particularly sinister about it. The present Secretary of State for Education and Science is someone for whom I have great affection and respect. I had some common purpose with him in the 1964–66 Government, and I am very fond of him. But even he has fallen into this sort of collective hypnosis which means that selection must not even be mentioned, let alone done. I did not see the full text of the whole speech, so I may quite easily be misquoting him, but he appeared to say that selection must not happen at any time or at any stage. What can that possibly mean? Does it mean that everyone born is immediately made a Fellow of the Royal Society? Where does selection come in? Is there no selection for going to university, no selection in taking university examinations?

BARONESS BIRK

My Lords, if my noble friend will allow me to interrupt, I do not have the text of the speech with me but I have read it. My right honourable friend was referring to selection in school. In fact the Amendment which he was moving was very much more restrictive than what we are discussing this afternoon.

LORD SNOW

My Lords, that is reassuring, and I am not surprised because the Secretary of State is too sensible to have made the statement attributed to him. I am going to confine myself almost entirely to intellectual education, partly because it is something I know slightly more about than other things, and also because no one in this House, or in this country, ought to have the effrontery to talk about moral education, because children's behaviour, as the noble Lord, Lord Annan, said, is learned from the people you see, from the kind of people who teach you, and the other persons around you. When children see their teachers going on strike, waving banners and shouting, who in the world could expect them to behave well? I know all the arguments. I am very sorry that teachers are not paid better; but it is utterly intolerable that people in responsible positions should behave in such a way, and we really must occasionally speak our minds; it just will not do. I think I would rather abandon the education system for a while and recruit decent priests, or members of the Communist Party, who could be trusted to be dutiful, than suffer this sort of nonsense.

The educational process is not easy. Some parts of it are if you are talented. Curiously, mathematicians usually do not have to work very hard. Most education, however, is quite difficult. It needs work, just work. However clever you are, if you try to learn a language without work you will not get very far. I have a young friend who has a gift which I passionately envy, of picking up languages "out of the air". He needs to be in a country for only three days to be prattling. However, even he would have to work for many months to learn a difficult language, because you actually have to memorise it.

So we have to assume that there will be two components to anything we say about education: that is, some sort of talent, and some sort of obsessive quality, determination, energy, and what the noble Lord, Lord Annan, called character. We know something about this. It is not quite so mysterious as he made out, if you have ever been concerned with personnel, and if you know that selection, though not easy, is certainly not impossible. We did it fairly successfully 30 years ago. So, in fact, the 11-plus could, curiously enough, be carried on. It would be extremely unpopular and very painful, but it could be done. It consists of two things. One is I.Q. I.Q.'s mean something; not very much, but they mean something. It is usually wise to be suspicious of people with a very low I.Q. Whatever their charms and apparent efficacy and sometimes their articulateness, they cannot be entrusted with serious intellectual life. But there is something else that is absolutely necessary, and that is this kind of ability to apply your I.Q., often for a long time, to the operations which are necessary. That is at least as important, and often more important, than the sheer intelligence itself.

Almost all successful people have an element of this high obsessiveness. That of course comes very markedly possibly from innate qualities, but almost certainly much more from the environment; but almost certainly much more from parents or the family background. Therefore, if you are seriously applying the 11-plus aspect you would have to consider both those things. I doubt whether any society would really allow a method of investigation which consists of examining children and their parents at the same time. Yet we have to remember the importance of this particular kind of environment, as well as the solitary child himself, before we understand what is likely to happen in certain kinds of comprehensive school.

We all accept that there are about as many people at least outside higher education who are, in intelligence terms, I.Q. terms, as able as those in higher education. That is granted. That has been admitted all along. That is why many of us, myself included, for a long time thought, whatever our doubts about comprehensive education, that we should probably have to become fairly strong supporters. I now have many more reservations, partly because the boys and girls we are thinking of, who in fact have all the intellectual equipment, but often do not possess the kind of environment or background which makes it easy for them to apply themselves to academic work. I think that there is no question of this. They have not, in the harsh, true terms by which all academics judge things, been particularly successful. One has to say this to what the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, said: Yes, in Oxford and Cambridge scholarships there are occasional winners from comprehensive schools, but very few, and very few in any university I know of. If you ever read through the list of scholarship winners, or the list of first class honours degrees at any university in England, you will get occasional winners from the comprehensive schools, but nothing like as many as there should be statistically. This is a fact. It is no use saying that this is because although the comprehensive schools are there the grammar schools cream them off. There are quite enough in comprehensive schools to make a substantial number of able and gifted children if they had the particular components of energy, devotion, that are necessary to do what is fairly difficult in England, these rather difficult academic exercises.

The objective tests here tell their own story. I think that the answer is rather simple. Put down a clever child, who has not been trained by ordinary background in academic disciplines, with people who are striving and have been trained in academic disciplines, then of course he will profit. Put down a clever child trained in academic disciplines in a large group who are not, who despite him and have no use for him, then, far from profiting, he will go backwards. It is the particular naivety that the mix is a good thing and must work for the academic good of all, that I find the most intellectually indefensible part of the whole business. For instance, grammar schools on the whole have a fairly wide spread of intelligence; but a large number of the people in grammar schools come from homes where the parents are serious in the sense that I have just been trying to define: they believe that the working life, the academic life, is, in itself, a thing on the whole to be admired, and their children ought to be encouraged to do their homework, take their examinations, and be pleased if they succeed in them.

I saw the other day one of the most astonishing slogans I have ever seen in the course of a life which seems to have been spent largely in seeing astonishing slogans. It read: Grammar schools, the bastions of privilege. Well, I then looked through the papers of an old friend of mine who taught for 40 years at a very humble grammar school, but that produced some able people. He was a man with a taste for collecting facts. He died in the middle 'sixties. In these papers he recorded the incomes of the parents of the grammar school children whom he taught. When he first went to the school no parent had an income above £450 a year. When he died in the 1960s none had an income above about £1,000 a year. Of course, the value of money has fallen and it can be taken that during those 40 years no parent had an income of £2,000 a year. That is less than the income of most factory workers in Coventry and now a large section of the mining population.

Bastions of privilege! How fatuous can this sort of warfare become? Grammar schools have had a great deal to recommend them and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte, said, they have produced more social mobility than any other form of English education simply because, as again she commented, nearly everyone there had the same kind of interest and it was therefore relatively easy to forget class and get on with some sort of work. I confess that I shall be surprised if they survive very long. I shall be very sad if they do not. But some things can go, and this debate is an indication of places where people of reasonable good will, who are not easily swept over by camp phrases or nonsense, can perhaps throw in a little weight.

The noble Lord, Lord Blake, remarked on the conception of an inquiry. That I personally should welcome, but I think that it should be extended not only to comprehensive schools but to all forms of secondary education. It is very important to get a real systematic survey of I.Q.s, incomes, family backgrounds, right the way through. Also, it should be done over a period from now to the end of the 1970s, with probably a report every two years. I believe that it will be very interesting. It would give results which would be extremely surprising and disconcerting and, I am afraid to many people, extremely disheartening. But it is worth doing because although the facts may be harsh, in the long run they give one strength.

The second message, and my last—I have talked for much too long, and not obeying my maximum that no Back-Bencher should ever talk for more than 10 minutes—is that I believe much lies in the hands of the universities. That is why it is admirable to have the head of a great college introducing the debate this afternoon. The universities are autonomous. If they do not lose their nerve—and there are occasions in the last few years when they have badly lost their nerve—they can automatically keep up some of the standards which we cherish. They can keep up their own entrance requirements and entrance scholarships —not an examination I have ever been enamoured of, but at this stage I should be sorry to see it go. They can certainly keep up the standard of their own degrees; otherwise we shall find, in the name of all happiness for all people, that examinations will have to be swept away or that students will take control of the university buildings for 17 weeks. Universities can do all this. As the repository of some sort of academic seriousness, and in some ways of intellectual seriousness, too—they are slightly different—I think now they have a function which is perhaps one of the most valuable they have performed for this country.

6.23 p.m.

LORD ELTON

My Lords, I ought perhaps at the outset explain that I address your Lordshps' House from this Bench not because of any difference of opinion between myself and those who sit immediately in front of me, but because I am speaking from a small experience of the teaching world, rather than any other capacity. I do so with enormous deference. How could it be otherwise when one looks at the list of speakers? The debate has been introduced, to our great benefit, by a noble Lord who was a respected, popular and, I am happy to say, sporting member of the academic staff when I was a mere callow undergraduate, and is now head of the college of which my father was once Dean. The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, is the architect of everything that I have worked within. It would be an impertinence for me to make any attempt to congratulate those of much wider experience than I who have preceded me, although I must add my comment to those already on the Record in admiration of the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester.

My Lords, we have already seen and are all aware of the fact that the children of this country are the seedcorn of our future, and that the responsibility of those into whose hands they are entrusted is absolutely enormous. Yet they are at present in a certain uncertainty. Ever since the inquiry by the A.T.O's was instituted in 1970, followed and overlapped indeed by the James Committee, and in turn pursued by the White Paper, there have been areas of change suggested, new structures alluded to but never precisely delineated. This is a point which I do not wish to pass over lightly but upon which I do not think it is necessary to dwell at length. What I think is necessary to reinforce—and it has been said on both sides of the Chamber already—is that those who are entrusted with such responsibilities for the future of this nation must be rewarded adequately, because since the inquiry started they have seen their financial reward diminish in actual terms and their standing in the public regard also decline, not only as a result of their own conduct. The result of this and other things has been an acute shortage of staff in certain areas which has resulted in a greater load resting upon those who have soldiered on.

The first point I wish to make is that it is important not to underestimate the weight of that extra load. Preparation periods swallowed up in extra teaching periods, in supervision periods, in extra duties on the sports field and in administrative tasks, build rapidly into something that is unacceptable if efficient teaching is to continue. Teaching is not done off the cuff. Preparation is essential and so is the reflection on what has gone before and its digestion. And, of course, to that is added in the areas of greatest shortage the real extra load reflected in disorder, the impatience and the frustration of children or young adults who have not had adequate supervision, leadership or encouragement as the result of this shortage. That greater load is in itself a further incentive to leave the distressed areas.

There comes a critical point, which daunts even the most stout-hearted of teachers, and at which there is a real danger that they become not the guardians but the gaolers of those over whom they are expected to exert a wise and bene-violent authority. This is bad, it is dangerous and it is going on now. My first proposition is the elementary one that we need more teachers proportionately to the number of children taught. There may be two halves to the equation of course and one answer, I suppose, would be to reduce the number of children taught.

There has been a certain amount said about the effects of raising the school leaving age and ways in which this could be reduced by selected release. The ground has been covered. I wish only to add this to your Lordships' reflections on the matter, if such schemes should be introduced—there is much to recommend them and I should certainly support them—they should be backed up by something which was, I believe, introduced under the 1902 Act and which later lapsed; that is, that those released would require not merely to go into activities approved by the local education authority or the Secretary of State but should go accompanied by a certificate of satisfactory attendance at school during the preceding two years.

The other end of the equation is of course, the teachers. Here it is necessary to attract into the profession not only those whose vocations are so robust as not to be daunted by the prospect of 35 R.O.S.L.A. remedials in a room with equipment which they started to regard as outgrown the year before, but also those with gentler but not less genuine gifts—and those gifts, my Lords, are precious. I have served as a private soldier and as a commissioned officer; as a farm labourer, a shepherd and a farmer; and also as a publisher. Indeed, I spent a short time in a City office. But I have also for ten years of my life taught, and I can say without hesitation that of all those occupations that I have pursued the most exacting, the most demanding and the most exhausting profession was that of teacher. All those jobs required physical or mental energy in one degree or another, but teaching demands, as well as agility of mind and a diligence in performance, an expenditure of the spirit which leaves one at the end of a good term exhausted, and a sort of shell. I speak, of course, of those who teach with dedication, but those are the people we want; and we want them, my Lords, because what we are entrusting to them is something which is infinitely precious—the future happiness and security of the children of the whole British nation; that is, our children, my Lords, and the children who are the stake in the future of our country.

So how are we to attract these people with the gentler but no less genuine gifts into the profession? I think there are three considerations: status, conditions of service and, not surprisingly in this or indeed in any other age, cash. The latter is that which is politically the most contentious, and yet I think I detect an agreement in this House that the risk must be taken. It is always dangerous to argue a special case at a particular time, because one special case instantly promotes twelve more. But, here, what is entrusted to these people is so precious, the pressures upon them are so great and their need for relief is so urgent, that a special case surely does exist.

