LORDS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 18 November 1976)

§ Lord DONALDSON of KINGSBRIDGE
My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 6, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 8.

§ Viscount ECCLES
My Lords, I should like to ask a question or two of the noble Lord. He knows perfectly well that there are nothing like enough qualified mathematics teachers. Those teachers will be grouped more strongly in some schools than others. In fact, there are schools—and I fear for some time there will continue to be schools—where really there are no teachers qualified to teach mathematics to A-level.
Since we have just agreed with the Commons that the words "wholly or partly" are restored in subsection (1) it means that no local authority has the legal right to send pupils to the schools where there are qualified mathematics teachers if there are no qualified ones in a comprehensive to which the child has originally been allocated. This is very serious. There is no disagreement between 1541 the Government and those on these Benches that the standards of mathematics have fallen, that the standards which we need under modern conditions should have risen and that industry and many other employers looking for young people with the basic mathematic skills are highly dissatisfied.
What can we do about it if we pass a Bill which legally prohibits any local authority from matching the pupils who would get the most benefit from the qualified mathematics teachers from doing so? In view of the rigidity of the Government on this question, the only thing they will be able to do about it is, roughly speaking, to disregard Clause 1, and I agree with my noble friend Lord Belstead that as soon as the Bill is passed local authorities will say, "We will not pay any attention to it; it makes absolute nonsense of our education system if we are not able to use to the full the qualified teachers we have." And there is no subject so important as mathematics in relation to the deficiencies of teachers today. Therefore, although I quite see that if one is wholly sold on the comprehensive principle and one does not want any form of selection by ability or aptitude, which is what Clause 1 says, one pushes it through, one does it to the damage of the children and against the national interest.

§ Lord ALEXANDER of POTTER-HILL
My Lords, we should not avoid facing this problem. The only solution which seems practicable if the Bill goes through is to recognise that it would be quite impracticable in comprehensive schools—even if they are of a considerable size, and one does not want them to be too large—to provide A-level mathematics teaching in all such schools (indeed, to provide sixth form teaching in all such schools) without having either sixth form colleges or tertiary colleges; in other words, bringing toegther those who wish to pursue these courses. The problem which the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, faces, and it is a difficult one, is whether this means that the teaching below that age, say 16, will be adequate. As I said earlier, I believe the problem starts earlier than that; in the primary school. We must face up to the issue that as soon as one takes a concentration of probably the best qualified teachers in mathematics and proposes to disperse them over all second- 1542 ary schools, there is no prospect of providing adequately for sixth form teaching in all schools.

§ Lord DONALDSON of KINGSBRIDGE
My Lords, there are serious problems over mathematics. We all know that and we have spent hours here and in another place discussing it, so I will not go over the ground again. We have said that one solution would be for a boy with a particular aptitude where a teacher was not available in a comprehensive school to go to a course at another school. This may sometimes be possible and at other times not, but there is no rigid exclusion of trying to get the best teaching here and it is wrong to suggest that there is. The Commons in their Reason are accurate in saying that the Amendment goes too far and allows children to be selected not for courses but for schools on aptitude, something against the entire comprehensive system which the Bill is here to try to enforce. Although, therefore, I have never—I think I have shown this to be the case in our discussions—taken less than very seriously the mathematics problem we have in the schools (and particularly it is a question of teachers, which is really nothing to do with the point before us) I hope noble Lords will not find it necessary to insist on the Amendment which the Commons have asked us to remove.