Adult and Further Education

HL Deb 20 June 1984 vol 453 cc345-82

6.20 p.m.

Baroness Lockwood rose to call attention to the urgent need for the expansion of adult and continuing education; and to move for Papers.

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in moving the Motion standing in my name, I am conscious of my own interest in and, indeed, my own indebtedness to adult education. Adult education in this country has a long and fine tradition, and therefore it is all the more regrettable to have to say, over 10 years after the Russell Report, that the priority given to it does not match the priority that it deserves, nor the priority that is so essential to the future needs of our country.

The service is very diverse. If your Lordships will permit a personal note, my own experience illustrates this. On leaving school at the age of 14, I received my vocational education in a private secretarial school and at the local tech, and later at other LEA classes I moved towards the arts, English literature, French and art itself. However, my liberal education came from the WEA in the voluntary sector, topped up by a period at Ruskin College, one of the few adult residential colleges in the country, which incidently received its mandatory grant status as a result of Russell. But in my days grants were difficult to come by. My own grant came from a charity in the voluntary sector, the Mary Macarthur Educational Trust, of which I now have the honour of being chairman, and which continues its contribution to women's education largely through awards for short-term courses.

My direct experience has continued by my membership of the Council of Hillcroft College, a residential college catering for second-chance opportunities for women, and by my presidency of Birkbeck College, which I am proud to have recently taken over from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning. Incidently, Birkbeck is the only university college catering solely for part-time students who, because they are part-time, do not qualify for mandatory grants, a factor adding to the overall financial problems of Birkbeck.

I have not covered all the facets of adult education—for example, the Open University—and I know that many of my noble friends will be picking up points which I have missed. But, as I have said, my experience illustrates the diversity of the adult education system, stretching as it does from the public to the voluntary and private sectors. Some would say that the system is too diverse. I would say that we need to preserve and develop all the strands, but more effective co-ordination is called for.

So far I have referred to adult education. It is a term and a concept with which we are all familiar. But we now have a newer and perhaps more appropriate term and concept: continuing education. Adult education conjures up a picture of filling in in adult life what has been missed in earlier education; whereas continuing education implies a continuous process of education throughout life, and that is certainly essential in today's fast-changing technological world. There is also a tendency to see another division: vocational and non-vocational education. In actual fact there has never been a clear division. LEA adult education has always spanned the two, and must continue to do so, and so too have other provisions.

Perhaps one of the reasons why the report of the Russell Committee did not have the same influence and impact as some of the reports on other sectors was the fact that its terms of reference were confined to non-vocational education. In future the two must be seen in tandem. We must ensure that continuing education does not become synonymous with vocational education, and sometimes there has been a tendency for it to do so in recent developments.

However, what are these recent developments? First, there has been the increased activity of the Manpower Services Commission: the New Training Initiative followed by specific reports on youth and adult training, leading to the introduction of YTS and the White Paper, Training for Jobs. These have been discussed before in your Lordships' House and they may be referred to again in today's debate. They are rightly concerned with vocational training, because that is the remit of the MSC. Like your Lordships. I am very conscious of the real needs in this area. An up-to-date training scheme for both initial and continuous retraining is essential for a viable and competitive industrial economy.

There are still many gaps in the system and a requirement for additional resources, especially if we are fully to utilise our human reserves and to match our competitors. That is without question. But what I would say in the context of this debate is that once resources are switched from the educational sector to the industrial sector, as Training for Jobs envisages, the infrastructure of our education system is weakened and its capacity to continue to provide adequately for non-vocational education in the FE sector is, as a consequence, also weakened.

My second point is that the DES's own initiatives in trying to strengthen educational-industrial links through such schemes as Pickup are welcome, although I would ask the Minister a specific question on Pickup. Why is it that, while other educational institutions are receiving an outright grant to get their schemes and organisation off the ground, the Open University is given only a loan, the interest on which has to be paid for by the university and is an added drain on its reduced resources?

The third recent development to which I would refer is the excellent report of the UGC Working Party on Continuing Education. This is a most significant report because it acknowledges the important role which the universities must play in the provision of part-time and continuing education in the future. Of its recommendations, I mention two. Recommendation (a) states that: the stated policy of universities should be to regard continuing education as a central part of their role and to give it status and recognition equal to research and the traditional teaching of undergraduates". Recommendation (e) states that: the UGC should review its present arrangements for indicating student numbers to universities with a view to allocating virement from full-time to part-time provision". Recommendations like this, involving a shift of status and a shift of resources, are central to any real move forward, and it is good to see a recognition of this in the UGC working party report. One hopes that the report is being taken seriously by policymakers.

I am not suggesting that the report has said the last word. It does not, for example, take aboard the problems created by the fact that part-time degree courses do not qualify for mandatory grants—a problem which, as I have said before, is of particular concern to women, and especially married women out of the labour market who have no resources of their own to pay fees, plus travelling expenses, perhaps plus baby-minders while they are out at classes. Nor does the report apparently fully comprehend both the advantages and the financial needs of a university college like Birkbeck, concerned purely with part-time students. This second problem, I hope, will be overcome in the consultations on the report, but the first is a matter which the DES itself should face up to.

The UGC working party report is also important for another reason. It clearly implies that falling rolls in schools should not lead to a contraction of numbers in the universities. On the contrary, this provides an opportunity for developing the new role of continuing education without damaging the prospects of the 18 year-olds. The present reduction in the numbers of 18 year-olds gives an added urgency to the need to act now if we are to stem the decline in our own competitive position relative to the rest of the industrial nations of the world.