My second proposition, my Lords—to strike out, as it were, on a different tack, but again relevant to the main aim of this debate—is this. It is so elementary and almost banal that it might not be worth staling except that it is from time to time, in surprising places, ignored. It is that in any system of education and at any stage of education the prime and overriding concern must be with the children. This is particularly the case when it comes to the training of teachers. Obviously, an institution designed to train teachers has a responsibility to the students who embark upon its courses, but that responsibility is subordinate to the responsibility to those upon whom the training colleges and the Department of Education finally let loose their products. It is subordinate to the responsibility to generations of children as yet unborn, for whom all those institutions exist. In the James Report this principle was early enunciated, but let it be remembered that when a policy is embarked upon in individual colleges or in the Department, as to, for instance, the proportion of permissible failures, and the standards of permissible admission to colleges of education, it is not the proportion of those who pass the courses that matters; it is the standards of those who pass the courses that matter, and they are what must be defended. A margin in recruitment must therefore be allowed over that required at the end of the course. This does not commit the Department or anybody else to a fixed percentage of failures.

I think it necessary to mention this, because there are the current fears of over-recruitment to the profession, and I think these are invalid for a number of reasons. The first is that the motive of parsimony is not relevant, because if a potential student does not embark upon a course which leads to a teacher qualification, he will almost certainly embark upon some other course of higher education which will be just as costly to the State. The second is that there is, of course, an existing shortage in our own area here. In the Inner and Outer London and Surrey waiting areas there is a shortage of 1,600-odd teachers now, so there is a good gap to fill. And even when the teaching profession is recruited to its full establishment, there is still a very important area to be filled; that is, the area of supply teachers—those people who come in when somebody goes down with flu or appendicitis, suffers a bereavement or has a baby. If those people are not available, then, again, you have a strain on the surviving staff of the school and the standard of the education there goes down. The demands on the supply teachers are, in a way, more exhausting than those on others, because they are always by definition operating in an unfamiliar surrounding.

Then, again, I feel that to maintain standards the local education authorities must be able to be both selective in appointment and more rigorous than at the moment either the law or the supply of teachers permits them to be in dismissals of proven incompetent teachers. Here we must see some movement towards reinstating Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools, who have lost so much force of late and who were the only instrument, the only rumbling from the clouds, that senior teachers used to fear. A full-scale inspection is a very terrible thing on the receiving end of it, I assure your Lordships, and it does a great deal to make all teachers attend to their standards. Another, though less pressing, reason for not being too cautious—does the noble Lord wish to intervene?

LORD DAVIES OF LEEK

If I may, my Lords, very briefly, on the inspectorate. As one who has also had experience in all branches of teaching, what is of as much importance is that the old-fashioned way of appointing inspectorates should be abolished, in so far as it is as absolutely necessary for an inspector to have done some real teaching before he is promoted as it is for a good collier to work on the coal-face before he becomes a manager.

LORD ELTON

My Lords, I entirely agree with everything the noble Lord has said. It is no good telling somebody how to do something if you have not done it yourself, and cannot, in fact, do it better than him; or, at least, see how he can do it better than he is doing it now. I entirely agree with the noble Lord. The other point to which I wish to allude briefly is the notorious, if surprising, unreliability of the birthrate statistics. It is important to have some extra trained teachers around for when the Central Office of Statistics, or whoever it is, does not count the storks right.

Then, there is a further and final reason, which is the reduction of the present class sizes. The largest class that I taught was 42 children. I became increasingly depressed as I went on to discover that I would know those who were brilliant, I would know those who were hopelessly stupid, I would know those who were immensely naughty, and the rest would be a grey, indifferent mass because I had a heavy teaching load elsewhere in the school. I still look back in horror at the dilution of pastoral care which that must have forced me to give those children. If your Lordships find this particular allusion difficult to follow, then may I reduce it to arithmetic and say that if you set a piece of marked written work; if it takes you five minutes conscientiously to appraise it, to assess it, to mark it and to put a comment on it; and if you have a class of 42, as I did, then, every time I set a piece of marked work I was committing myself to 60 minutes more work than those who were taking a class of 30—one hour extra. You do not do that many times in a week without burning the midnight oil, and you do not burn the midnight oil for many weeks without getting irascible and short-tempered, and then the band of grey people in the middle of the class that I referred to earlier gets bigger, the number of neglected gets larger and your teaching gets worse.

My Lords, there are two further points that I wish to make, and I shall make them briefly. The first is this. I have spoken earlier of the uncertainty that hangs over the future of the institutions which train teachers. There is a feeling about—it may not be justified, but it exists—that there is a sort of numbers game going on and that, whereas originally the intention was to make useful marriages between institutions which were compatible, it is now a question of getting the right number of bodies under the right roof, and, as long as there are enough rooms, windows, chairs, desks and possibly beds and table lamps, that is good enough. It is not good enough, my Lords, and I think that it is axiomatic—and this I say with as much force as I can command—that the only proper institution with which a training college or college of education can be amalgamated is one which pursues advanced education.

It is no good having a sixth form college in the same building as a college of education, because that would be to pin upon the shoulders of the apprentice teacher the trappings of youth and adolescence which he will carry with him and he will be looking backwards rather than forwards to his career. I am convinced that this is wrong. There is only one exception to this rule, and that is where it is convenient to attach a college of education to some primary school where the age gap is so wide that this confusion of identity cannot occur, and where the teaching staff of the college and its students can have adequate opportunity for practice and observation. That can and does work, but the other method is a great mistake and dilutes the effort.

My Lords, there is a great deal that I have not said. I have omitted all reference to the direct grant schools—something very dear to my heart—because hey have been so forcefully defended already. In summary, all I have said is this. The teacher holds our childrens' future in his hands. He should be adequately prepared and generously rewarded for a task which is infinitely demanding and of an importance which it is difficult to exaggerate. We must devote to the recovery of our national educational standards—and I have to use the word "recovery" because I am not as sanguine as some of the speakers this afternoon—such resources as we can spare. I think that 7 per cent. of the budget was mentioned earlier—and I am told by the Belgians that it is 11 per cent. in Belgium, which is worth remembering. If we starve the schools of resources, and, more especially, if we starve the colleges of education whose product will be responsible for those schools in the future, then we starve the minds of the generations to come and we mortgage the future of our children. At a time when resources are scarce they ought to be put into people and not into things and places. A good teacher can teach inspiringly in an uncomfortable room, and a bad teacher will ruin a lesson wherever he takes it.

6.42 p.m.

LORD REDCLIFFE-MAUD

My Lords, I think we are the more grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blake, for having started this debate in the light of the very high quality of the speeches which have been made on both sides of the House. At this hour, it is perhaps better that one should be brief rather than long, and I shall try to be brief. There has not been much discussion this afternoon of the starting point of the whole debate—that is, the purpose of education.

If I may, and if I can remember it, I will quote the words which a great schoolmaster at my old school wrote in 1861 and which are now out of print, so your Lordships will not be able to check his words if I misquote them. He said: "You go to school at 12 or 13 and for the next five years you are not so much engaged in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism. A certain amount of knowledge you can, with average faculties, acquire so as to retain. Nor need you regret the hours that you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least saves you from many illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits: for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of entering quickly into another person's thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage and mental sobernes. Above all, you go to a great school for self knowledge. "I would myself add to what William Johnson Cory said in 1861 that one goes most of all to learn self-forgetfulness, to learn to become so absorbed in what one is doing that one stops being passionately interested in the world simply from the point of view of oneself.

That seems to me to be a definition of the purpose of education which I do not think anybody who has spoken in this debate would be ready to refute. I think that there is a basic agreement on all sides of the House and in the country as a whole that what we want more than any of the particular bits of education—intellectual, artistic, character-building or the rest—is for each child to have the chance of starting out to realise his or her potential in such a way that he or she will go straight on till death increasing his or her knowledge and value to society and enjoyment of life. At least, that is what I think is the basic agreement that there is between us.

However, if we are frank we must admit that there is great difference of opinion about how to get there and about what pattern of schools we ought to set ourselves to recreate over the next 5, 10 or 20 years. Here, I think first that we should admit that each side—and I shall over-simplify in speaking about the "comprehensive" side and the "selective" school side—has an honourable position to maintain. The people who are particularly concerned with comprehensive education are anxious that there should be something done to lessen the divisiveness and the differences with which we are born and go on according to the circumstances in which we live.

It is a generous instinct which makes people want to do something better than the traditional system of education under which we are selected at whatever age it may be, particularly now that we have rejected the idea that the selection is to be by the amount one can spend on education and have preferred to rest on the public requirement that education shall be available. On the other side, let us recognise that those who defend, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, so eloquently did, a particular and splendid school—and we all know that Godolphin and Latymer is a first-rate school—are not simply defending their own and wanting to disagree with the generous people who believe in comprehensives. They wish that people, without respect to their income or background, should be able to have the chance of rigorous intellectual development and general education of the sort which I think is designed to achieve the purpose which Cory defined and which is found in the first-rate grammar schools.

In my experience, there is no type of school in which one cannot find examples of good and bad schools according to one's taste—and I do not mean that one is dishonest in looking for them. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, mentioned a first-rate comprehensive. On the whole, one would say that it is in big towns like London where it is most difficult to solve the problem of the pattern of education simply through comprehensives because of the neighbourhood and the difficulty to which Lord Annan has referred. Yet, in Sheffield, no one can say that a child of working class background cannot get a first-rate education through a fully comprehensivised system because there the local education authority has been wise enough to learn from experience and has agreed, in spite of what the National Union of Teachers is inclined to say, that sixth form resources must be concentrated if children of real ability are to be given the chance of fulfilling their potential—in so far as they can at school—in a comprehensive school. Similarly, in other parts of the country there are places—Pershore in Worcestershire is one example—where a first-class secondary modern school, as it was, has been built up into a general comprehensive school to the point where its "O" and "A" Levels and its sixth form work make it quite reasonable for the education authority to feel that it need not take up places in the local grammar school.

I give you those simply as two examples out of many. But wherever you go it seems to me that you need to accept the fact that for us to do the improvement, to raise the standards, with the quite inadequate money that we are going to have available and the existing equipment of buildings and teachers that we have, over the next few years we must have a mix, and it is no good either side saying that in no circumstances should any direct grant school cease to have children sent from the local authority. It is no use the other side saying, "I am sorry, but it is incompatible with the ideal of comprehensives that we should allow any selection or have anything to do with either independent schools or direct grant schools". I believe that in the country as a whole, if you think of the parents whose choice we are particularly concerned with in this debate, there would be a general demand for "a curse on both your Houses", in so far as there are Houses which say "nothing but comprehensives" on the one hand, or "nothing but continuing with direct grant schools, grammar schools and independent schools" on the other.

That is why I plead for the local education authority, as reconstituted, to be given the chance of sorting out the incredibly difficult problem of harmonising the inheritance of its predecessor authorities which, in most cases, local authorities have to do. Let them work out what is the best way to get from where they are to where they believe it will be better for our children and grandchildren if they can adapt the system. Neither let there be in the local authority a determination to confront people who believe in this ideology with people who believe in that ideology, but let there be a readiness in the local authority to have respect for parents, not only when individual parents claim under Section 76 what they can try to claim—and we all of us in this House know that it is very little—but when they are deciding what is the pattern of education wanted in the light of those who elected them. Let them have respect for those who did not vote for them, whose parents want to have something different from what the majority party view in the authority may be.

Most of all, let there not be dictation from the centre—either from the Government and the Department on the one hand, or from the Party political headquarters on the other—because I believe myself that there is just as much danger of us not working out a sensible compromise solution place by place, adapted to the conditions of the various areas; there is as much a danger of dictation from slogan-making Party headquarters, as there is from a Government, whatever that Government may be, and the officials who will loyally carry out the Government's instructions.

