FURTHER EDUCATION AND THE VENABLES REPORT

HL Deb 11 May 1977 vol 383 cc242-57

2.52 p.m.

Baroness LEE of ASHERIDGE rose to call attention to the present state of further education with special reference to the Venables Report; and to move for Papers. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I have brought with me not only the final official report of the Venables Committee, but also an interim report which was published almost a year earlier. I have done so, because I am most anxious that the type of misunderstanding which surrounded a Venables Report almost 10 years ago, when the planning committee of the Open University was set up, should not be repeated on this occasion. Anyone who looks at the interim report will find the statement that was sent out to the other universities, technical colleges, WEAs, extra-murals and the rest, asking for their views and advice on the proposals in this report on continuing education.

To begin with, I should like to get rid of any idea that the present Venables Report is a bit of empire building on the part of an Open University seeking to belittle or replace the marvellous work that has been done by so many people over the wide field of adult education. That is not its purpose. Indeed, the report clearly states that none of its present funds, which of course are used to promote graduate, post-graduate and research studies, could possibly be diverted to financing continuing education on a lower level. I hope that the Department of Education and Science and the whole educational establishment will consider and accept this Venables Report, which lays down the ground plan for an open college to follow the Open University. It is not even asked that the Open University should do this work itself. It is simply seeking to give the benefit of its experience gained during the last eight years in the techniques of mass communication to those who are working on a less demanding level.

I should also like to clear up another misunderstanding. Many of my own Labour and trade union colleagues were resentful about 10 years ago, because they said "What nonsense this is! Why put the cart before the horse? Why establish a university, when there is a crying need for more money to be given to adult education, to the extra-murals and technical colleges?" I want to say to them, quite frankly: first, that I was not asked to take over the work of other Ministers who were dealing with adult education; and, secondly, that from my experience in dealing with senior civil servants, and with my own senior colleagues, I was quite certain that there could be no real breakthrough if I had surrendered to the very considerable pressures that I was under to lower my standards and abandon the concept of an independent university. I was driven to this conclusion, because we are all the prisoners of our early education, our early home life and our early schooling, and there was not the slightest sympathy among senior officials in the Treasury or in the Department of Education and Science for the concept of an Open University—with one wonderful exception.

Almost the only person I did not quote at that time, whom I wanted to involve in the experiment with the Open University, was Sir William Armstrong—as he then was, now Lord Armstrong. Of his own accord, he came along to Belgrave Square, where we had got ourselves into respectable accommodation away from the Curzon Street slum where the Department of Education and Science was then functioning, because he wanted to know whether it might be possible to have some courses related to the work of the Civil Service. It may have been because of his early Salvation Army beginnings—I do not know. But he helped me to shepherd five Parmanent Secretaries around the hospitable dining table of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, in order that, in that grey twilight, they might appreciate that we were serious people. The main function of that dinner was to try to ensure that as much as possible of the profits, which I was sure would one day be made both at home and abroad from the sale of technical equipment, books and the rest, should go to the University or the Treasury, and only a minimum should go into private pockets. But on the educational side, I must also make an exception of Mr. Ted Short, as he then was, now a Member of your Lordships' House. It may be that he was influenced by the fact that he had been a secondary schoolmaster, and had got his degree by the long and lonely way of the London University external course.

It is very important at this stage that there should not be any renewal of the old resentments between the adult education establishment and the Open University. By its Charter, the Open University is asked not only to give degree courses, but also to help in a wider sense. If I may respectfully ask your Lordships to read this Venables Report and to come to your decisions on what it actually says, not on secondhand or third-hand reports that you may have of what it is supposed to be saying, I hope that you will agree with me that we can now make a dramatic advance in continuing education, which has always been called the Cinderella of the education world. Those of us who have any knowledge of the matter know of the inferior accommodation, the badly-paid staff and the heroic work which has been done. I have just had a note from the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, who says that he will be here for a short time but will have to leave, reminding me that he was a member of the original Tawney Committee on Adult Education.