There have also been other developments which have been more negative. In many ways we appear to have two strands: on the one hand a recognition of our problems and an attempt to cope with them; on the other hand we have the Government's determined policy to cut back on resources even if, as in the subject of our discussion today, it means cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Here one can cite three things: first, the 1981 UGC cuts, the full effects of which we have not yet been able fully to evaluate; secondly, the cuts on the WEA and the universities extra-mural departments, which noble friends will be picking up; thirdly, and far more important and far reaching, the cuts that local authorities themselves are suffering. One of the most frustrating features of education within the LEAs at the present time is that they are being asked to innovate, expand, initiate, but without the resources to do so, and in some cases with rate capping it will be a question of the more an authority innovates and initiates the more its resources will be cut.

Local education authorities have identified priorities, and I suggest that they are something like these: one, making provision for those lacking basic skills; two, making provision for the unemployed; three, contributing to the training and retraining needs to meet changing vocational opportunities; four, removing barriers to adult access to mainstream further and higher education; five, accepting responsibility to provide special education for the adult handicapped; six, providing adequately for women, which implies making provision for child care; and seven, providing adequate educational and counselling services for adults contemplating entering the complex field of education. In all these areas, except adult vocational training, the overwhelming proportion of expenditure falls upon local authorities.

Leeds, for example, spends £1 million on education for adults, excluding staffing costs. Of this 50 per cent. is spent on what it regards as "normal" programmes, 20 per cent. on basic skills courses, and 30 per cent. on special needs. It reckons that an additional £500,000 would be required to meet the increasing demands of the unemployed, of students moving from basic to more advanced courses, and the special needs of the handicapped. So far as I am aware, Leeds is not what the Government regard as a spendthrift authority but it is frustrated in its desire to provide the kind of service it knows is required. Its problems are shared by others, and this underlines the essential need for more resources.

The problem will not be solved simply by applying the principle of "self-financing" to the expansion of provisions. This is a principle which is creeping more and more into Government statements. Two dangers arise from it if we press it too far. One, the liberal and arts side of education will be squeezed disproportionately, and secondly there is also a danger that some of the essential vocational education will not be carried out at both advanced and lower levels if too great a demand is made on the participators or their industrial sponsors.

My Lords, I see two urgent priorities. First and overriding is the expansion of the resources for adult and continuing education. Second is the need for the establishment of a body to replace the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education. Whether it is to be advisory or more powerful I will not go into today, but I simply claim that the now proliferating number of schemes and experiments and the need to maintain a proper balance between vocational and non-vocational education require a body to oversee and co-ordinate this increasingly important sector of our education system. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

6.36 p.m.

Lord Vaizey

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, for introducing this Motion this afternoon, and particularly for doing so in such a moderate and interesting way. Despite my distinguished place on the list of speakers, which shows a charity on the part of the Chief Whip after the affair of last night, I am not speaking to defend the Government but rather to continue to ask some of the questions which the noble Baroness has asked.

I would say, however, in parenthesis, that in the difficult economic circumstances in which we find ourselves the Government are doing quite well, and a number of the initiatives which have been taken are important in their long-term consequences. I realised as the noble Baroness was speaking that it was 33 years ago when I took my first WEA class at Wisbech in the Fens. I vividly remember driving rackety cars across those misty lowlands which must be well known to the right reverend Prelate, and on one occasion bumping into Ely Cathedral, the fog was so thick.

The need for adult and continuing education is unquestionably growing, and growing for the kind of reasons which the noble Baroness mentioned. There is a growing gap in our society between the educational experience of the young and the old as the educational qualifications of the younger generation increase. That is particularly acute in the ethnic minorities where many of the older people are first generation immigrants, and the second generation are British born. That is a huge area which is, and must be, the sole responsibility of adult and continuing education.

There is the need that we had in the earlier debate this afternoon to stimulate culture and recreation. As the proportion of the population spending more and more time in leisure increases, so that need grows rapidly. There is the need which the noble Baroness brought out extraordinarily well to acquire new skills in this rapidly changing technological society, and to switch from basic manufacturing to the service sector. There are also the particular problems of the handicapped and other special groups who need to be extremely closely targeted.

I think that the Russell Report—and I greatly regret the death not so long ago of Sir Lionel Russell, who was a distinguished man in the field of education—was a landmark, and it is a tragedy that no party in power has ever seen fit to implement many of its major recommendations. It is increasingly being overtaken, however, as the noble Baroness pointed out implicitly in her speech, by the changes taking place in the structure of continuing and further education.

The first is perhaps the evolution of the concept of continuing education itself, which has increasingly replaced the words "adult" or "further" education as the concept which is in wide use, particularly with our European partners. All kinds of things have come on stream, as it were, since Russell. Perhaps the most important of these is the Open University which, after the brilliant start it was given by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx—I believe that "Rievaulx" is pronounced in some peculiar way, but I cannot remember how—has continued to grow. It is being re-examined now, but I see no reason why its continuance and its development should be considered to be under threat, purely because the Government have sought to re-examine the way it is financed and organised. I should have thought that it was ripe for a fundamental re-examination. It has done extraordinarily well so far and now we have to see how it will develop towards the year 2000.

I was particularly glad that the noble Baroness mentioned the White Paper Training for Jobs. I have a feeling that the Manpower Services Commission has initiated one of the most important changes in the structure of British education and training for skill that has ever occurred. It is an area in which we have fallen tremendously behind other nations, and this is a fresh start.

I am closely involved in this work myself and I am extremely optimistic about what will happen, despite the many shortcomings and problems which we are immediately facing. The speed with which the thing is going is commendable. I am particularly encouraged by the Youth Training Scheme, which I think eventually will become the major form of education for post-compulsory school-leavers in this country. I was particularly glad that the noble Baroness mentioned Pickup. Pickup is an extraordinarily good and innovative system. I was a little distressed by some of the things that the noble Baroness said about it, and I hope that the Minister will pay attention to what she said. She is a great expert in this field and it is important that Pickup, which is one of the major recent innovations, should be seen to succeed.