I think that this debate has demonstrated that those of us who have thought about this matter realise that there is no simple answer to this problem of what in a particular area you should do about the inheritance of the schools you have. I go back to 1945, when I had the privilege of being a super-hack in the Department of Education with a great Minister, Ellen Wilkinson, who disastrously died before she had completed two years in office. I remember how she and her successor George Tomlinson, and Florence Horsbrugh after that, over the whole of those first seven years after the war, never issued a circular about which the Opposition side had to say, "We will withdraw that circular when we regain office". Because there was respect for something, not a consensus, because you cannot have consensus in these highly disputable and controversial matters, but a respect and a desire that there should be nothing done that had to be, as it were, undone if that Government lost office.

For the first twenty years—long after I left the Department—there was something that Britain could be very proud of in the way we made progress without allowing these great debates to be polarised in simple slogan-shouting terms—particularly we avoided having them attached to one Party or another. Frankly, over the last ten years this has not been so, and it has been no doubt for entirely honourable reasons on both sides. I am not asking us to pretend that we agree about things we do not, but I appeal for an effort on both sides, and in particular in the local authority areas, for an effort to see how far we can use the existing traditions of good schools, wherever they are, and not mess them up in some botched-up scheme which will ask them to be something different, but will nevertheless move towards something which will be better than the old selective system and which is in no sense a going back to eleven plus.

Finally, I mut warn your Lordships that there is a danger that we deceive ourselves. Most people applauded when it was said that the Government accepted now that the big comprehensive school of 2,000 was too big and that now somewhere in the neighbourhood of 700, 800, or 900 was about the maximum. How wonderful if that were really easily realised. I must remind your Lordships that in the old days of 1945 and Ellen Wilkinson, everybody realised the immense advantage of a small school. Of course, everybody would have liked to say that a comprehensive school does not have to be more than 700. But they did in fact honestly believe that unless you went to something like 2,000 you would not be able to do what the advocates of such a school were determined that it should do, which was to give as good a chance to the bright boys and girls as if they had gone to a selective school.

We must not deceive ourselves into thinking that sixth forms can be formed which will give as good a service, as it were, to the boys and girls who need that kind of sixth form education in a school that has only 700 or 750 if it is in an area like, shall I say, East Ham or West Ham, and not in an area where perhaps, if you like, there is a middle class spread and most of them would have passed the eleven plus. By all means let us learn from our experience and say that we are not going to have too big schools because we find that the disadvantages are too great. But if we are to have smaller schools, do not let us go on claiming for them what before we could only justly have claimed if it was going to be very much bigger.

So, my Lords, I end where I began with a general recognition of the value of this debate, and in particular the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I end with what I think he was particularly concerned with, which was the need not to have confrontation. I do not believe that the people of the country want educational confrontation any more than they wanted it in other spheres of economic and political life. I think our great chance is to give the local education authorities a chance. Let us speak up without any equivocation for what we think is right whether in the local authority or in Parliament and in national debate, but let us bend over backwards to be generous and to believe that the people who disagree with us on educational theory are also generous.

6.59 p.m.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, as I have listened to one noble Lord after another speak in this debate I have become overwhelmed with a feeling of my own inability to contribute anything effective. The noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, who has just spoken, has given one of the most fascinating surveys of education and we are all very grateful to him. There are, however, one or two points which perhaps I can make, and one of them refers to the point which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Blake, in his introductory speech, when he seemed to indicate that the school leaving age should not have been raised, that it was done, I think he said, for egalitarian rather than educational reasons. I hope I am right in saying that—

LORD BLAKE

My Lords, may I interrupt for one moment? I used the expression "egalitarian reasons"—I believe I said "primarily for egalitarian reasons"—but I did not say that the school-leaving age should not have been raised. Indeed, I definitely said that I would not wish at this moment to reverse that decision.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. I should be very sorry if the idea got about that this had been done for purely egalitarian reasons, although I must admit I see nothing wrong in egalitarianism. I well remember that when we were discussing the matter in your Lordships' House the then Leader of the House resigned his leadership over this very issue, because he was not prepared to continue to serve in the then Labour Government, when the decision was made to postpone the raising of the school-leaving age; and he certainly did not do that for any reasons other than those concerning higher education. I think that it would be unfortunate if it were to be felt that the raising of the school-leaving age was something that had been done hastily or without true thought and consideration for the interests of the children. I am quite sure it is one of the most important things which we have done in the last ten years or so in the educational field.

There have also been, necessarily, references to comprehensive schools. Obviously, one can make this an issue of principle. Personally, I do not think that principle comes so very much into these educational matters, but I believe it is wrong to assume that education cannot be used at all for what the noble Lord, Lord Blake, referred to as "social engineering". This is rather a harsh term to use. It suggests that one is doing things in a very mechanical way. Nevertheless, if one looks at educational systems throughout the world, it will be found that they have all been used for forming the electorate and for educating the mass of people in the country in such a way as to serve the ends of the community. There is no question about it. If one looks at the United States of America and its educational system, it will be found that whereas American schools have not often succeeded in educating children to a very high educational level, they have deliberately aimed at making them good citizens; inside the schools of America they have put citizenship first. They may in consequence have suffered to some extent from not having a high intellectual level but they have shown that this can be overcome later, and they have in fact created junior colleges and so on, where the intellectual failures of the earlier system may be remedied.

If we look to-day at big cities in this country—for instance, at our own City of London—we see that the problems of any education authority are often really immense. I have here one of the publications of the Inner London Education Authority which gives a Table showing the percentages of population in the various boroughs forming Inner London born outside this country. The figures are amazing. In Westminster, 34.8 per cent. of the resident population were born outside the United Kingdom. Admittedly, about 6 per cent. were born in Ireland, but leaving that aside, the rest were born outside the British Isles. Practically the same figure holds for Kensington and Chelsea. The overall figure for the Inner London Education Authority boroughs is 19.95 per cent.

This raises an enormous problem for an educational authority to deal with. If you have children born outside the country whose native language is not English (or if it is, it is English which has been somewhat poorly acquired), when they come into primary school they may find it very difficult to learn effectively. Then, when they go on to secondary school, they are still suffering from their failure to understand the concepts, because their knowledge of the language is not adequate. I was struck by this point some years ago when I was examining at the college in Sierra Leone, which was, at that time, part of the University of Durham. This college started originally as a Church of England school and even when it became a college it was of rather a low grade, and it went up at best only to first year university standard, and most of the time it did not get as far as that. I spoke to a number of people in Sierra Leone, including some Americans who were teaching in a school there. One of them said to me: "The real problem here is not the quality of the education, but the fact that the children do not know English, and it is vital for them to know English in order to understand the ideas with which they are faced when they go on to higher education." I believe that the same problem can arise within this country and that it is one of the major problems inside our big cities. Indeed, the figures which I have quoted relating to the City of London show what a substantial problem this presents. Therefore, I would say that it is essential for any educational authority to look at this problem of social engineering, because without it I do not believe they can tackle the problem at all.

It is quite another matter to say that you cannot or should not use an educational system to reform society. There, I would agree entirely. It is not only a misuse of the educational system but I believe it has an exactly opposite effect from the one intended. I rather agree with what George Bernard Shaw wrote when he said: all education is really homeopathic"— and certainly it is so far as ideas are concerned. You can try out one idea and you often find that a totally different idea is being generated. So I do not believe that people can use an educational system in that way, but I am sure that any educational authority would be failing in its duty if it did not pay attention to this problem of the social structure of the community with which it is dealing, and did not attempt to do something about it.

I do not want to detain your Lordships for very much longer, but I should like to refer to one other point concerning higher education and the university scene. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Blake, will forgive me for continuing to refer to his speech—which I enjoyed and which I am sure all your Lordships found most interesting and stimulating.

LORD BLAKE

My Lords, I am flattered!

LORD WYNNE-JONES

But he said that he thought there ought perhaps to be a halt to the expansion of higher education. This has been said for years: it has always been said. If the noble Lord looks back at the figures for this country of those undertaking higher education, he will find that the total of such students at the beginning of the last century was about 2,000 students. It expanded during the whole of the last century at an average rate of 2½ per cent. It has gone on expanding in this century at about the same rate, and even in the period between the two wars when most people imagined that there was no expansion it was still going on at a rate of 2½ per cent. There was a big increase at the time of the Robbins Report, and this was because we in this country realised that we were falling behind in the number of students who received higher education. It jumped up to a figure of something like 7 per cent. It has flattened out since, but do not let us imagine the pressure is not there. If you look at the number of applicants for admission to the Open University—those are the ones who cannot or have not been able to get into other places—this year it is 50,000. The University is able to take only 14,000 because of lack of money.

The real crunch to-day is that this country is not prepared to pay for education. If we are not prepared to pay for education, we shall have all the troubles and difficulties; we shall get all the tensions which make people curse the educational system and say that it has failed. It has not failed. It has weaknesses; it may do things badly, but the failure is in our resolution as a people. It is our resolution which is important. If we can have that resolution then I have no fear that, provided we give the money for it, we will have a continually improving educational system.

My Lords, I hope that as a result of this debate, which has been an extremely interesting one, the message will go out clearly, not only to the Government but to the people of this country, that education is something about which we care deeply.

7.11 p.m.

THE EARL OF SWINTON

My Lords, I thought at first this was my unlucky day, speakng at No. 13 on the list. I thought perhaps this was the right place to put the only Earl speaking on education! I have enjoyed this debate and have been much stimulated listening to noble Lords, most of whom are a great deal more intellectually and academically equipped than I am to speak on this subject. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Blake, for introducing this topical and interesting subject to-day. It is especially topical for me because since local government reorganisation I have been Vice-Chairman of the North Yorkshire Education Committee and Chairman of its schools sub-committee which is responsible for some 70 secondary and 500 primary schools in the largest geographical county in England and Wales, over some 200 million acres.

Parents have many parts to play in education, and one which I should like to congratulate them on is that which they play in managing and governing bodies of schools. It is more necessary now than ever that schools and parents should act together for the welfare of children. We have heard a lot to-day about truanting, bullying and vandalism. Parents are much more likely to be reasonable and helpful if there is a choice available to them. It is not practicable for the majority in my area to have a choice of schools. Distances are so great, communties are scattered, and it is only possible to have one secondary school in one area. Even primary schools are many miles apart, and transport costs are so colossal that, on the whole, we cannot offer parents a choice of schools. Therefore we feel that we must offer a choice of courses of study. If that is to mean something, each school must have adequate resources and staff. Unfortunately, in recent years local education authorities have been unable to provide schools with absolutely all the necessary support and facilities. Successive Governments have acknowledged the need to tackle oversized classes. There always seems to be a shortage of cash.

I was interested to hear the speech of my noble friend Lord Elton, and I agree wholeheartedly with what he said about the importance of having more teachers. Nowhere is this more the case than in our old, overcrowded primary schools. Some noble Lords may feel that I have a bee in my bonnet about this. Before local government reorganisation I was Vice-Chairman of the old North Riding Education Committee and Chairman of its primary schools sub-committee, and year after year I came to London to see various people to try to get more money for replacement of old primary schools. I remember several years ago seeing the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, when she was in another place, and also on more than one occasion my noble friend Lord Belstead. The importance of replacing overcrowded and old primary schools cannot be stated too strongly. If a child starts off in the brighter, happier conditions of a new, modern primary school, he is much less likely to drop out during the course of later education, to say nothing of producing sufficient remedial teachers to cope with children who in different forms have problems of learning.

Successive Governments have pledged their support to the replacement of old primary schools, and a certain amount has been done. But I feel that more can be done and, once agan, we are feeling the economic pinch. At the present time the situation is bad; not only is the replacement of old schools at a standstill, but we seem to be having difficulty in even getting schools to cover the heads of "roofless" children. The Secretary of State's attention was drawn to this quite forcibly at a recent conference of the Associaton of Education Committees.

I was very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, said, and I especially enjoyed his speech, which was full of good common sense and was most excellently delivered. He said something about the difficulties of local education authorities at the moment. We in North Yorkshire have our own particular problem in so far as we have inherited parts of areas previously administered by four different local education authorities. They all seem to have had different ways of doing things. Now we are all one authority we have to try to bring the general standards up to the level of the highest. No one wants to be worse off than they were before, and it is very difficult to have one lot of rules for a school a mile away from another when they are in the same authority. Of course money is desperately short; inflation goes on. People quite rightly protest like mad if you put the rates up, and we have our difficulties.