Nobody is trying to take away from dedicated men and women the credit which is their clue. However, the time comes, whether you are dealing with Oxbridge, the red brick universities or with other kinds of adult education, when we have to summon up enough courage and imagination to take a fresh look at what is happening. If noble Lords study the membership of the present Venables Committee on Further Education, they will see that it has upon it representatives from the trade union side, industry and commercial colleges. It is not, in any sense, a group only of Open University people.

I should like to clear up another misunderstanding. The original Venables Committee had upon it representatives from areas of activity far outside those covered by the conventional universities. I was told that I had packed the committee with Vice-Chancellors. It was very useful having Lord Annan, Lord Fulton, and Lord Briggs upon it, as well as a few more of that kind. It was very useful indeed to have the help of some of the leading teachers and administrators in the older universities on the original planning committee of the Open University. But in addition, Sir William Alexander, as he then was, now a Member of your Lordships' House, very gallantly accepted my invitation to be a member of the planning committee, and later on he helped us in many ways. Dr. Roy Shaw, who is now Secretary General of the Arts Council, was the Professor of Adult Education at Keele University. He did a wonderful job. Most of his colleagues were scared stiff, but he and I went around the country speaking to ice cold meetings of university people. They thought that the Open University was going to take away their jobs. Now, of course, we are the greatest of friends. They have dis- covered that the Open University needed them and that it has enlarged their opportunities. Indeed, one cannot operate an Open University without the help of the staff of other universities. Therefore we have won our spurs; that is, our academic acceptance. It is from a position of strength that the Open University can now venture to advise and offer to cooperate with others in order to find out whether the techniques which they learned in those years can be applied.

There was a time when the Open University was almost strangled at birth. I want to express my thanks to Mrs. Margaret Thatcher for the rescue job which she did at that time. As Shadow Minister of Education, she went out to Walton Hall, where she saw that she was dealing with serious, responsible people. They had a marvellous argument with one another. She came away not entirely convinced but knowing that this was a serious proposition. That visit stood us in good stead. When there was a change of Government in 1970, Mr. Iain Macleod became Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had the axe ready for execution when Mrs. Thatcher stayed his hand. Regarding the tragic early loss of Mr. Macleod, I want to say how generous he was to my husband when he became Minister of Health. He said, "I can't find anything much here to change", or wows to that effect. They were good friends. Neither of them was of the stuff that good Lobby fodder is made of, and very often they paired. If Mr. Macleod had had more time and could have visited Walton Hall to meet the people who were working there, I feel certain that he would have come around to an acceptance of its value. But, alas! his life was tragically cut off. Mrs. Thatcher was a very good friend indeed at that time, because she knew about it, although did not agree with everything.

As I have mentioned the Leader of the Opposition, may I say a word about the Leader of the Government, Mr. Harold Wilson, as he then was, in the 1964 to 1970 Parliament. However much they may disagree with him on other issues, it is too discreditable for people nowadays to try to take from him his pride in the fact that without his obstinate, steadfast insistence there would have been no Open University.

Several noble Lords: Hear, hear!

Baroness LEE of ASHERIDGE

My Lords, that happens to be the truth. Mr. Wilson, as he then was, had little or no support among his colleagues, although one of the exceptions to the rule who will address your Lordships later is sitting in front of me. It was very cold, windy weather, but Mr. Wilson held out for the Open University and was incredibly generous towards me. He had a few other matters to attend to, so I was given a free hand. He gulped a little when I said that I did not like the consortium idea: that the Open University had to establish its academic credentials as an independent university, taking second place to no other university, otherwise we had no right to ask students to undertake a long, hard road of study.

I should like to continue my roll of honour, but time forbids. Too many are involved. However, again we were fortunate in having Sir Hugh Greene as head of the BBC. I hope that the present good relations between the BBC and the Open University academics will continue. While a College of the Air dealing with people who left school at 15 or 16, people of any age, sex or colour, will not be doing exactly the same work as the Open University or applying the same techniques as the Open University, very much can be learned from the success of the older establishments.