Thus I should like to conclude this necessarily brief speech by saying that I think that this is the area, particularly when the school population is declining so rapidly, which promises great growth; great growth not through the traditional forms of adult education, but through the new forms of adult education. Devoted though I am to the WEA and all it stands for—I hope it will continue to carry on its good work—it is the new areas that we must examine and become excited about today.

6.43 p.m.

Baroness Seear

My Lords, I have to apologise to the House for the fact that, for the reasons that I have explained to the Minister, it will not be possible for me to stay until the end of this debate.

The Government have a favourite slogan, "value for money". Apart from the fact that we hear it rather often, no one can seriously take exception to it as an idea. The point I want to put forward and to stress in the time allowed is that adult education, in its various forms, gives remarkably good value for money. If the Government want to make economies, this is not the place to make them in their own terms, let alone any other terms that may be put forward.

I should like to illustrate this point by referring to what has been going on at the college of which I have had the honour to be chairman for the last 15 years, Morley College. This is not a boost for Morley, but it shows what can be done with very small resources and how to obtain extremely good value for money. At the present time there are no fewer than 10,000 students attending courses at Morley College. There are 650 different courses. These are controlled and organised by 14 full-time academic and supervisory staff-14.for the whole of that activity. The rest of the teaching is done by part-time tutors. Some of them are in other jobs, but do part-time teaching at Morley, and many are extremely distinguished and work for a variety of reasons. It is an extremely economical way of running very good courses.

There is here an illustration of what can be done on a shoestring in terms of resources for the amount of work going on. Not only is it very economical in the use of resources: adult education is also able to deal with some of the most urgent problems—problems, which we all agree, are extremely urgent—in a way that makes it difficult for other forms of education to contribute.

Perhaps I may again refer to Morley. Of those 10,000 students, no fewer than one-third are unemployed, pensioners, or people on supplementary benefit. It does not take much imagination to realise that if someone falls into one of those three categories, the opportunity to attend the college for an interesting course of his or her own choosing is a lifeline. It enables people who might otherwise fall into boredom, apathy, or even despair, to have a hold on, and a continuing interest in, life which they otherwise might not have. These are groups about whom we are all deeply concerned. The courses that are provided—I quote this only because it is typical of colleges in many other parts of the country—deal extremely flexibly with the demands made upon them.

One of the problems in the world of education is to get rapid response to new demands. The adult education system, of which Morley is an example, is peculiarly well-suited to being able to adjust swiftly to new demands. Because of this it has been able to increase the provision to the unemployed, provide second-chance courses, give a considerable amount of time and attention to illiteracy, the improvement of basic skills, numeracy, and literacy, and offer a course in English as a second language. These can be swift responses to particular needs which, if they were not attended to quickly, might become serious problems. This can be done quickly and cheaply. For reasons that there is no time to go into, other forms of education often find it very difficult to respond quickly.

In the work I am doing in connection with the youth training service one of the big anxieties I experience as I identify opportunities in the labour market and recognise that there are no people ready to fill them, is that getting courses going to prepare people to enable them to take advantage of the new jobs coming along takes place only very slowly. This is a problem on its own which we ought to look at. Because of the way the adult education service is staffed, because of its whole tradition, it is able to respond very flexibly.

There is a further point which gives great value to the work going on in colleges. Not only is it dealing with special groups with special needs and responding to new requirements, it is also maintaining the very high level of work that has been done in art and in music, so that within the same college there is a whole range of people of very high competence and, at the same time, people taking part in the most elementary form of education. Surely there is some real value in being able to combine in one place the opportunity to sing in a choir and in opera performances, very reasonably. Again, to quote Morley College, it has received very good reviews in the national press. To have that kind of work going on at the same time, and in the same place in which we are dealing with the basic requirements of education, means that ideas and opportunities are made available to people who perhaps would never have thought that this possibility could be opened up to them when they attend a college of this type.

In so much of our education work of a high quality is carried out in one place and basic work is carried on somewhere else and never the twain shall meet. It is a characteristic of adult educational institutions that there is this great mixture of very high quality advanced work on the one hand and basic work on the other. There are open to people doors which they must have thought never existed, let alone thought they would have any opportunity to go through.

I beg the Government to think hard before they attempt to cut back any further on adult education; indeed, to put their policy into reverse and to give priority to institutions of this kind. May I ask the Government, following the debate that we had here a week or two ago, whether it really is possible that adult education should be the one major form of education for which there is no statutory obligation on the local education authority? As we said in that debate, this obviously means that when cuts come adult education is extremely vulnerable. Is it not time that we gave thought to the possibility of including the provision of adult education as a statutory obligation? I shall be interested to hear what the Government's views on that may be.

6.51 p.m.

The Lord Bishop of Norwich

My Lords, I was delighted to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, start her speech by referring to the Workers' Education Association because the main point that I wanted to make in this short debate was to underline the stake which the Church has always had in adult education. It may have lost its interest 20 years ago, but it is deeply involved again in adult education now because it was Archbishop William Temple himself who, as your Lordships know, was one of the founders of the WEA, who sought to found it with a very high ideal in bringing higher education within the reach of working-class men and women which was consonant with his particular belief—and when I say "particular" I mean a "particular Christain" belief—that human beings were creatures of divine value whose value had been confirmed in and through the incarnation and through the life and death and resurrection of Christ; so that Temple, to use theological terms, saw that man's divine value was derived from the incarnation of Christ which had given worth to all human life. It follows therefore that anything in this life which denies man that divine value must be removed so that man's true value might be given to him.