It is most important that the Secretary of State, when considering proposals for reorganisation, must place emphasis on maintenance and improvement of standards. I am a supporter of comprehensive education when it is done properly. As the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud said, it must not be a hotch-potch on a shoestring. We have tried to do it without spending money and to make do with existing buildings. I welcome what was said about reducing the size of comprehensive schools to-day, but I wonder just how practical this is. I am thinking of my area. Around the fringes of the largest cities we have fairly fast growing communities. If you have one comprehensive school and you build it ideally for a thousand pupils, if it has to take 1,100 and then 1,200 pupils, when physically can you say, "Stop this is enough We will cut down to 600 pupils and build another school"? You cannot afford to do it. It is a problem to know where to draw the line.

We do not have too much of a problem with really larger comprehensive schools, but it might interest your Lordships to hear that we have the longest comprehensive school in the country. It is 13 miles long. This came about when we did our plan in the old North Riding comprehensive reorganisation. We published a draft plan which was to shut down a tiny grammar school at end of the dale and enlarge a secondary modern school in the local market town. Partly because of the trouble we had over getting accommodation—and I must also admit because of the furore this aroused among the parents and public up the dale that we were going to close their secondary school—we decided to keep open the school and run the two schools as one. I must admit that hard though the staff have worked over the years, the head teacher and all under him, the scheme is not working terribly well. Staff and pupils spend so much time travelling between the two schools that there is now pressure upon us to close the old grammar school buildings and to have the school on one large campus. How on earth we are going to do this in the present economic climate, I do not know. It is interesting that the very people who shouted loudest at us to keep the school open are now shouting at us to close it down. So perhaps the public and the parents do not always know best.

I should like to say something about two forms of education which have not been mentioned to-day. I am delighted to hear that nursery education is going to go on. I support this. I should also like to pay tribute to play groups. This is something in which parents not only actively take an interest but also participate in running. Over the years they have done an immense service not only to their own but to other people's children. Not much has been said about special schools. They certainly have their problems, for both the physically and the mentally handicapped. I do not think there can be anything so comprehensive as a boarding school for physically handicapped children. Not only do they have the whole range of abilities, but they have children from 5 to over 16 years of age. My goodness me! they have their problems.

I was interested in what the noble Lord. Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, said about adolescent children. If you get problems with adolescent children anyway, how much more do you get them with the mentally and physically handicapped who have other problems to add to those of the normal teenager in growing up? I would ask the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, a question—I am afraid I must apologise for not having given her prior warning of this. I wonder what has happened to the Warnock Committee on Education and Further Education for the Handicapped. I believe that this Committee was set up by the last Administration. So far as I know, the Government had nothing to do with closing it down, and I should like to know when members will be appointed and when work will start on this most important subject. It is specially important because it is concerned largely with what happens to handicapped children when they go out to work, at the most critical stage of their lives. Can the noble Baroness help me on that point?

I have been fairly gloomy about the financial situation this afternoon—it is gloomy—but there may be just one tiny advantage coming from it, which is this. There have been so many changes in schools in recent years, in both organisation and curriculum. Of course it is right to examine existing practices and to consider new ways, but for many schools a period of steadiness and stability is needed to enable them to reach their peak—and, thanks to the present situation, we just might find that being the case.

7.21 p.m.

LORD HUNT

My Lords, no one who forms his views about secondary education or education in general from a reading of the daily Press, and notes the more familiar headlines—under-staffing with the effect that it has had in reducing to part-time the schooling of significant numbers of children for fairly long periods; school-leaver illiteracy and truancy; I would pick out truancy in particular for its link with juvenile crime: we learnt earlier this week from a report in The Times that one-third of juvenile crimes committed in the Metropolis are done during school time—can fail to acknowledge the importance of the subject that the noble Lord, Lord Blake, has drawn to our attention this afternoon. One of the troubles about these facts taken out of the full context is that they add fuel to the fire of the educational controversies and tend to detract from the intrinsic merits of the objects of those controversies: comprehensive education, the future of the grammar and independent schools, private and direct grant, and this more recent controversy about ROSLA, the raising of the school-leaving age.

It is all the more important—and I was grateful to the noble Lord who led us off this afternoon for giving us this sense of balance—to look at the full context. It is understandable that one cannot get a full picture from the national dailies; and it is important that people who are actually involved in education—and, goodness knows!, we have had a fair and remarkable sample of these this afternoon, but I am also thinking of educational administrators, of head teachers and junior teachers—should be heard. I count myself fortunate in having retained a number of contacts with secondary comprehensive schools from an earlier time, and in anticipation of this debate I have been in touch with quite a number of head teachers in those schools, both in and out of London.

It has been said earlier in this debate—and I think Lord Blake himself made the point at the beginning—that complacency is the last attitude to adopt, I would say particularly in view of the serious situation in London. What is more, I would not presume to claim that my small sample has any particular validity in regard to the whole picture. But I should like to say here—and I am speaking not of a particular school as the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte, was—that I have been immensely impressed when I have visited these comprehensive schools. And they are a fairly varied sample in location and type. I will not take up the time of your Lordships by retailing details in a debate which must be about broad issues, but I believe that other noble Lords who have spoken or who may speak will be aware that a great deal is going on in our comprehensive schools which is good, which is encouraging, and which is indeed exciting. I have here a magazine from one of these schools, edited by the pupils. I cannot pass it around the House. There are not many of your Lordships to see even the title. But if I were able to retail some excerpts from these magazines, it would make my own speech very much more exciting than it is.

In saying that, I have particularly in mind those aspects of education which are generically known as social education and outdoor education, with the definite connection that this has with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, when he spoke about character. It is particularly in those fields that one can catch a glimpse of what young people who are socially disadvantaged can achieve and can aspire to, and can have some idea of what many more young people in a similar situation could achieve and aspire to if they had more opportunity. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack made the point that, where there have been and are troubles and difficulties, many of them are a reflection of the wider malaise in our society as a whole; and the cures for the troubles in our schools must be considered as part and parcel of resolving those greater problems in the country as a whole.

I would revert briefly to the big questions of education, although they have been so well covered by people more expert than I am. It is good to know from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that there can be no question of any national policy to abandon the comprehensive principle (I think we shall hear more about this from my noble friend Lady Birk when she comes to wind up the debate) despite the disadvantages under which that principle and system has been operated. I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte, if she were here in her seat (she will not be able to read what I say, because it will not be printed to-night in Hansard), that comprehensive education has gone way beyond the point of a general experiment. It is well and truly proven. The real questions are those of making comprehension more comprehensive, or the other way round, and thus of realising the full potential of that principle. This, in turn, of course relates to the question of the freedom and discretion of local authorities and schools to provide alternatives in the form of grammar and direct grant schools, and it relates, too, to the question of the future of the private schools—all of which, in my contention, and I think I am not alone in this, detracts from the development of full comprehension. When I say "the full development" I have in mind the flexibility of, the variety of choice in, and the quality of the staffing of, those schools, indeed the progress of young people under the umbrella of the comprehensive school.

I was particularly interested in what was said about the maximum numbers that can be beneficial and acceptable to the comprehensive principle. I would say it is my belief that, inasmuch as the best teachers and the more able children tend to be creamed off into the grammar and independent schools, this runs counter to and is detrimental to the comprehensive principle. I would exempt from this criticism, if it is to be seen as criticism, the sixth form colleges. I am one of those who believe in sixth form colleges. They tend to keep the comprehensive schools within reasonable numbers—this is why I was interested in the figure given by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor—and, because at a certain stage those who are emerging from the fifth forms are growing out of the secondary school environment; they are beginning to need a more adult environment in which they can specialise and pursue a wider range of studies.

I will turn away from the big questions which are controversial, and which have been so well covered, to two personal questions, in the interrogative, of my own. I sometimes wonder—and here I shall perhaps be seen as heretical—whether our tradition of freedom to interpret and experiment with education with the maximum degree of devolution has not gone too far for too long. I wonder whether there has not been enough, if not too much, experiment and too little consolidation; and whether the young are not sometimes unfairly treated as guinea-pigs to satisfy the curiosity and the convictions of adult experts.

Here I am running completely counter to the speech made by my noble friend Lord Redcliffe-Maud, whom I greatly admire and respect, but I wonder whether firmer guidelines should not on that account be given by central Government in the interests of providing equal opportunities for all young people. Surely that is the essence of our debate to-day. I question how far any society, especially one which has the limited resources which we have in this country to-day, can afford to proliferate the variety of its educational practices to the extent that we do in this country. I understand that this contrasts with the pattern of education in a number of other countries which have a more uniform, established or stable pattern of education. The right reverend Prelate referred to the need for this. It appears to produce not unsatisfactory results.

The noble Lord, Lord Blake, and other Members of your Lordships' House have spoken about the wrongness of being complacent. May I speak about the wrongness of being arrogant in contending that we have a better system of education and a better tradition of education in this country than anywhere else? I regard that as arrogant. Above all, I wonder, as other noble Lords have wondered without the doubts which have been expressed, whether it might be possible to take education out of politics and prevent it becoming, as it has done during the last ten years, the plaything of Party politics. To-day there is a great deal of support for the need to make common cause between the political Parties in order to tackle our most urgent problems. Surely this is one problem where an effort should be made to reach a consensus on broad aims and strategy.

My Lords, like so much else these days, policies tend to become polarised at two extremes. There is the one pole of cultivating excellence—of concentrating resources to provide the highest order of leadership and expertise so as to produce an "élite" in all areas of our public life from among the young people who are being educated. Who would quarrel with that as a proposition? Pushed too far, however, this inevitably means disadvantaging the slow learners and the less able; and therein lies danger. The other pole is that of aiming to reduce the divisions in our society—aiming for the ideal of "one nation" through young people of all ages, of all shades of social background, of all grades of ability, sharing one broad form of primary and secondary education. Having said that, I should qualify it by remarking that this by no means implies the same thing as producing an egalitarian or uniform society. Surely there is merit in that but, pushed too far, the elimination of streaming from all types of subject and learning is bound to hold back the best intrinsic talent. And there is danger in this.

My Lords, both of these policies have been dubbed, criticised and condemned as "social engineering". The noble Lord, Lord Butler, quoted Thomas Carlyle on the aims of education. We have also heard an inspired and remark-able quotation—a feat of memory—from Lord Redcliffe-Maud. The noble Lord quoted what the headmaster of his school said in 1861. However, we are living in 1974 and the realities of the world that we live in are that education is involved in the community. And so it should be. Schools should not be insulated and isolated from life as it is lived. So far as schools are concerned, may I say that the school of the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, would have been one of them and that that is how private schools still tend to be.

The realities demand that education should be concerned with the community as well as with the individual. This is just as true in a free society as it is in a dictatorship, and it is sheer humbug to take either of those poles—the élite and the "one nation", or whatever you like to call it—and say that the one is "social engineering" and the other is not. They both are. However, in seeking to compromise between these two poles, surely in the conditions in which we are living today there should be room for agreement which will serve the best interests of parents, of children and of our democracy as a whole.

My Lords, as regards R.O.S.L.A., enough has been said. I was thankful to hear that the Government propose to proceed with it. Those headmasters whom I have consulted are unanimous in wishing that it should be proceeded with. One headmaster said that he was confident that his fourth-termers, after all the initial difficulties, would be taking the additional year in their stride. One of the troubles has been that too many authorities, too many schools, have not prepared for it sufficiently. A survey which was undertaken by the N.U.T. implies that as many as 33 per cent. of authorities or schools may not have worked out in time the necessary curricula and courses. Looking at the matter realistically, I suppose that the problems had to arise before the "bugs" could be ironed out.

I now come to the case made by the noble Lord, Lord Blake, for strengthening the rights of parents. We have heard a lot about that this afternoon, including the right to choose the preferred school which the parent wishes, including private education. Again, I am prepared to be accused of uttering a heresy when I say that I have reservations about the rights of parents to choose, without let or hindrance, the education which they prefer for their children. I doubt it, because I think that too many parents have insufficient wisdom, or knowledge, or even the proper motives to make decisions in the best interests of their children, which is what this debate is about.

My Lords, having said that, may I revert briefly to the question of private education? I was gratified to hear the noble Lord, Lord Butler, say that we must look forward to the day when private and public education come together. May I put it another way by saying that I hope the day will come, without undue haste, without resort to sudden draconian measures and recourse to the process of law, when the option of a private, fee-paying education is no longer available. I say this because so long as one can buy something which is recognised as being better and which a great many other people cannot buy—it is all very well to do this for oneself but to do if for oncoming generations is quite a different thing—one negates the principle of equal opportunity for all children. Thereby one tends to project into the future, from one generation to another, a certain established social structure. It is divisive and it is manifestly unfair. I reckon, also, that it is socially damaging.