Also it is true that we have technical colleges all over the country, although some parts are better served than others. There are many people who simply cannot leave their homes to go to a central place of education. There can be the intelligent young wife with young children, who simply cannot go out in the evening. There can be the invalids. As noble Lords know, the Open University has done more for invalids, who are natural students, than all of the other universities put together, because it is able to get through to them in their own homes. Then there are people who simply do not want to go out again at the end of a day's work. Also, they would find it very difficult to go out again for reasons of travel, expense, and distance. Instead they have the facilities which the Open University provides. They have their correspondence courses, their counsellors and advisers. Also, they have the oppor- tunity of meeting one another now and again at summer schools. There is not a single part of the old, established field of adult education which needs to be left out.

However, we do need to get rid of a certain dowdiness that is caused, if you like, by poverty. If the adult education system has been called the Cinderella of the educational world, I hope that Sir Peter Venables will be regarded as the Prince Charming who is waiting to take her to the ball, because that is what the Open University is seeking to do. We were fortunate beyond words to have Sir Peter Venables, that distinguished teacher and administrator, as chairman of the original planning committee of the Open University. We have been doubly lucky in persuading him to be chairman of this Committee on Continuing Education. If his committee has its way—and I repeat that the committee is not composed solely of Open University people—then I believe we can put fresh currents of enthusiasm and opportunity over this whole field.

I know just how bitterly some people, like my good friend Michael Young, felt when they could not persuade me to abandon my type of university and help with the work they were doing at a lower level. Michael Young is a very distinguished worker in adult education; indeed, he was one of the first to be given an honorary degree by the Open University. But I was not acting out of caprice. I said that senior civil servants and Ministers were prisoners of their early days—I was a prisoner too; I did not quite see myself in that role at the time but, looking back, I realise that I, too, was completely the product of my early youth. Could anyone come to me and tell me that because a man earns his living digging coal, or assembling cars, or running a lorry, or delivering letters, or emptying dustbins, he is intrinsically intellectually inferior to another man who earns his living in a lawyer's office, or in the pulpit, or in a doctor's surgery? Your Lordships cannot tell that to me because I have the advantage of knowing both worlds, and there are the natural students in both worlds and also the natural non-students.

All that we are seeking to do is something that I think any country must do that wants to be called civilised. What we are seeking to do is to bring the best in the Arts and the best in education within reach of the entire population. In most fields of government it is laws and regulations and restrictions; but in this magic world you do not have to go to a technical college, you do not have to go to a concert hall, you do not have to go to a theatre, museum or gallery: you are absolutely free to choose—why should you go if you do not want to? But if you have the wish or the need they ought all to be brought within your reach much more so than at present.

So in those early days of the Open University I saw it as a continuation of the work that I was asked to do in promoting the Arts; and, in conclusion, I should like to say that when I was first doing the work as Minister responsible for the Arts I received a great deal more support and encouragement from your Lordships' House than I got from the other place—maybe because more of your Lordships were involved. The noble Earl, Lord Drogheda, came a-courting; he was delighted—we wiped out the debt at Covent Garden, and they were getting more money than they had before. Why should not your Lordships show more interest, with so many people who have the time and opportunity and public concern to help to look after the great museums, galleries, theatres and the rest? Why should you not be delighted? The other House, which is more important —if your Lordships will forgive me—than your Lordships' House because it is the elected Chamber, was overwhelmed with economic and other problems and therefore it had not the same time to give to the Arts. I am appealing to your Lordships to do the same job again over the whole field of adult education. Read the Venables Report; read the Interim Report. I have checked that there are some copies available in the Printed Paper Office. I would also respectfully ask your Lordships to read the book that our distinguished Vice-Chancellor, Sir Walter Perry, has written because this tells in great detail the early story.