In fact, Temple was really saying that man is made for God and therefore he must be allowed to develop as a truly human being, physically fulfilled in health and home and work and mentally fulfilled in truth and knowledge and experience and spiritually fulfilled—in the great traditional Saint Augustine phrase: As Thou hast made us for Thyself Our hearts find no rest. Until they find their rest in Thee". The interesting thing about Temple which is coming to our thinking in the Church today is that Temple did not therefore see that adult education was only concerned with theological teaching or with Christian education. To him it was important that economics and industrial history and areas of general history were a truly theological outworking of his theory and belief in the nature of man. And that came right through all those early presidential addresses of Temple in the WEA. I think that we have probably lost sight of that with the great names like F. D. Maurice and others. I believe that this debate gives us the chance of just reminding ourselves again that adult education is at the very heart of a great deal of Christian thinking today.

Linked to that is an interesting development within the Church which your Lordships may like to know about: that because, on the whole, the educational standards of our congregation have been growing in the past 10 or 15 years, we have been seeking in continuous ministerial training to re-train our clergy—and we Bishops accept re-training ourselves—that we may be better equipped to help our people. It is very interesting that even in the narrowest of levels of evangelism, in our Mission England project—we have just had Dr. Graham with us in Norwich for four days over the past weekend—we are following this through with a follow-through for a whole year of Christian education, admittedly on the narrower level of helping people to become intelligent Christians, workers, witnesses and worshippers. But it chimes in with the fact that we are training our clergy in these methods of continuous training.

I should like to put in a particular plea for young people. Those of us who are parents have grieved over the fact that our children have not always grasped the opportunities in education which we did not have as young people but which they have now. Should we not determine with sensitivity that our post-teen young people should get a second chance now they have a deeper motivation? I find that in City College in England's "second city"—and those who read The Times will recognise the allusion to the second city in our country, which is, of course, Norwich; and it is all there in The Times, four pages of it, today; and I simply wanted to make sure that your Lordships were up on that—lots of our former ex-teenagers are now young 20s, 21s and 22s and are really grasping again with a new motivation a desire to learn in all sorts of areas. I hope that the Government will always keep that in mind.

My only personal "plug" to the Government is to remind them that if we are to have the quality of clergy in the future, whether Church of England, Free Church or Roman Catholic, then it may be good for us to put money into vocational training. I must admit that one of my sons is coming back from Uganda in September to start his training, having got his degree at Cambridge and therefore now he has to have money for vocational training for the priesthood. I admit to a personal interest there. But vocational training in the Church today is something which is very short of money. I hope that the Government will realise that here is an opportunity in adult and continuous education which is investing in the future usefulness of the ministry of the Church. That is my "commercial". I have taken one minute over my five minutes; and so I stop.

6.58 p.m.

Lord Taylor of Blackburn

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, for allowing me to take his place in the batting order this evening. I wish to speak on this subject from experience, and to tell your Lordships of an experiment that we conducted in the 1950s. In the 1950s, I became the chairman of the Blackburn Education Authority, as it was in those days. We conducted an experiment by using one of our disused secondary schools as a people's college. There we formed a tripartite pact between the local authority, the WEA and the extra-mural department of Manchester University. We introduced all kinds of adult educational classes there, and it was surprising to me how people flocked to those classes, taking advantage of an opportunity that many of them did not have in their younger days.

As the college progressed, a lot of the people who attended those classes found that they were able to lead a fuller and more active life than they would have been able to lead. The older community benefited from it because many of these students became leaders in various organisations, voluntary organisations, local authorities, and other bodies. And they became very active members. Therefore, we found this was growing and we were able to go forward and introduce other experiments on these lines in other parts of the county borough. And this was good because many people obtained a fuller understanding and a greater appreciation of life than they had been able to get before. We were able to find that people were giving their services. Some part-time lecturers were paid; but other people were giving their services to the community, asking no reward, but to serve.

Unfortunately—and I am not criticising the Government on this—because of fees, at the present time the numbers are not as great as they were and this is a pity because there are more and more people with more leisure and time to enjoy these facilities, and more time to be able to receive the benefit fromwhat we were able to lay as the foundation stones in the 1950s. I ask the Government to consider again the fees that are charged and to give more encouragement to local authorities to carry on the good work that was set up at that time.

7.1 p.m.

Viscount Ingleby

My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me to hear the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Blackburn, and I must start by declaring an interest in that both my wife and I are adult students in French at Morley College, where we have a superb French teacher who brings out the best in her very varied class of adult students. There are excellent facilities for the disabled, apart from the fact that the side door has to be kept permanently locked and there are eight steps down to the restaurant. For some curious reason—well, the reason is said to be the fire regulations—it is not possible, it is said, to introduce a stair lift there. So I have to ask three burly students to pull my wheelchair up and down the stairs.

The impact of unemployment is bound to be greater on disabled people than on the able-bodied. Therefore, the need of the disabled for continuing adult education must be much greater. The Open University has specialised in helping disabled people since it began and in 1984 there were 2,179 disabled students registered and taking courses there. This number is increasing, and if it goes on increasing at the present rate there will be 2,762 in 1985. Of these, there are about 200 with visual impairments, about 200 with hearing impairments and about 200 with polio, like myself, or spinal injuries.