That is not to deny parental rights. I would far rather interpret those rights in the terms in which the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, and others have done—the right of parents, where the area in which they are living permits it, to ask for a place in a certain school which should be granted if it is seen to be in the best interests of that child, if it is without detriment to the interests of other children and if there is such a place. I should like to interpret parental rights in the ways which have been mentioned: by involving parents through parent/teacher associations, through places on school boards, and, most interestingly, in London through the formation of consultative committees of parents who are consulted by the education authorities. These are some of the ways in which parents may influence, in consultation with the professions, both the education of their own children and the education of other children in the community. Surely this is the way to ensure that schools and education as a whole become part of the whole community. These are not only the rights but also the duties of parents.

7.40 p.m.

LORD DAVIES OF LEEK

My Lords, I have been fascinated listening to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, speaking, because I know the contribution he has made to outdoor work with children and also some of the underprivileged, and also (although he may not know this) having heard his praises sung among the snow and ice and eidelweiss in Switzerland only about three weeks ago. I reiterate the point he made because we have figures to substantiate this. Reference has been made to the underprivileged, and the figures given by the Minister of Education and Science in another place the other day were to the effect that there are about 1 in 10 of the child population underprivileged. Some 900,000 childen are in that position.

One asks oneself: what were the motives that brought me into politics? I ask that as one coming from a Welsh farming and mining background, who received a university scholarship after a great deal of effort—a scholarship which one did not take up for a while and then took up again. One of my first loves was that like the Scots I wanted to see equality of opportunity in education. I accept that people cannot be equal; I accept the differences in mental ability and stature, but somehow a civilised State ought to be able to give equality of opportunity. Consequently, the noble Lord, Lord Blake, who is so knowledgeable in this field, has indeed given us a great opportunity and I, too, should like to thank him for it. He has given us this opportunity in drawing attention to the need to attain the highest standards and in drawing attention in the educational system to the importance of parental rights. There are obligations on parents as well, and I should like to see throughout the country, even at the primary school level, the obligation laid on parents in the Parent Teacher Associations to take a greater interest in maintaining discipline at primary school level.

When the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack gave us figures which showed that he was spending somewhere in the neighbourhood of £4,000 million on education—which for the first time in the history of Britain demonstrates that we are spending more to-day on education than on defence—this should not be a blot on the escutcheon of the British Government, whatever their politics. There should be a gasp of pleasure and one should say, "Thank God! At last people are becoming civilised". As Dr. Kissinger said the other day, "What and where is our speaking from strength"; and as Nye Bevan said, "You cannot be deader than dead" when you are speaking in terms of massive nucleonic defence. Consequently, in the educational system we may be creating wiser people who will find answers to these great problems.

As one who has had experience in all branches of teaching, right up to adult education, I was glad to hear those with practical experience speaking of the burden and the pressure on the school teacher at primary level. Unless we get that level right the pyramid of education will not be on firm foundations. When I was thrust into a classroom, green as grass, but arrogant because I knew everything in the world at that age (like everybody else) it was in front of a class of 80 kids in one room, in an old church school where there were three other classrooms. I was glad of the job because in those hungry 'thirties it was almost impossible to get a job anywhere. A pal of mine wheeled a fish cart round the streets selling fish, and he had a marine engineering degree. We were glad of the jobs, but the kind of schooling that we had and the opportunities for the underprivileged were terrible. God knows! how some of them even got to learn to read and write, let alone anything else. But there was a drill, there was a discipline; there was a thirst for knowledge.

Something has happened since 1861 and that beautiful description that we had a little while ago, and this is the 64,000-dollar question: we have men and women in this House with vast experience in the whole gamut of civilisation and yet we are not certain of what we are trying to achieve in the educational world. Print technology began at Wurtemberg and man was able to accumulate his knowledge between the covers of books and pass it on. Printing released men but it broke down the old guild system: it broke down the arrogant assumption of the time, when the mind of mediaeval man was locked and the key was on the girdle of a priest. It broke it down as books gave instruction and man began to think. Mind you, much of the thinking, as to-day, may have been warped. But to-day there are new technologies.

I am cutting out about 90 per cent. of my speech, because most of it has been said already, but one finds that when a child comes before one the little brat has had about 5,000 hours of television before he can read and write. He knows more about the world at five years of age-having watched the "telly" with his mummy or with his old man, who will show him anything sometimes, especially if it is football—than I did when I was 15 or 18. He has seen the world in colour, he has seen the activities of human beings; he has seen killing, he has seen shooting, he has seen the Vietnamese war and death on the battlefield. His imagination does not act like mine. I read in books about death on the battlefield or climbing. My imagination built castles and massacres and holocausts, but the child of to-day sees it and he comes to school and there is a teacher with 45 babies, trying to teach them the alphabet because the parents are both working and they are too busy to start.

My daughter, who had an honours degree in economics, wanted to earn some money, so she did some teaching for a while, but she was shocked to find that so many of the kids said, "damn" and even worse. One kid said to her, "I can't learn this damn thing". You have a child of five or six, sophisticated in the visual world, not prepared to use his mind to get to grips. There are more illiterates to-day, but do not make the mistake of thinking that illiteracy means lack of wisdom. I have said before that many a peasant who could not read or write had masses of wisdom, and consequently literacy and numeracy are not the open gates to wisdom. When the gift was thrust upon him—"What gift do you want, lad?"—Solomon said, "I want the gift of wisdom". Not cleverness, not literacy, not numeracy. Our educational system must unlock this door: how do you give to the modern child and to the modern university student the gift of wisdom? I do not know the answer. This is how the modern education system strikes me. We have a lonely crowd of 1,000 million watching a ball being kicked about. I have played rugby and soccer most of my life. I expect my noble friend has forgotten it, but we once played rugby together years ago. I wonder whether he still remembers it?

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

My Lords, since that recollection has been introduced, no doubt the noble Lord remembers that, in those days, those who were then the elementary schoolteachers were not allowed to play rugger against the secondary schoolteachers in the world of Stoke-on-Trent.

LORD DAVIES OF LEEK

My Lords, there was aristocratic dichotomy, but it went off my back like water off a duck. It is quite true. To-day, a lonely crowd who have not participated in any games at all tell you how to referee a match, how to play football. We have become sponges, and this in itself is not creating the balanced, wise outlook of modern man. The changes in the content of human communication at a multi-level of the interplay of different types of communication processes which are now beginning throughout the world are part of our new educational system. Television, tape recorders, transistor radios, record players, records, language laboratories—we have not yet learned how to use these.

In millions of homes we have this wonderful machine that could be the Open Sesame to a wiser world and—without being snobbish or foolish—the trivialisation that appears upon it sometimes is deteriorating man's thinking apparatus and making it more spongy to-day than it has been in the past. Possibly somebody will correct me about that and say that I am exaggerating. And so eternal vigilance is creating the very opposite of what is wanted. It is creating indifference; the eternal watching of the passing shadows which occur on a television box has created indifference in the child and something is happening to the pattern of human awareness. And although he said a lot of things I do not agree with, Marshall McLuhan is right.

The scientists of our time are just as confused as the philosophers. The amount of progress in the field of biology is frightening. There is more progress the field of biology than in space research and yet we do not know quite where we are going. I am only on the fringe of it. I was not trained for it; I have only picked it up in threads and patches as I have been wheeled along in it. Our teachers still have the illusion that new developments can be fitted into the old space environment. Faced with our own electronic and laser-beam technology, we are as primitive and helpless to-day as any man facing the first mechanised tools in the 1830s.

How do you get all this into the world and how do you use it to free man from his slavery and yet not clutter him up and make him arrogant and greedy? I played about with maths, and my wife was a first-class mathematician, and yet I have gone into schools where children in the third year are doing work in mathematics by hand and with models equal to work that I was doing in the sixth form when I was a youngster at school very many years ago. So there is still the talent, there is still the opportunity, and I will finish with this. I should like to say more, but so much has been said. I hope people will not criticise me too much. I think the search for wisdom is one of the great things to-day. I do not know how you get it. Can anybody explain why in 1968 from America to Paris—I was in Paris at the time—to England there was a revolt among university students? I could never understand it. My thirst for knowledge, the joy of listening to lectures, the joy of reading books, was absolutely thrilling. Suddenly all this becomes dead. I meet scientists and others who say tid appa—what does it matter? The world is going the wrong way, and I believe that the time has come for deeper research into education in relation to the machines that we have. That is why the Open University, founded by the noble Baroness, Lady Lee, is a step in the right direction.

Your Lordships have listened to me now for 14 minutes and I am sorry, but my last point is this. One asks why do people get education? It was not a gift from the Gods; it was the necessity of the tool age in which we live. "Technology" is only the Greek word for "tools". If I were your boss owning a steam engine in the 1830s and 40s and you were such a clot that you could not read and write you would burst my boilers. So I had to have "Put oil in here every three hours and fill this boiler with water every two days", so the boy or the man had to learn to read and write, and reading and writing protected a system of society that taught man to produce. The early capitalist system did a service to mankind. It taught man how to produce. Now we have to find a system of society that teaches man how to discriminate. It must be a wise society and we need the education to do it without killing each other.

7.56 p.m.

LORD DERAMORE

My Lords, I should declare an interest in that I am a governor of a girls' independent boarding school and also the manager of a county primary school which is curiously known as a controlled voluntary school, because it was built by an ancestor of mine and a kinsman of the noble Earl, Lord Swinton. However, my main interest in education stems from the fact that for many years I was associated with the schools building programme from 1949 to 1969. For the first four years of that period, I had the honour to serve in the Hertfordshire County Council Architects Department under the late C. H. Aslin, whose opposite number in the Education Department was no less than Sir John Newsom who later made the famous, formidable and controversial Report. It is fair to say, however, that the schools built by Hertfordshire County Council in those years under their leadership led the world and set the standard for all schools that have followed. I say this in no boasting spirit, but to make it clear that I do not speak from ignorance of the very real contribution which the State system has made to educational standards.

The noble Lord, Lord Blake, and noble Lords who have spoken, have dealt with the subject with an erudition to which I cannot aspire, but I hope that my modest experience at Hertford will enable me to make some small but useful contribution to this debate. It seems to me, my Lords, that the important point about education is that the quality of life depends on our extracting every possible talent from every child in a country. My dictionary says that a talent is a special aptitude, faculty or gift. It does not just include a mental acuity, and as the noble Lord, Lord Annan, has said, character is more important than anything.

In deciding on the best educational system for this country it seems to me that we must avoid at all costs falling into the trap, as the Japanese have done, of having a system for producing human cogwheels to mesh into a vast industrial machine dedicated purely to growth—however much that may appeal to some economists. On the other side, I think we must avoid producing too many intellectuals without a proper sense of reality. Your Lordships may remember a rather cynical definition of an "intellectual" as being someone who has been educated above the level of his intelligence. It seems to me that no two children are the same, and there is such a wide range of aptitude and ability among them that no single system, however benevolent or efficiently administered, can hope to cope with all requirements. There are bound to be an appreciable minority of children who do not fit into any slot in the neighbourhood school which is available at that moment. If only a handful of these children have the capacity to make a significant contribution to our civilisation, it would be criminal that they should be denied the opportunity for the sake of dogma or administrative convenience.

In my view, political and religious doctrine should have no part in any monopolistic national system. I think there is a very real danger to democracy in any system in which politically motivated men in high places can influence the education of the whole nation. The memory of the Hitler Youth movement is too recent in our minds to be ignored, and your Lordships do not need me to remind you that intolerance and thuggery are not confined to any one colour or political spectrum. In my view, there is an irrefutable case for continuing a system of independent and direct grant schools alongside the State system. I appreciate the sincerity of those people who think that such a suggestion is divisive and against their egalitarian principles. I suggest that the answer is not to remove the choice of schools, but to abolish, so far as possible, the divisiveness wherever it exists.

As the noble Lord, Lord Annan, said, these schools provide special opportunities for people who have special aptitudes such as musical ability or, perhaps, ballet dancing, and boarding education for those children who will benefit more from that than from day schooling.