So I end as I began, my Lords, by saying that the Open University had a long period of gestation and a difficult birth. There is no reason why the College of the Air should go through all those difficulties and misunderstandings again. The Open University now, out of strength, is able to hold out a helping hand to the whole field of adult education, and I hope that hand will be grasped as warmly as is now done in the relationship between the newest of our universities and the oldest. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.16 p.m.

The Lord Bishop of DURHAM

My Lords, I am sure all Member!, of your Lordships' House will be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, for giving us an opportunity to debate this report. I am only sorry that the list of speakers appears to be so thin, not least because this leaves me in a somewhat exposed position. I also greatly welcome the initiative taken by the Open University in commissioning the report. I am afraid I am not able to follow the noble Baroness in commenting on the internal political complexities which lie behind the relationship between the Open University and other bodies, but I should like to take this opportunity of registering satisfaction that the Open University exists, expressing thanks for those who worked so hard to set it up, and also to see this report as evidence of its continuing liveliness.

I wish to make only three brief points, but I believe the first two points go to the heart of the general section of the report, which is about the concept of continuing education rather than about the particular contribution made to it by the Open University. The first point I wish to make is to commend the very broad understanding of the objectives of continuing education which the report spells out. I do not believe that we in this country have yet really latched on to the concept of continuing education or seen its importance, not only for individuals but for the health of our society as a whole.

It is good to see the end of the old distinction between vocational and non-vocational education, particularly since this can so easily lead to bias against so-called non-vocational education in times of financial stringency. I am sure the report is absolutely right when it emphasises the need to help individuals to grow, to widen their experience and to become more responsive to change. I should like to quote a few sentences from paragraph 127 of the report, in which I believe this is set out extremely well. That paragraph says: Education enables individuals to cope with change and also provides the means to influence and effect change. Continuing education must enable individuals to grow and develop so that they have greater powers of choice, and are able effectively to participate in influencing the course of future changes, which may concern them not only as individuals but also as members of groups, and as part of a social structure. A main purpose of continuing education may thus be seen as enabling individual citizens in a democratic society more freely and constructively to change and sustain that society". I regard that as an extremely important statement of aims. Perhaps one might sum it up in terms of flexibility, critical awareness, balance, and a broad perspective. These are the qualities needed in a changing society by very many of its citizens—qualities, I dare to say, needed even more than technical expertise. But I also want to add to that list the word "integration". Integration seems to me of fundamental importance in an era of cultural fragmentation. If I dare to put in one piece of jargon from some American philosophers of education, may I slip in the word "synoptics", which, in case noble Lords are mistaken, in this context has nothing to do with the Gospels. "Synoptics" is used of those subjects in the educational curriculum whose aim is to integrate and relate other skills and realms of meaning to one another.

The aim of synoptics, broadly, is to raise the large questions about meaning which can easily be ignored or by-passed in the various specialisms. In terms of the curriculum, typical examples of synoptic subjects are history, philosophy, and, of course, religion. But just because they have this broad function, they can too easily be overlooked in educational programmes geared to more immediate practical concerns. I would say that it is when human beings learn to integrate that they begin to grow. Education is not a straight line progression up a narrow one-way track. It is at its most exciting and productive precisely when different areas of knowledge are brought together, and this can most easily happen in those who are adult or at least relatively mature.

I believe that the qualities of flexibility, balance, breadth of perspective, that I have earlier referred to, arise out of this kind of experience. That is why I very much hope that the integrative subjects will not be overlooked in the field of continuing education, and why I was a little disturbed that page 104 of this report, where there is a list of suggested adult concern courses, is rather thin on that kind of topic. For example, even with a very wide selection of problems which adults are supposed to encounter, I see no whisper at all of anything to do with ethics, which seems very odd indeed, but that nevertheless you can, if you like, learn how to run a local pressure group. I suppose it is a sign of the times that we should have the one without the other.

