Education Expenditure (Hansard, 2 August 1982)

§ Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton)
Yes, my Lords. In 1978–79 net recurrent expenditure per head on the education of children under 16 in England and Wales was £679. The latest year for which we have out-turn figures is 1980–81. The per capita expenditure then was £703. The figures I have given are all expressed in terms of November 1981 prices.

§ Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that bewildering array of splendid figures. May I ask him whether I should be right to assume that both real spending per child and the teacher-pupil ratio of 18 to 1 will remain at their present record levels?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, I can relieve my noble friend's bewilderment by saying that I make it that the expenditure in real terms per capita has gone up £24 in two years. As to the teacher-pupil ratios, these are at the best ever level, and we hope to maintain them at that level.

§ Baroness Gaitskell
My Lords, may I ask the Minister to tell us, as well as giving us these figures, how many unemployed young people there were in 1978–79?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, I think that is a completely different question.

§ Baroness David
My Lords, may I ask the Minister how he reconciles these figures with Her Majesty's Inspectorate's report, which says that many subjects have disappeared from the curricula in many schools, that remedial teaching has disappeared and that certain subjects, like craft, technology and music, are not provided in every school? Are the figures not partly the result of the fall in rolls?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, the noble Baroness is arguing in some respects from the particular to the general. What Her Majesty's Inspectorate has shown is that there has been a great variation in the level of expenditure among local authorities, and, more particularly, in the value for money which those authorities get. 516 In some authorities, children have fared worse than in others for reasons other than economic. As to the question of falling rolls, I think the noble Baroness has put her finger on it. The savings in having one or two desks empty in a classroom do not in fact save anything at all, and there is not a saving in the expenditure of local authorities from the fall in rolls which is in any way commensurate with the reduction in the number of pupils on the roll.

§ Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, following on from that, may I ask my noble friend whether it is correct that the rolls have fallen more rapidly than the education budget in the life of this Government? May I ask also whether, on the other hand, facilities in schools should improve because an additional £20 million has been provided to local authorities for books and equipment?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, the noble Baroness makes it difficult to answer questions when she phrases them so closely to the terms in which the answer would have been given. I can confirm that we included £20 million in the rate support grant settlement for 1982–83 to allow authorities to restore their expenditure on school books and equipment to its 1978–79 level, and there is some evidence to suggest that even prior to this there had been some increase in the level of purchases of school books.

§ Lord Gladwyn
My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the inspectors' reports are likely to be published ever?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, I think it is the experience that they usually are.

§ Lord Orr-Ewing
My Lords, among the reforms of our educational system, of which we are delighted to hear, will my noble friend consider, in the future, persuading children to stay at school until they have reached a minimum level of standard in craft and in learning? Is it not important to raise the standards of the less privileged and the less intelligent children so that they can get jobs and thus contribute to and improve our economy and our well-being?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, in answer to a Question at the end of last week I was at pains to show how this is happening and the very great importance which the Government attach to the performance of children who are not intellectually gifted but may be gifted in other ways equally valuable to themselves and to the community.

§ Lord Avebury
My Lords, is there not a golden opportunity now, with falling school rolls, to redeploy teachers into pre-school education, particularly in the areas where a high proportion of both parents go out to work and in areas where there is a high concentration of ethnic minorities, as recommended by the Rampton report?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, the Government have under review continually the best use of teachers, as have local education authorities; but as the Question relates 517 specifically to—no, I cannot shelter behind the terms of the noble Baroness's Question. We would accept that teachers should be put where the need is greatest, but, of course, this has to be done in consultations with the local authorities, who cannot be directed to it.

§ Lord Molloy
My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that another important aspect would be to change the Government's economic policy, so that neither the gifted nor the non-gifted are penalised when they both join the dole queue?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, I am not quite sure that I can follow the full irony of that supplementary question. If the Government were to abandon their economic policy which at last is showing fruit, I think the people who would suffer from it most would be those who are now the youngest—the school-children.

§ Baroness David
My Lords, is the Minister aware—I guess that perhaps he is not—that the Educational Publishers' Council has produced a spending guide for local education authorities in which it points out that, if the local authorities were to spend in real terms what they spent in 1978–79 on books and equipment, the figure would be nearly £80 million and not £20 million which was the figure mentioned by the noble Baroness.

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, the suspicion with which I greet that figure is perhaps based on the fact that I have not yet read it. I shall read it with interest. The fact remains that the Government are restoring standards from which there had been some slippage, and I think the House will welcome that.