It is noteworthy that the late Kurt Hahn and T. F. Coade, who pioneered so much of modern eductional theory, did so in independent schools. Had their theories been misconceived, a few hundred children might have been disadvantaged, but it is more likely that their parents would have taken them away and sent them to some less adventurous establishment. In the other sector, some theory cooked up by an enthusiast in the Department of Education and Science may well affect tens of thousands of children whose parents have no effective sanction available to them.

Some noble Lords may feel that I am advocating one form of education for the poor and another for the not-so-poor. This surely is the crux of the argument for a State monopoly which is paid for by all taxpayers and ratepayers, regardless of their marital or parental status. However, if my contention is true that the independent and direct grant schools have a role to play, surely the answer is to find some way of providing this education for those who cannot afford to pay the fees. As the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, mentioned, there is the suggestion that educational vouchers might be provided. It seems to me that an educational voucher available to all parents and viable at all schools would widen parental opportunity and lessen the heavy burden of education on local authority.

My Lords, in conclusion I have heard it suggested that the cost of educating a boy at a certain comprehensive school is more than the cost of educating a boarder at a well-known independent school just South of the M.4 and near Slough. I have no means of verifying this, but if there is any truth in it the voucher system might well provide useful economies in our overall educational budget.

8.2 p.m.

LORD CACCIA

My Lords, I came here because of a sense of some obligation to add whatever small obol I could as a result of the privilege which has been mine and the absorbing interest of being Provost of Eton, that is, the chairman of an ancient foundation which includes a school. So many wise words have been said that I think the time may have come when your Lordships would prefer to hear the speeches from the Front Benches rather than from the Cross-Benches or Back-Benches. So without in any way wishing to suggest that the experience of the last nine years has not left me with some strongly held and clear views on the matters which your Lordships have been debating this afternoon, may I say that I would prefer at this time of night to address your Lordships as the President of the M.C.C., and declare the innings closed from the Back-Benches and the Cross-Benches, and leave the field for those on the Front Benches.

8.5 p.m.

LORD BELSTEAD

My Lords, we are very grateful to my noble friend, Lord Blake for the very clear reasons he has given for this debate. I think the House is very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, for allowing me to say this at this hour, and not several minutes later, although it is a very great pity that he felt he did not want to speak this evening about any sector of education which he could have chosen, because the batting list has been so long. Not only is my noble friend Lord Blake eminently well qualified to speak about educational standards, but as the governor of a school he understands the hopes and aspirations of parents, and has undoubtedly introduced a debate which will give the Government plenty to consider. The House was also delighted to hear the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I am intrigued to see that he was at one time the editor of the religious literature of Penguin Books, so no doubt the right reverend Prelate knows all about the art of communication. On this, of all subjects we were particularly glad to have such an interesting maiden speech from the Bishops' Bench, and I know that your Lordships hope that it will not be too long before he returns to take part again in our debates.

My Lords, what do we mean by "the highest educational standards"?—a question answered better by my noble friend than I am able to do. Is it not in suiting methods of leaching to the personality of the individual that the fascination and sheer hard work of education lies? If one is talking about very young children, then the influence of the parents is an absolutely vital ingredient. In the White Paper published by my right honourable friend the former Secretary of State in 1972, your Lordships may remember it was clearly affirmed that nursery education ought to build on and never supplant the efforts of the parents. I remember that in 1973 the Architects and Buildings Branch of the Department of Education and Science lent weight to this view by publishing an ingenious design for an infants and nursery school to be built in Derbyshire, which included a reception area to which parents were welcomed and from which they could be drawn, naturally and automatically, into the life and work of the school.

In this context, I believe that the play group movement will be of considerable importance in the future. The only one of your Lordships who mentioned this was my noble friend Lord Swinton. I should like to ask the Government whether the Department has collected any information about the policy of the authorities towards play groups. As your Lordships will know, assistance can be given to voluntary organisations in a variety of ways, but I believe that assistance to play groups will be effective only if it is accepted by all concerned that the involvement of mothers in such units is really of mutual benefit.

I venture to include a word or two about the participation of parents because, as many of your Lordships have pointed out (and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Snow), the value of a good start for any child is fundamental not just to the young, but to all who are involved in education, and perhaps at this hour your Lordships will accept this without further debate. Is this not especially so for the children who are deprived of the encouragement of parents, for those who perhaps have handicaps or specific difficulties, and not least for the bright child, ready and eager to get on? I think it was right for my right honourable friend to start her White Paper with the under-fives. I believe I am right in saying that the first allocations became operative from July 1. Perhaps in reply the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, might tell the House how the Government see the programme for the first year unfolding.

In one way or another, I think all noble Lords have referred to the quality of teaching. My noble friend Lord Blake and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, both referred directly to teacher training. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, made several suggestions for improving the content of initial training. If the immediately financial future really is bleak, then the recommendations of the Committee which sat under Lord James of Rusholme on the quality of teacher training assume increased significance. For although the greatest need of all children is possibly to gain a sense of stability and security from those who teach, none the less the demands on the teaching profession are constantly changing. It is not always possible for the initial training completely to prepare someone for their first, or possibly their subsequent, job. Still less without in-service training can teachers gain experience, hope to renew ideas or have a "breather". This is not to decry the valuable work being done by the members of Her Majesty's Inspectorate or those in the teachers' centres, but this is spasmodic and not on a regularly planned basis.

There was an exchange about the Inspectorate, and as I understood it I agree with my noble friend Lord Elton about full H.M.I. inspections, and with my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, about the ability to teach being a qualification for the Inspectorate. But if my memory serves me right, I would be very surprised, at any rate, if almost all the Inspectorate have not done some training before becoming an H.M.I. I believe I am right in thinking that the Senior Chief Inspector, Mr. Harry French, who has done so much for the Inspectorate in the two or three years that he has been S.C.I., and is due to retire I think this month, has in fact returned to having some full inspections, as many as he is able to accomplish with a force of H.M.I.s at a rather lower establishment than perhaps he would wish.

LORD DAVIES OF LEEK

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way for one moment. To get the Record straight, my criticism was not of present H.M.I.s. My knowledge goes back a long time. There was a tendency in the old days to appoint people straight from the universities without this prior knowledge, but not to-day.

LORD BELSTEAD

My Lords, having said that, although I think the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor gave some very welcome and interesting information about teacher supply, the debate affords the Government an opportunity to answer two questions. The first was put by my noble friend Lord Blake; namely, do the Government agree with the 1972 White Paper policy for teacher training, and, if so, is it possible now to proceed with any of the recommendations of the White Paper? Secondly, will the Government be able to reveal with rather greater clarity their plans for the colleges of education? I regret that I have not given notice of this question to the noble Baroness, and I shall more than understand if she does not wish to reply this evening. I accept that it is an inevitable consequence of the 1972 White Paper that the remarkable expansion of the colleges really must be curtailed, an expansion which owed so much to my noble friend Lord Boyle, and to the Labour Government of the 1960s. But undoubtedly the colleges are going through a worrying time. Senior people find their careers at risk. Colleges of old foundation feel threatened. This may be necessary, but if it is, I hope that the Government will find an opportunity to state their case, to defend their methods and to indicate the results they now hope to achieve.

There are just two more aspects of what I might call national policy to which noble Lords have referred and to which I would briefly refer. The first is the concept of educational priority areas as it relates to my noble friend's debate. It was, of course, Lady Plowden's Committee which coined the phrase "positive discrimination", and this, I am sure, is the thinking behind the Government's recent allocation of £10.8 million to teachers in schools of "special stress", as they are now being called, a salary increase which is undoubtedly needed and deserved, though whether it will encourage staff to stay in the schools remains to be seen. But I think that an E.P.A. policy is an aid to education, not an end in itself. I remember a junior and infant school in a difficult area of Manchester which had received a visit from an educationist who did not believe perhaps too much in high academic standards and in particular not in standards for this school at all. The staff were outraged. They said "Our children need the best. They need the best facilities that additional resources can give them and they need the best teaching we can possibly provide."

Only a small fraction of pupils in need of extra help attend E.P.A. schools. That is why resources for the fundamentals of education are so terribly important, and that is why I stand staunchly by the raising of the school leaving age. May I remind your Lordships of two points. First, when the noble Lord, Lord Boyle, announced in 1964 that as a matter of policy the age would be raised, he affirmed his belief that this would be a levelling up of educational opportunity, and who can doubt it when one considers the lost opportunities of boys and girls who have lived in places where, usually for understandable economic reasons, early leaving has been a tradition. Secondly, when the age was raised to 15 in 1947, so formidable were the post-war problems faced by the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud and his Minister that it was described as an act of faith, which really was not the case in 1973. The distinguishing feature of the raising of the school-leaving age is that it involves young persons to-day who mature earlier, and I believe that this may be one of the causes of the violence and truancy to which so many of your Lordships, notably, the noble Lord, Lord Blake, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, have referred. Without deviating from the principle of a school-leaving age of 16, I would urge the Government to take account of what the teachers concerned have to say and not to rule out any arrangements which may be desirable as the practical considerations become clearer.

May I add a word on the individual school? How does one pursue higher standards there? However good are the arrangements for local devolution, it is undeniable that local government reorganisation has accentuated the need for an effective local voice in the running of the actual school. This is by no means easy. It requires effort and it needs encouragement. No parent teacher association can hope to get started unless the Head supports it. None can succeed without the enthusiasm of the parents. Ideally schools need people locally on whom they can rely as governors and managers. I believe it was Sir John Newsom who once said to a young education officer who was serving with him, "Democracy works best if properly imposed". I really do think that the majority of councillors on governing bodies could sometimes be modified in favour of parents, representation of the staff and more local residents. But, of course, busy people need to be involved if they are really to be interested. With the severe capital restrictions now facing us all, I believe that the real challenge for the next few years will be the management of resources and the deployment of staff. If only authorities can offer as much discretion as possible to Heads within the capitation allowances, one silver lining which we may see in education in the next few years is a good opportunity for governors and managers to gain a real insight into the running of their schools.

May I turn finally to the question of reorganisation of secondary education. Many noble Lords' speeches have concentrated around this and around the terms of Circular 474. I think that I am right in saying it is Section 13 of the 1944 Education Act, as amended, which alone provides the legal base on which the organisation of the schools can be changed, requiring formal proposals to the Secretary of State, publication, and the two-month period for objection for local government electors and Governors of voluntary schools. That is, I think, the statutory procedure, and Circular 474 very properly makes it clear that there is an overriding criterion, and the overriding criterion the Government have chosen is elimination of selection at any age. Yet those who propose to make changes in the education system bear a responsibility to show that they will be to the pupils' advantage.

In paragraph 4 the Circular mentions two-tier schools, just in passing, but such schools really do pose some educational problems. The upper schools can find themselves short of well qualified teachers for the less able pupils, whereas the lower schools may find it difficult to attract staff for the more able, and certainly teachers for some shortage subjects. But between the two tiers there does lie unpalatable choice. Although 11 to 13 represents a very restricted age range, transfer at the age of 14 is even less attractive, for this is precisely the moment when pupils embark on courses for examinations. If the Government will forgive me for saying so, I think they may be deluding themselves, and worse still, they may be deluding others, if they do not take sufficient account of the implications of some of the forms of reorganisation. Let us take one more example, the familiar problem of size. Here again there is dilemma in creative all-ability schools large enough to support healthy sixth forms without creating huge institutions.

In 1972 in a speech to the National Union of Teachers, my right honourable friend the former Secretary of State explained her preference for smaller schools, and undoubtedly many smaller comprehensives have been something of an unsung success story, with staying-on rates well above the national average. However, it is a fact that the five form comprehensive schools which have been pioneered by Hertfordshire, and which have always been thought of as being at about the reasonable end for comprehensive schools, are still day schools of 800 pupils or more; and though schools of four and three forms of entry flourish, generally they do so with very favourable staffing ratios and in favourable surroundings.

The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that it had been recommended that the size for comprehensive schools should, if possible, be between 750 and 900 pupils. I am most grateful to him for saying that. I am not aware that it has been said before. As the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, said, we could be in danger of deceiving ourselves if we disregard the facts of that statement. Therefore, may I ask two questions, of which I regret I have not given notice? In fact, whose recommendation is that? Is it a recommendation supported educationally by the inspectorate? Many people would be interested to know that. I wonder whether perhaps at a later time the noble Baroness could tell us in writing what percentage of comprehensive schools, at present, fall outside the recommended bracket.