My second point concerns the availability of continuing education, and in particular the difficulty of trying to ensure that the people who most need it are encouraged to make use of it. I think there are some very helpful practical recommendations in the report, which I hope the Government will take note of. In particular I draw attention to the suggestion of positive discrimination in favour of those who have not had a higher education in any form up to the point of wishing to join a course. I also hope that what is said about paid educational leave will be taken extremely seriously. But even recommendations of this kind, I believe, are not going to help very much in the crucial period of two or three years after the 16 year old has left school, when attitudes towards further education are becoming set. It is not uncommon to find 17 or 18 year olds in this category who, tragically, have deeply resented and deliberately wasted their last year at school, who are now ready to see the point of further education and yet do not know how to get back into the educational stream. I believe that much more attention needs to be given to that crucial period. Perhaps we need to think of a much more gradual transition between the world of education and the world of work from the age of 15 onwards. Ideally, I believe, work should become an accepted part of school experience around this time, and, conversely, further education an accepted part of work experience. This, of course, would mean national planning of continuing education as a whole, not hiving it off as something quite separate from what is done through schools.

While on the subject of availability and motivation, I should just like to add that the voluntary agencies, including the Churches, have an enormous network of contacts, often among the very people who would not spontaneously think of making use of the educational facilities which are available; and it seems to me that there is a very fruitful area of cooperation here between the voluntary and the statutory authorities which ought to be exploited more than it is.

That leads to my final point, a very brief one, which is simply to remind your Lordships' House that the Churches are among the oldest protagonists of continued education, and, within the voluntary sector, are still among the largest agencies in providing it. The British Council of Churches in particular has tried to do some forward thinking on the subject and has recently launched a National Ecumenical Project in Further Education, for which it is hoping to appoint an executive officer. In a way the project reflects the traditional interests of the Churches, investigating the relationship between further education and the 1944 Act, looking critically at some of the values being transmitted through further education, being concerned with the personal and pastoral aspects of the whole educational enterprise; but also, and very significantly—and I have not seen mention of this anywhere else—developing multiracial inter-faith and international awareness in further education. This seems to me a highly important aim in today's society.

The Church of England greatly welcomes the Government's initiative in agreeing to set up a National Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education, and I would end by saying that, in view of the Churches' close concern with the subject and the new work which it is hoped to begin, we believe it is important that the Churches should be represented on any such council, at national and at local level, preferably through the British Council of Churches. We also hope that in this and other ways the existing work being done in the voluntary sector will be recognised and supported.

3.29 p.m.

Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY

My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Baroness for initiating this debate and allowing us to range over the whole field of further education, with special reference to the Venables Report, of course, but looking at further education as a whole. It is about this that I want to make one major point. Before I do so, I should like to thank the right reverend Prelate for his extremely thoughtful, and in some ways provocative, speech, which helps us to think in terms of the wider issues in which this question is set.

In particular, I should like to refer to the question of work experience and the possibility of placing it earlier in the curriculum, which is absolutely right. However, we must aim at something even more far-reaching than that. We must work out a whole system of education in which school and future adult working life are not as divorced as they are at the moment. In the great book The Need for Roots that the French writer and secular martyr, Simone Weill, wrote for France at the request of General de Gaulle's Government in exile, there is a remarkable passage where she tries to sketch out a scheme which involves learning what work is about at a very early age. It starts in the home, as still happens in a great many homes where children start to learn about work by helping their mothers about the house, or in farms, small businesses or workshops. Unfortunately, it cannot be applied to large factories and that was one of Simone Weill's complaints. She worked out, very roughly, a scheme as to how, throughout education, work and schooling can be kept in touch. It would be most difficult in our highly complex and industrialised society but I am sure that we should have it at the back of our minds as a goal at which to aim.

That goes further and wider than the one main point which I wish to make this afternoon—that is, the need in this area for a strategy, and for a machinery to carry out that strategy. We are seeing the beginnings of this with the acceptance of the National Council for Adult and Continuing Education. However, I should like to see a very strong organisation—a very strong machinery—for coordinating a strategy for all education beyond the age of 16. It may be right to make the boundary 18 years, or any other age, but I cannot help feeling—and this is my Party's point of view—that the proper moment at which to start pulling all further education together (and I mean "further" with a small "f") is the moment when compulsory schooling finishes.