Special aids have been provided by the Open University for disabled people; for example, the texts of units of 129 courses are recorded on cassette. Local support may include the provision of tutorials in students' homes, tutorials by telephone and transport to study centres, et cetera. But the Open University, of course, have had to face cuts, like all the others, and I am quoting now from their information newsheet of May 1984, No. 1: In order to adjust to 1984 cut, the University has had to reduce expenditure in real terms by £3.5 million compared with 1983. The most serious concern, however, is about the 'advance indications' which the Department of Education and Science have given about the expected grants to the Open University in 1985 and 1986. The sum suggested for 1986 is actually less than the 1984 allocation. The University estimates that, on the basis of a realistic assessment of likely inflation rates and pay rises and other factors, it will need to cut its expenditure by another £4 million in 1985 and a further £6 million in 1986—a total of £13.5 million over three years". This is the important point: As there is now little scope for further efficiency savings, the University is having to consider serious reductions in numbers of students, staff and courses, in broadcasting production and in student support services". The services that they provide for disabled students of course often cost more than they would for the able-bodied. I am told that sometimes it is half as much again, so that these services are at risk at the present time.

I would ask the noble Earl whether, in view of his special interest in the disabled, he would not agree that at this time there is a need to increase adult education for disabled people rather than to reduce it?

7.8 p.m.

Baroness White

My Lords, like the noble Viscount, Lord Ingleby, who has just spoken, I am primarily concerned in this short debate with the fate of the Open University. As an institution, it was referred to with strong approval in the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, last March, by, among others, the noble Viscount Lord Caldecote, in relation to updating courses for industry, and on all sides of the House.

The basic question which faces all of us who share this concern is why such an educationally successful institution should appear to have been singled out, as the noble Viscount, Lord Ingleby, has just indicated, for future clobbering by the present Government. The Open University is cost-effective, it is accessible to all and it is innovative, both in educational technology—that is, in devising successful methods for distant teaching—and in adapting its academic subject areas to changing economic and social needs. It has an international reputation. I understand that the Government of the People's Republic of China is the latest to seek its services and advice.

I think anyone who has looked at it objectively will agree that the Open University is the best educational bargain on offer both to government and to adult students alike, yet it is currently in a state of alarm and despondency. Like all institutions of higher education over the past four years, it has suffered cuts in resources. It is encouraging to learn that so far it has surmounted these cuts with considerable success and has been able to increase both its student numbers and its range of provision. One might argue that this indicates that the cuts were in a sense justified. But it now faces, as the noble Viscount Lord Ingleby, has informed us, threatened further cuts in 1985 and 1986. It rightly regards these not as belt-tightening, which may be justifiable, but as potentially damaging to its present fabric and its future success. The prospective cut is estimated to be £13.5 million over three years, from 1984 to 1986 inclusive. My Lords, that sum is not peanuts.

Contingency plans are now being made to reduce the hours of broadcasting next year by between 10 and 15 hours a week out of a present weekly total of 36 hours, 40 minutes. If one takes the less pessimistic figure of 10 hours a week, that is more than a quarter of the total Open University broadcasting time. With the numbers involved in the Open University, this will affect not tens or even hundreds but thousands of students. In 1983 there were 65,000 Open University students at various stages of their degree studies and nearly 50,000 clients within the continuing education programme. Admittedly, not all the latter are dependent upon broadcast programmes, but the degree students are.

This prospective deprivation would be geared to saving a relatively small element of recurrent grant. For distant teaching, fixed costs are high and it is capital intensive. As was graphically desctribed in the earlier debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, once a programme has been put together and recorded, and the ancillary material, study packs and so on, have been prepared, the net cost of purveying this to individual students in their own homes is relatively low. Open University students pay course fees—they have been doubled in the past four years—and, unlike most other students, the majority of Open University students contribute to the national income, from which the other costs are met, through taxation on their own earnings.

In addition to what I consider thoroughly wasteful reductions in broadcasting time, I understand—and it has been confirmed also by the noble Viscount, Lord Ingleby—that discussions are afoot on a possible reduction in student numbers in 1985–86 of up to 10 per cent.—again, an uneconomic economy.

One must ask: why? No justification has been put forward by the department. There is no question for the Open University of an imminent demographic decline —an argument which perhaps has a grain of truth for the conventional universities, even though one rightly rejects the DES extrapolations of student demand. The Open University student age range will stay unaffected, at any rate for the next couple of decades, and I would have supposed indefinitely. This disfavourable attitude towards the Open University cannot be because it has not heeded the calls to emphasise science and technology. It has been successful in both and is uniquely well-placed to provide post-experience and updating courses for all kinds of skilled and professional people, whatever their age or sex and wherever they may live.

But the Open University has been harassed over its Pickup finance scheme, though not quite as badly as the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, suggested; it has received some small concession this year. It appears to me that the Department of Education and Science has failed to keep a proper watch on the Open University's interests, in the relation between its courses and those of the Open Tech scheme, run ostensibly at a different level, under the aegis of the Department of Employment.

The Open University is directly funded by the Department of Education and Science. There is a visiting committee—a mini-UGC between the Open University and the Secretary of State. An efficiency review, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, said, has been announced. But the visiting committee was not consulted about the threatened future cuts. Nor can they he based on the efficiency review, as that has not vet started.

It is surely incredible that Sir Keith Joseph can have nourished a general prejudice against the outstanding and acknowledged excellence of most of the Open University's work because he once took exception to a small group of over-emphatic and perhaps over-ebullient Marxist sociologists on the staff of the Open University. I cannot believe of him that he would maintain a negative attitude or be so small-minded in this respect. Yet there is no rational explanation of the excessive pressure and false economy now being threatened for the Open University for 1985 and 1986.

By definition, anyone who obtains a qualification through the Open University is strongly motivated, well-disciplined and pertinacious qualities which surely appeal to the Secretary of State. Education for the Open University age group is essential in a democratic society. I recall the late Lord Haldane's favourite quotation from Goethe: Nothing is more dangerous than ignorance in motion"— the justification for all the best in adult education. So one hopes that Sir Keith and his department will have the good sense to think again—

The Countess of Mar

Order—eight minutes!