Of course, one solution to this dilemma is to concentrate sixth form work. It is done admirably in Oxfordshire where they use a ring of schools where they can do so, and use certain schools for the different sixth form subjects. It can be done in a college or in further education; but here again there are problems. We do not yet know what effect the decapitation of schools will have. All we do know is that sixth form teachers, who habitually teach down the school, are removed and that new staff are left with no sixth form to teach.

I concede that I have given a brief catalogue of difficulties with comprehensive reorganisation, but they are difficulties which suggest that we need further research beyond that which was undertaken in a rather leisurely time span by the N.F.E.R. Let no one conclude that, in the right conditions, comprehensive schools are not successful. As my noble friend Lord Swinton said in some areas they have jolly well got to be successful. It can be most impressive to see the care with which some authorities consult, to ensure that a new sysetem gets off the ground to the best start and with the utmost goodwill. For instance, a middle-school system, which must incorporate elements of primary and secondary teaching in the middle schools, makes immense demands in terms of planning and consultation, but well-planned it is one of the systems which demonstrates clearly the gulf between a well-prepared scheme and a plan where schools are just thrown together.

Your Lordships are familiar with Section 76 of the 1944 Act. It is because of that that on this side of the House we believe in a diversity of schools. Parents want, we believe, to have the opportunity to choose between large and small, mixed or single-sex, schools which stream and those which do not, schools, arising from the speech of noble Lord, Lord Snow, which concentrate on certain subjects, and many parents continue to seek a school of religious foundation. I do not discern encouragement of diversity in the Circular. Indeed, a new element has appeared; a direct threat to the voluntary aided schools. It is sad that the Circular makes no attempt to discuss the value of these schools, but simply lays down that what has to happen is that they will conform to the local authority system. We already have a grandstand view of what this would imply for the voluntary aid schools of Inner London. Invariably these schools are popuar because they are not large. But, as my noble friend Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte has told us, apparently the Authority is bent on destroying this advantage, artificially to join together schools which are often separated by considerable distances.

Finally, may I say a word about direct grant and independent schools? I must declare an interest as chairman of the Governing Bodies' Association whose member schools are representative of independent education and of the direct grant schools. In recent years the pressure for places in these schools has enormously increased, and I make no secret of the fact that I should like to see this demand satisfied whenever possible. So far as the direct grant schools are concerned, with 25 per cent. of the places having to be offered free to pupils who have come from a primary school and 25 per cent. of the places offered to local authorities, for the parents as free places, for them a wide intake could be effected by local education authorities claiming their places, and by improving the remission scale for fee-paying parents, which was last done three years ago.

One remembers the first question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden in his speech; is there going to be enough money to do everything? I think that these schools provide a good bargain when you consider that during last year alone direct grant schools carried out nearly £6 million of school buildings with money which they themselves had raised. So far as the independent schools are concerned, historically many of these schools have had scholarships and funds precisely to enable a variety of pupils to enter. There are many independent schools where both the school and the local authority value their connection, and I am doing no more in this context than advocate an extension of this kind of co-operation.

May I conclude by just asking one question? Why is it that in increasing numbers parents are prepared, in a sense, to pay twice for education? What is it in independent and direct grant schools which has an increasing appeal? First, I believe it is a fact that the governing bodies are free to run their schools as they believe, and in response to the wishes of the parents. I believe that there is also a desire for small units—not just in the classroom, but from a pastoral point of view—and this is something which boarding schools can provide better than any others. Parents also look for a reasonably stable staff, for how can children properly be cared for if the staff are only birds of passage? I believe that both parents and pupils subconsciously want to have a loyalty to their schools. I was interested to read recently in the Times Educational Supplement that many sixth formers in a survey felt that they had reached an age when they wanted to get out of school, but they felt that they had an obligation as senior pupils to remain. But you only build up that loyalty if pupils remain in school for a period of years.

I hope that it does not sound pretentious to say that I am sure that parents want a school which has a sense of endeavour and (following the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Annan) one that will help perhaps to form a young person's character, and where it is believed that work is therapeutic and that life will require us to be trained in the habit of work. These characteristics are not the preserve of independent and direct grant schools. There is many a maintained school that can teach its colleagues more than a thing or two, and I am sure that each sector can derive considerable benefit from the other. I think that the distinguishing feature about the schools that I have just mentioned is that parents can choose what school will suit them, and can perhaps make their choices from some of the options which the noble Lord, Lord Annan, listed in his speech. This is why we, on this side of the House, wish to encourage a healthy, independent and direct grant sector, working in competition and in co-operation with the maintained schools, as the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, among others, so strongly recommended.

There are many practical ways in which this can be achieved. The sharing of good facilities in schools; the sharing of initial training courses where you have both the students and some of the lecturers attending from different sectors of education, and also the sharing of teachers' centres throughout the land. For Heads who know each other well, the temporary transfer of staff is not a problem, and as I am sure your Lordships know, in cultural or recreational pursuits, for the children concerned the kind of school they represent is not of very much consequence. I believe that this is the path for the future. Where there is a difference of view about the right of parents in a free society to have some choice, surely it is desirable to see both philosophies in competition and in co-operation for the continued advance of education in this country.

8.29 p.m.

BARONESS BIRK

My Lords, may I first apologise that because the closed circuit television system was not working I missed the beginning of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Belstead. I certainly did not wish to miss one word. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, made such a short speech that he too was up and down before I could even be summoned.

This has been a fascinating debate, my Lords. One could say that it has been a good crash course in depth in adult education. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blake, for having chosen the subject and for having allowed it to be opened up in this way, although as I continue I shall not find myself able to agree with some of his observations. Nevertheless, it is important that all aspects should be discussed.

I turn now to a couple of points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who was kind enough to inform me that he would have to leave early to get his train. His comments on the linking of truancy with juvenile crime were extremely important and serve to underline the great necessity of making sure that in the last years at school we are shaping the curriculum in order to suit the lifestyle and the needs of the young people so that they are not frustrated or bored.

One of the reasons I wanted to concentrate on one of the points of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, before he left was because he spoke to the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte, about comprehensive and direct grant schools. When he spoke about comprehensive schools he, along with several other noble Lords, referred to the good things being done by them, saying that they were good and exciting and that they were beyond the experimental stage. He illustrated—it is relevant and I shall return to it later—the arguments of those noble Lords who are in favour of retaining the direct grant and independent schools in their present form. But we have gone beyond the stage of experimentation with the comprehensive schools. The comprehensive system is here to stay. I shall explain why the Government consider that it is not only the right system but the best possible way of organising education in this country, and why the choices must lie within the system.

The noble Lords, Lord Blake and Lord Belstead, and other noble Lords, were kind enough to send me advance notice of their comments. If I should not cover all their questions, I will endeavour to write to them. This has been a long debate, and while I do not usually get tired of hearing my own voice I think that other people may. The noble Lord, Lord Blake, referred to a relatively high proportion of young teachers leaving in the early years of their service. It is true that people leave; people of course leave all types of professions, but I think the most important fact about this is that there is a well-established pattern of reentry, both of men and of women. Some of them leave to study, to travel or to try other work. They come back to teach. Above all, the married women return. It seems to me that we should do more to encourage this trend. The re-entry rate is about 4 per cent. a year. This has the effect of reducing the net loss. One hopes that in the context of what my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said about future planning on teachers' pay and conditions we shall be getting a greater supply of teachers. The Lord Chancellor referred also to the pupil-teacher ratio, comparing I.L.E.A. schools with other schools. It is now probably a little better than 16 to I compared with the national average of a little more than 17 to 1. But there is a difficulty in recruiting and in keeping mature teachers. In London, the education authorities have to rely more on young teachers.

We are all aware, I think—and at this point in the debate it is not necessary for me to emphasise it too much—that London is a special case. One of the great problems for teachers in London is not only the question of pay or travel but the enormous problem of housing. All these matters are so interlocked that it is impossible—and I am glad to see the noble Lord is nodding his head—to look at this situation without considering all the other social concomitants that go with it.

The noble Lords, Lord Blake and Lord Belstead, referred to the James Report. The Government are going ahead with this, especially so far as in-service training of teachers is concerned. I will briefly venture on three examples in this regard. From September this year the first of the new three and four-year batch of education degree courses will be introduced in colleges of education. Secondly, with financial assistance from the Government the Liverpool and Northumberland local education authorities are already introducing pilot schemes of induction training for newly-appointed teachers. Thirdly, the Advisory Committee on the Supply and Training of Teachers is currently considering this matter and will be advising my right honourable friend about the question of detailed arrangements for the further expansion of in-service training opportunities for teachers. If either noble Lord requires more detailed information about it, perhaps they would be satisfied if I wrote to them.

The noble Lord, Lord Blake, also raised the subject of the average cost of training a teacher. It is correct that the estimated average cost is between £3,000 and £4,000. The figure includes student grants which covers the average length of course of just under three years. Frankly I would have thought that that was quite a cheap rate, considering what we expect to get from it.

The noble Lords, Lord Blake, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, and other noble Lords who have spoken, set the pattern of the debate most admirably, but perhaps I may use the occasion to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester on his maiden speech. He was good enough to let me know that he could not be present until the end of the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, established the whole wide setting in which to discuss the subject of education. I very much enjoyed the way he pushed out the limits and widened our horizons away from the formal structure of our schools, universities and colleges of further education, giving us some respite from the problems with which we are faced so that we could enjoy what I feel is the much more positive side which people are imbibing all their lives. This helped to set the pattern for the course taken by the debate, and to which so many other noble Lords contributed.

Together with a number of other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Snow, the noble Lord, Lord Blake, and my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones referred to universities. It is true that the universities are feeling the strong sting of the economy. This, as I know the noble Lord, Lord Blake, is aware, is the result of the policy which was decided by the last Government. Because of the economic situation which we inherited—I will not underline that point any further now—we have had to reaffirm that policy.

I was very grateful to the noble Lord for putting the blame for something on to the last Government. I understand and sympathise very much with the difficulties with which the universities will be coping in the months immediately ahead, when some of them, probably most of them, will be faced with considerable cash flow problems; and the Government are concerned whether there may be means of alleviating them. I cannot forecast the outcome, and I should not like to raise hopes, but we are looking at them as sympathetically as the severe economic situation allows, while realising the limits of the elasticity of the budget, not only for universities but for education—and in education there are, as has been mentioned on all sides, so many other priorities.

Before leaving the subject of universities, I am happy to be able to announce at least one piece of good news, and to inform the House—and I know that this will concern my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones—that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has now agreed to increase the Open University's grant-in-aid in order to allow the University to raise the 1975 intake of undergraduates to 20,000, compared with 14,000 originally contemplated. This is as large an intake as the University can cope with in 1975, and because even then it will mean that may applicants will still be disappointed my right honourable friend has informed the University that the intake in the following year will again be at least 20,000, and that the necessary additional resources will be found.

I think this sets the pattern for what really is the crux of this whole debate. Here we have a situation in which we have to cut down on the universities, much as we dislike doing so, but so far as the extra resources are concerned we are giving them to the Open University in order to bring into the higher education system great numbers of people who would otherwise not have any opportunity at all. What I think is extremely important and so exciting about this, as was mentioned in the debate on May 23, is that it enables many people in different stages of maturity or in middle age, or whatever word one wants to use, to be able to take up their education again at this point.

If I may for a moment go on to the other range of further education, I think it is very often the case—and may be particularly so, my Lords, in this House—that it is the universities and the rest which are concentrated on, and we are apt to forget the very wide range and increasing variety of opportunities in further education which are not contained in the universities. Apart from the educational aspect of this, we need large numbers of men and women—and these are numerically several times the number of graduates—whose academic studies are closely linked with practical application. The role of the technicians and practitioners is of immense importance, and these people deserve a better status than they have received up till now. One way in which I feel that actions are speaking far louder than good intentions is the Government's proposal to introduce legislation before the Summer Recess to make mandatory awards to those who are accepted for the Higher National Diploma and the Diploma in Higher Education.