That strategy, which would deal with all education beyond that stage, should have several guidelines—several words which define our objectives. The first is unity. All these forms of education—vocational and non-vocational, further, higher, permanent, recurrent, whatever we like to call them, down to the sixth form colleges and the colleges for further education—should be treated and looked at as one. Within that unity we must, of course, have diversity. By unity I do not mean by any manner of means that we should look for uniformity. On the contrary, we should look for as many different forms as possible. I think that the merging of the lines between the treatment of vocational and non-vocational training is long overdue. After all, we have always had fairly odd ideas about this. A great deal of the highest of high education is merely vocational training for dons and there is no real dividing line for the future.

That means that we must do our utmost to diversify forms of education, particularly in the country where people can reach it without having to travel too far. Of course, the Open University and an open college are wonderful institutions, but I wonder whether we are right in closing some of our country education colleges, such as those at Hereford and Alnwich, instead of using them as more diversified colleges for further education of different kinds.

The third guideline is mobility. We must try as much as possible to have modular courses and credit systems so that students and staff can cross as easily as possible from one sector to another. There has been far too much watertight departmentalising in the past, and we must work away from that. Fourthly, there is the necessity for communication —for a good advisory careers service. We already have one, but it should go much further back into school life, just as work experience may go further back into school life. It should have an overall strategy for telling people much more and getting across to them all of the choices open to them, both in work and in education, at all phases of their careers.

Fifthly, we should aim for universality —that is, we should hope that no one will slip through the net. Of course, after a certain age it must all be voluntary but even before that the question of day release must be considered. I do not think that we have concentrated enough on trying to ensure that every boy or girl who leaves school at the age of 16 can have day release if he or she wishes it. In small firms it is often extremely difficult, and there are various other situations. Of course, it is not uniformly welcomed, even by the pupils themselves, but there is a real problem here which should be tackled and which can best be tackled by an overall view of the whole situation.

More help needs to be given to older students. On previous occasions I have raised in your Lordships' House the question of assistance with travel and the discrimination that seems to exist in favour of students under the age of 26 who can obtain various rebates on this, that and the other, as opposed to older students who may be just as badly off—indeed, if they have given up a job and have several children to support they may be worse off. I fully accept that the answers which I received to my questions are all that one can expect at present and with the present structure. However, we need to take an overall look at this whole area and we need a body which will produce this kind of strategy and machinery.

I am also delighted that there will be a National Council. It will be much better than the welter of nominated advisory committees that we have tended to have in the past. What we really need is what only it can give us and that can be achieved only if it is set up wholeheartedly and given real power to take initiatives and to plan. We have the vast body of the Department of Education and Science, which has often been criticised for lack of strategy. In one sense that is a totally fair criticism: in another sense it is unfair because I am not sure that it is for Government Departments in their Civil Service sense to develop strategy. That is something that must come at the will of politicians. However, in the educational field, it does not necessarily come from politicians. Secretaries of State for Education come and go. Not all that long ago we had a period where they came and went rapidly. Let us hope that that is not the case now. We have had good ones and bad ones—I think that now we have a very good one. We have had ones who have known nothing about education whatsoever and some who have known quite a lot—and the present one is one of those. What I am saying is that the system is not geared to producing an overall strategy and producing the machinery which will apply it.

On the one hand, you have a change of Secretaries of State who may, or may not, know something about the subject, and underneath a machinery which is there and ready to be used but which cannot work without political instigation. I think that that is what needs to be produced, and I think that that can be produced only by a national, independent body which is really given power to look at the whole area and to start things moving under way, subject of course to political control. What we need to do is to put a soul and a heart into this great machinery of the DES to produce something to improve and increase all the educational possibilities from the age of 16 on, from the end of compulsory schooling. I cannot think of anything which would be more healthy and more useful to the whole of our national life than that.