Baroness White

—and so retain the respect of those who regard the Open University as a whole as our most valuable initiative in adult education since 1945. One of my noble friends was good enough to take a shorter time, my Lords.

7.14 p.m.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour

My Lords, there is no question that, during the lifetime of people who are young today, they will have to adapt to change to an extent unknown to previous generations. I want to speak about the resulting acute and growing need for local, easily accessible opportunities for ordinary people of all ages wherever they live, whatever their previous academic attainment, to learn the new things that they want to learn and to develop their talents so that they can cope with life as it unfolds. For many people, those opportunities are needed literally in order to survive, and needed in new forms of which my noble friend Lord Vaizey spoke.

I believe that the Government recognise this need. Their adult training strategy is part of this recognition. In 1980, when at the DES, Dr. Rhodes Boyson said in a speech: We believe that expenditure on continuing education is one of the most purposeful and productive aspects of all educational expenditure". I hope that when he replies from the Front Bench my noble friend will be able to reaffirm that view.

But I want to suggest to the Government that now they need to go further; that the time has come to give a lead in this issue, to put to people some of the possibilities and to show what can be done by describing recent success stories in adult and continuing education in this country. Until that happens, the will to move more resources within local and central government from other areas of expenditure into this area will not be there.

If we are to succeed as a society, we must get the votes into continuing education. There are plenty of examples to talk about and build upon. I should like to quote a few from my own experience as chairman of the Scottish Community Education Council where, as your Lordships probably know, youth and community work and adult education have merged into one community education service. Much can be learned in Scotland, and, I believe, south of the border, from the success of the adult basic education programme, which began in 1975 with the help of the BBC as the adult literacy campaign and which has shown the enormous amount that could be achieved by large numbers of volunteer tutors, trained in turn by a few professionals—individual helping individual. This method is now a proven part of community education in Scotland.

Then there is the success of organisations like the pre-school playgroup movement, where young parents help one another—sometimes also helped by professionals—to learn how to bring up small children, or the Scout and Guide movements with their extremely sophisticated methods for training adult leaders. The success of community education classes, evening classes and afternoon classes, when they are about what people really want—keep fit, computers, car maintenance, finding one's way through the bureaucracy—is shown by the fact that those classes are always over-subscribed.

There is a report from Age Concern Scotland which proposes a network of local groups, often run by older people themselves and supported to a limited extent by professionals, where older people could meet together and learn about subjects of their choice, suggested primarily by themselves. There is in Scotland the scope of the new modular system for young people of 16-plus in schools, where each young person can put together a course which suits his or her own views—some modules to be followed in schools and some in colleges. When older people want to study these same subjects, they could easily be incorporated without enormous additional cost. And so on, my Lords.

Many of your Lordships have already mentioned examples of success stories and others will do so in this debate. It is on examples of this kind that future discussion, instigated and led by the Government, could build. The important thing is that we really begin to raise public awareness of what the realistic possibilities are and how these possibilities can meet what people know they want. I commend these thoughts to my noble friend.

7.20 p.m.

Lord Stewart of Fulham

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, referred to the number of new forms of adult education that have come into existence recently and then urged that when we plead the cause of adult education we should think not only of the WEA but of them also. Nonetheless, I want to make a particular plea for the Workers' Educational Association and I do that not only out of an ancient loyalty—it is rather more than 50 years ago that I began to be a tutor to WEA classes and I may say that that was a process in which I learned at least as much as my students did. That is one of the merits of the WEA. But we must remember that throughout its long life the WEA has always been short of money. It has always found it difficult to meet all the demands that have been made on it, and its own ambitious conception of what it could do meant that it was always in financial difficulty. I do regard it, therefore, as a matter of particular regret that it should be the subject of proposed cuts at the present time and I most earnestly ask the Government to reconsider them.

The WEA stretches out at one end to co-operate with the extra-mural departments of universities and, at the other, to conduct classes on a simpler academic level but nonetheless an extremely useful level. It has widened the scope over the years of the range of subjects it teaches. It has taken to heart what was said by the Russell Report as to the kind of work it could do, and of course it does work among people who really value education and who themselves contribute in part to the cost of it. So the Government certainly get value for any money they spend in respect of the Workers' Educational Association.

Also, we should remember that at the present time there are several reasons why not only the kind of adult education provided by the WEA, but adult and continuing education in general, is of particular importance. The society in which we live is continually becoming more and more complicated. The job of understanding how it works and of playing one's part as a citizen in it is something that requires increasing study by adults. That is something to which adults are ready to respond. I remember once going round trying to persuade a number of people who had not been put on the voting register to take the necessary steps to get themselves put on it, and I recall the difficulty I had in persuading some of the recently-immigrant population that I was doing this irrespective of how they proposed to use their vote, and that this was one of the things to which, in the society in which they had now come to live, they should give particular attention. That was one of the simplest examples—getting their right to vote as citizens. And of course there are many other things that anyone who wants to be an effective citizen in this country has to learn.

We hope that one day we shall recover from the appalling recession and unemployment from which we suffer—unemployment that means enforced and unwelcome leisure to many. But it may be that, when we do, we shall then find that we are living in a society in which agreeable and wanted leisure is more available to people as a whole, in which case there will again be a question of what use they are going to make of it. I must admit I have always been a little irritated when people have wanted to talk to me about the problem of leisure, because the only problem of leisure I have ever had is that there never seemed to be enough of it. But it is true, I think, that with the way society is changing a number of people will want to find productive and attractive ways of using their leisure time. Also, we are living in a society with a considerable immigrant population, for whom adult and continuing education is a pressing need.