This means that any student who is admitted to a course for a degree—for the Diploma of Higher Education, the Higher National Diploma or teacher training—will be entitled to a mandatory award. It also means that some mature students who are reading for a university-degree and who up till now have received only a discretionary award will henceforward receive awards as a matter of right. This, again, is a very important—and not only for young people. Here, I am particularly thinking of the housewife, who may no have any other financial resources of her own and who has not been able to take up further training. The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, asked me about progress made in the reorganisation of higher education in the non-university sector. This. I think, covers one of the points. The planning process initiated by Circular 7/73 is already under way, but so far my right honourable friend has taken final decisions about the future of only 9 out of the 163 colleges. We appreciate the anxiety that the delay is causing, but we are going ahead as far as we can; and, again, if the noble Lord would like further information perhaps he will let me write to him about that, as rather a lot of detail is involved.

Perhaps I may now come on to one of the main points of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Blake—the question of parental choice and the rights of parents. A great deal has been said about this, and I shall try not to reiterate what other noble Lords have said. But it is true, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, pointed out, that when all the pretence is stripped away we have to face the brutal fact that the majority of parents have no real possibility of choice about the school in which their children are to be educated. If they are associated with a particular religious denomination and that denomination has been able to provide a school accessible to them, then that is fine; but even then it is also true that the Church schools cannot always take all those whose parents wish them to go there. Therefore, even that choice is restricted. It has to be by geography, by demography, by economics and in this way as well.

In densely populated areas it may often be possible for a parent to choose between two or mpre schools, but in sparsely-populated rural areas this cannot really be under almost any system unless we had such an economic Utopia that we had practically one school per family—and then there would be all sorts of social difficulties arising out of that. But one could not envisage a system where you could have this sort of free choice, and in my view this is what the comprehensive system is all about. Most authorities, even those most heavily burdened, have found ways of allocating their school places in a flexible and considerate manner; and here I think it is true—and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, will agree with me—that, on the one hand, we are very anxious both to support and encourage the autonomy of the local education authorities whereas, on the other hand, one finds a great deal of apathy in localities unless something arises and people feel strongly about their own child or school. But until then they do not even take sufficient interest in the election of their representatives, or bother to take interest at a point where action could follow. So very much more participation would also have its effect on the education system, as well as direct involvement of parents with their children and with the schools.

I think we should also face the fact (I cannot remember at the moment, but I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who pointed this out) that we do not always know—and I speak as a parent myself—what is best for our own children. What we do know is what we would like for them. I well remember (and though I say so now, she would probably kill me if she heard me) my daughter's struggle to try to pass the 11-plus and of the trauma that the whole family went through—with, at the time she was taking it, no comprehensive in our area. Really, the alternatives then were either to go into one of the local secondary modern schools—and, quite frankly, we are all aware now that a great many of them were certainly not up to any sort of educational scratch—or to go to a private school. This, let us face it, is really the choice that has been available, or not available, for most parents.

When one comes to the question of the independent schools, I think the advice given by my noble friend Lord Annan is probably good on this occasion so far as Members opposite are concerned: to leave well alone for the moment. As to the phrase "social engineering", if it is used in the right context I cannot see anything wrong with it; but I do not know how far you can carry social engineering when there is a situation today in which parents are putting the names of their children down for public schools or other independent schools before the age of one, and sometimes even before the child is born. How can one possibly know at that time how the child is going to develop, and what is going to be the right school for that child?

The parental right must surely attach to the choice of the right place for the child. Then we come to a phrase which has only been touched on in this House—"parent power"—but which has not been used as often as it has in another place. It may be an alliterative catchphrase, but I find it contentious, provocative and meaningless except in terms of confrontation. I think that it is a phrase which when it is used must put up the backs of any teacher or head at the idea of two powers confronting each other. What we really want is a greater parental interest, and we must face the fact that this very generalised interest is fairly recent, though it is an extremely good thing. I read a report in The Times yesterday which, it is true, was critical of the schools in London, but one of the mothers said, "A few years ago, none of us would have said anything, but would have just taken the education which was handed out to us. Now we are getting up at public meetings." I think that that is good. I think that parental pressure is very important and should be used.

So far as involvement is concerned, several noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, raised the question of parents on governing bodies of schools. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Blake, the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, also raised this point. There is no reason why parents should not be represented and it is up to them and to the local education authority to see that parents are represented as governors of the local schools. There is nothing against this and there is no statutory reason why they should not be.

I turn now to a point made by several people and put most eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, regarding the voluntary aided schools. She was kind enough to send me the question which she was going to raise about ILEA'S responsibility for the site value. The answer is, No, as long as the school retains aided status. The noble Baroness raised two further questions. As she kindly suggested it, I wonder whether she would mind if I wrote to her about these points because I shall only have to scrabble over the information and not really give the noble Baroness the answer the questions deserve.

The noble Baroness also moved on to the question of direct grant grammar schools and mentioned that I had been a pupil at South Hampstead High School. That is quite true. With great respect, I think that the direct grant schools and grammar schools served their day and their generation and, after all, they did produce the present Prime Minister, many of his colleagues and, right at the end of the line, as the noble Baroness has pointed out, myself. They certainly gave a helping hand to children of the middle class and sometimes of the working class who were able to squeeze themselves through the scholarship net. They gave an education comparable to that received by some of the more privileged and rich in the public schools.

To-day, however, I think we must accept that there has been an enormous change. What we are finding is that in the sixth forms, particularly in comprehensive schools to-day, they find this really rather irrelevant because academic standards depend on the current teaching staff and the head in any school, and gifted children may receive stimulation anywhere and—let us be quite honest—they may also miss out anywhere. There is no way in which one can completely do away with any margin of error and make sure that everything is perfect for every child, but what is absolutely a fact is that, under the other system—and I can quite understand the noble Baroness's feeling about the school and her wish to retain the good—and outside the comprehensive system, we always had a pattern of people who went through into grammar schools and who were not up to the standard and found it very difficult to keep up and perhaps dropped out, and, on the other hand, of people who went to a secondary modern because they had just failed to make it but who, given a further chance, and without having to be selected at the age of 11, would have developed and would have had a chance to catch up. I think that this is a point which my noble friend Lord Snow should bear in mind.

BARONESS BROOKE OF YSTRAD-FELLTE

My Lords, before the noble Baroness leaves that point I should just like to ask one question. I do not want to take up the time of the House as it is very late, but is the noble Baroness suggesting that the direct grant schools to-day are not making the same contribution as when they produced the Prime Minister and the noble Baroness?

BARONESS BIRK

No, my Lords. I think that some of them are making the same contribution, but what I am saying is that I am not prepared to accept that they are making a far greater contribution than the comprehensive schools. What is interesting is that the recent figures for people going on to higher education show that 50 per cent. of people who go to grammar schools and who, one would have thought, through the advantages they have had, will therefore go on to higher education, do not in fact do so. With regard to the point which was made by my noble friend Lord Snow about people from comprehensive schools not getting through, I am quite sure he appreciates that it is still really at the stage where people are going through these schools and are gradually reaching the university level, and that we have a far greater range of other further education possibilities. A number of people did go on, and there are some, though certainly not as many as was probably the case in the past, who are at university but who would be better off in other colleges or in other work. This is a point which I think was made most wittily by the noble Lord, Lord Butler.

It is unfair to blame the comprehensive system for this, and what I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, is that what one certainly wants to achieve are the academic standards which have emerged in many of the direct grant and other forms of grammar school, but these should be integrated in a comprehensive system which will itself be flexible. There should be no rigidity. I know that at the moment a lot of people do not like it, but there is no other answer if we are to give the best to the greatest number of children in our society. If one creams off 20 or 25 per cent., one does not have a really comprehensive system and there is no chance of equality of opportunity, which is really what we are trying to develop in our educational system.

I shall go very rapidly, taking just one minute to cover the other points which I hope to make. My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor referred to the high standards which are being achieved and it is true that, while people often look back on many things nostalgically— it is what I call the "nostalgic syndrome"—they feel that standards to-day are not so high as they were before—

LORD SNOW

My Lords, if my noble friend will forgive my interrupting for one moment, there is nothing whatever nostalgic about this matter. Manchester Grammar School is still one of the really great schools of the world, by any conceivable standard. My noble friend really cannot have it all ways. She said five minutes ago that comprehensive schools are not experimental any longer, but she is now saying that they are. She is also saying that one is being nostalgic about some of the greatest educational institutions on earth.

BARONESS BIRK

My Lords, I think that my noble friend has misunderstood me. I said that there was experiment in comprehensive schools. I said that the comprehensive system is no longer an experiment—it has been with us for so long. I am perfectly aware and I accept, as I said to the noble Baroness, and as I say to my noble friend Lord Snow, that there are outstanding grammar schools. Nevertheless, this was at the expense of the majority. Very few people got there and it was not always a question of parents; it was certainly not a question of parents' choice. The question was whether the children were able to get in, whether they were accepted by the head teacher, and what was the demand on the school at that time. In the best of all possible worlds I should like us to have it all ways, but we cannot and the best, it seems to me, so far as standards are concerned, so far as opportunity is concerned and—and this is the important thing—so far as developing the potential of the young person is concerned, is within the comprehensive system, which is flexible in terms of numbers, which is always looking ahead and not static in curriculum.

So far as standards are concerned, a special unit of the Department has been established in order to assess achievement and to see what is going on so that one is monitoring what is happening in the comprehensive school. So far as the curriculum is concerned, obviously it is impossible to deal at this time with the whole question, but one thing I personally feel strongly about and what is alarming to me, is that to-day in half the girls' schools—and this applies to the whole range, whether comprehensive or otherwise—the pupils do not appear to be made aware of opportunities in industry and commerce. Going across the whole area the science laboratories in girls' schools are far inferior to those in boys' schools, so it is not surprising that the opportunities for girls later on in work are far fewer. I certainly hope that this matter will be dealt with in the Sex Anti-Discrimination Bill which the Government are bringing forward.

Finally, on the question that we have discussed at great length, the school leaving age, I am very glad that the consensus of opinion in this House has been that it should stay as it is and be given a fair chance. To cover the points raised about young people obtaining apprenticeships or going out to work I would say that much more could be done in linking up work experience locally which, of course, means the co-operation of local industry.

Lastly, of course there is a need for more resources. There is a need for the greater involvement of parents in the running of the schools. There is the greatest need all the time to be looking at standards and trying to improve them. This is absolutely essential and we should not sit back and be complacent about it—and I do not think any of us are. We believe in choice—it is true not to provide privilege and not selection. We welcome constructive criticism concerned with the welfare of the child, and our aim is with the individual. But every man, woman and child lives in society, and therefore our aim—and by this I mean the Government's aim—must be social as well. Therefore, in my opinion there is no conflict between this and what I would call in the best sense, social engineering for the proper social aims.

The Earl OF SWINTON

My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, may I say that I was very encouraged when I asked the question about the setting up of the Warnock Committee on the Education of Physically and Mentally Handicapped Children. I was greatly stirred by sympathetic noises not only from this side of the House but also from the other. The noble Baroness has not answered me. I do not want to press her because I did not give her formal notice, but could she write to me in the next day or two and tell me what is happening?

BARONESS BIRK

My Lords, I have actually got the answer, but I did not see that the noble Earl was present. Mrs. Mary Warnock has been appointed Chairman of the Committee. The remaining membership will be announced very shortly and the Committee will start work in September. It will undertake a very full investigation of the educational needs of handicapped children and young people, taking account of the medical aspects and of preparation for employment.

I know there are a number of other points that have been raised that I have not been able to cover, but I hope that noble Lords will bear with me and will allow me to write to them or perhaps have a word with them.

The Earl OF SWINTON

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness. I am grateful for that reply.

9.5 p.m.

LORD BLAKE

My Lords, I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken the trouble to take part in this debate. It has been a very interesting afternoon and evening to me, and I feel that I have learned a great deal which I did not know previously.

I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, and the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack, for the courtesy and fullness with which they replied to my more partisan points. I did not expect them to agree with everything that I said, and I do not think they will expect me to agree with everything that they have said. But it is too late in the day to raise these matters, and I would conclude by mentioning two things: first—although he is not here I hope he will eventually read this in Hansard—I should like to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester on his maiden speech, which was concise and an example of brevity which some other noble Lords should perhaps imitate more than they do. It was a most able speech and we hope we shall hear him often again.

The other thing I should like to say is that it was well worth having this debate if only to drag the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, from out of his fastness in the Master's Lodge at Trinity College, Cambridge, to come down and speak to us this afternoon. It was a most interesting, witty and amusing contribution to the debate. Having said that, my Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.