For all these reasons, I hope the Government will reconsider their financial attitude towards adult education. The trouble is that the WEA, if pressed to make reductions in its work, will probably be obliged to do it in areas where its work is most needed. For example, some of its most expensive work is that which is done in the most thinly populated parts of the country. One could quote several other examples of where, if you have to make economies, they would have to be made in places and on subjects where one would most regret them. I was glad that the noble Baroness who preceded me drew the Government's attention to a speech of Dr. Rhodes Boyson. I must say I have never thought of quoting from Dr. Rhodes Boyson as an example to the Government; but here he is, with a most valuable statement down to his credit. I trust the Government will give careful consideration to it.

7.26 p.m.

Lord Hunter of Newington

My Lords, I should like to confine my remarks to two aspects of this large and important subject: one is the post-experience training of adults and the other concerns the activities of the Open University. Post-experience training means what it says. After people have had practical experience, they return to some suitable centre to refresh themselves and to up-date their knowledge. These centres may be run by industry, the Government, by universities or polytechnics, but all have certain characteristic features. Most important is the meeting of those with practical experience with university or polytechnic teachers, and this may be an important stimulus to new ideas and to research and development. In fact, both sides need this contact and the recurring experience.

How the activity is financed is important. There may be some permanent staff employed by universities and so on, but the majority of the staff, I believe, should be on short-term contracts. If the courses are unsuccessful, the programme dies. There are post-experience centres which have been successful for many years in this country. One which comes to mind is the Institute of Local Government Studies in the University of Birmingham. It largely earns its own keep, and it was responsible at the time of local government reorganisation for retraining something like two-thirds of the staff. In the engineering field, as at Cranfield, these activities are vital to the future. Because of the rapidly-changing body of knowledge, an undergraduate training may last for perhaps five years. These activities I have referred to are a must. Many government departments support them. In my view, the only money that should be made available through the University Grants Committee or the DES should be for pump-priming and then only for a small number of years—perhaps three.

In this way one can get spin-off for research and development projects; one can surface ideas of great basic significance; and I believe that increasingly the research staff of government institutions and private cmpanies should be involved in the teaching in universities and polytechnics. I submit that these activities should have priority over all other adult education programmes and, if they are successful, we shall be able to afford the others that much more easily.

I turn now to the activities of the Open University. When it started it was unique. It has spread the gospel throughout the world. Surely it should be given the opportunity of continuing as a world leader and should be doing a substantial amount of research and development. It was the application of modern technology, television and other things, which made the original development possible. There now exist new technologies, and particularly those of space, which require urgent examination and evaluation. I believe the Open University, because of its record, has earned the right to be funded for this purpose.

7.29 p.m.

Lord Perry of Walton

My Lords, I want to make only one point in this crowded debate: the expansion of adult education and continuing education. But, first of all, I must mention how extraordinarily heartwarming I find it to listen to so many noble Lords from every side of the House paying such compliments to the Open University, where I spent so many years.

The noble Baroness, Lady White, has described its problems very clearly, and I shall not reiterate them. I want to add only one point. Some weeks ago I wrote to the Secretary of State for Education and Science to point out one remarkable fact about the university and to make one suggestion. I pointed out that the fees paid by a student at the Open University are now so high (they have been pushed up year by year) that they are almost, but not quite, equal in a month to the marginal extra cost of teaching one additional student.

Noble Lords will all realise that calculations about extra marginal costs can be true only over a limited range of numbers. There comes a point where one has to erect a new building or purchase a new computer, when the calculations cease to apply. But they do apply over quite a wide range. At the Open University at the moment, the situation is such that a few thousand extra students could have been accepted without any significant increase in the grant paid to the university.

The university would have needed to tighten its belt another notch, but that would not have been a serious matter, and the university could have managed. That is not what has happened. In fact, the grant has not been left alone, but has been severely cut. The corollary to the situation I have described is that cutting student numbers does not produce any significant savings because the loss in fees is balanced by the drop in expenditure. This is wholly unlike any other institution.

If, as I suspect, the Government would really like to expand adult and continuing education but feel that they cannot devote more public money to that, then they could achieve their purpose, at least in so far as the Open University contribution is concerned, by leaving the grant untouched—neither increased, nor reduced—and by requiring the university to admit many more students. That is what I asked the Secretary of State to do, and I understand that he has been consulting the university about the matter. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, will add his voice to mine in trying to persuade the Secretary of State to consider this sensible suggestion favourably.

7.32 p.m.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ardwick for allowing me to take his place in the queue, so that I may fulfil a long-standing speaking engagement later tonight, which will mean—and I apologise for it—that I shall be forced to leave before the end of the debate. I hope that in the time available to me I may draw attention to one particular twist of the financial vice which is being applied to adult and continuing education by this Government. I refer to the intervention of the VAT man and value added tax, not just in the financing of adult education, but also in the curriculum and the way in which adult education is run. I am grateful to Christopher Price of The Times Higher Educational Supplement for drawing this matter to my attention.

The principles on which Customs and Excise work in deciding whether an adult education course should be outside the scope of VAT, should be treated as a business and therefore subject to VAT, or should be exempt from VAT, are rather complicated. They are set out in a document that was circulated to adult education colleges by the Association of Metropolitan Authorities.

The main principle appears to be that exemption from VAT applies if the education is provided otherwise than for a profit and is of a kind provided by a school or university. Recreational and sporting activities are specifically excluded from exemption unless they are provided as part of a general education curriculum. There is also limited exemption for the provision of vocational training. This means that all sporting activities taught in adult education establishments, including keep fit and gymnastics, which I should have thought were of general value to the community, and all recreational activities, which include not just games, but also such vital subjects, to my, mind, as wine appreciation, yoga and gardening, are treated as qualifying for VAT unless the fees are at, or below, the direct cost of the provision of the adult education. The direct cost is defined as being the salaries of the teachers, caretakers, and so on, but not the overheads of the college. In other words, the expansion of the college's activities is no longer possible.

The real impertinence comes when one examines what are known as the borderline cases. When it comes to domestic science, arts, crafts, music and so on, the VAT man says that they will be treated as exempt provided the local authority can demonstrate a formal intention to teach, instruct or train those attending the course. Therefore, course schemes or syllabi must show a clear intention of progression in training, aiming at the achievement of a defined standard or level of competence.

What on earth does it have to do with Customs and Excise as to the way in which adult education colleges choose to design their syllabi or train their students? The fact of the matter is that when one is dealing with creative subjects to impose that kind of straitjacket on a course is the guaranteed way to ensure that one will exclude students from applying or, after they have applied, will discourage them from staying on. It is the guaranteed way of ensuring that there will be no encouragement to creativity in those courses—which may not be a progressive thing at all.

The VAT man goes on to say that professional and vocational courses, academic and scholastic courses, and utilitarian courses, such as industrial relations, baby care, health education, et cetera, may be exempt, on condition that they are provided by an adult education authority. Note that all the way through these courses may be liable for VAT when provided for adults, but when they are treated as a business by, a public school, or, to be correct, a private school, then there is no question of VAT being charged.

The intervention of Customs and Excise in adult education is an educational impertinence. It is a trap for local education authorities trying to extend their range of provisions. The trap is simply this. Pressure by the Government on all local authorities to cut their expenditure to the bone, or, to be precise, to cut their rate demands to the bone, is intense and incessant. If local authorities try to meet the Government's demands by increasing the charges made for adult education, they immediately fall into the trap of becoming a business, and the fees for the courses will become subject to VAT. Can there be a better example in Government of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

7.38 p.m.

The Countess of Mar

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, has brought to our attention in this debate a subject in which I have a direct interest, and I am most grateful to her. When I left school at the age of 16 I little realised how woefully inadequate had been my education, despite the fact that I had seven O-levels and found no difficulty in obtaining the employment I wanted. My first sortie into the field of adult education was to study for a City and Guilds cookery certificate when my daughter was an infant. I then learnt to paint china and to draw plants, developing skills of which I was totally unaware while I was at school.

When I joined the Post Office at the ripe old age of 29 I realised that if I wanted promotion, I would have to work for it. By correspondence I studied for, and obtained, two A levels and a certificate in operational telecommunications. I then took a day release course in business studies, sponsored by the Post Office. At the same time I was able to attend a number of in-service training courses, which provided me with a broad view of the business world and its philosophy, as well as with the more specific knowledge necessary for my work.

I shall for ever be thankful to those organisations and individuals who enabled me to discover and exploit my own latent talents and who taught me to observe, inquire into, and appreciate all around me, and, most importantly perhaps, through whom I made some very good friends.

One of the facts that I discovered when I was taking correspondence courses was how extremely difficult it is to learn in islolation. I never met my tutors or any fellow students, and it had been a long time since I had been disciplined by the régime of the school room. Those who study with the Open University have my greatest respect. The financial strictures imposed upon local authorities have bitten deeply into our education system, and the local authority provision for both vocational and non-vocational day and evening classes has fared less well than other fields of adult education. In my own local education authority (and I have no doubt in others) the range of subjects has been severely pruned. Prospectuses advertising college courses are cancelled because there are one or two students short of the minimum number required to make them viable. The fees charged have increased to the extent that those who would benefit most are unable to undertake the courses which interest them.

There are, as we know so well, large numbers of men and women who are isolated from the community because they are unemployed or living on low incomes. Those particularly in my mind are young mothers who are tied to their homes and children. Not surprisingly, the period of formal education which our young people and children undergo is geared to their obtaining employment. With the standardisation of the curriculum there is an increasing tendency to produce stereotypes. Without the opportunities offered to young people through further education, they run the risk of becoming mentally stagnant.

I have mentioned the benefits which I obtained. These were gained at a time when there was a broad range of inexpensive courses available. I ask the noble Earl whether he will try to persuade his colleagues in the Government of the importance of adult education both to individuals and to the community by expanding the capacity of local authorities to provide courses over a wide range of subjects and by making them financially available to all social groups. I am sure that the pressures on our hard-pressed National Health Service and Social Services could be reduced. Physical and mental activity combined with social contact with people of similar interests can be a wonderful balm to the troubled and frustrated. No money spent on education can be said to be wasted.

Lord Ardwick

My Lords, the editor of the Manchester Guardian in my day was not only a world famous journalist; he was also a considerable economic historian, yet he had left school at the age of 14. But he had the good fortune at that time to learn that a fiery young man whose name was Tawney was beginning a WEA tutorial class. It was through this class that A. P. Wadsworth not only found the golden road to self-fulfilment but was able to begin a long career and make a long and distinguished contribution to society.

I went to the WEA although I had not been educationally deprived, and I found what was the secret ingredient: it was that you not merely learned a subject but you learned to discuss and argue about it with a teacher of excellent mind in company with your combative classmates. This belongs to history; but the work of the WEA goes on and is more necessary than ever. The first aim is to provide people with a liberal education directed to personal development through group study and understanding; and the second is to improve the effectiveness of those participating in community affairs whether in trades unions or political or social service. Both objects have value today when we have so many briefly educated industrialists and distributive workers, professional men, businessmen and women, who, after the age 14, may never have had a lesson in history, literature, art, economics or politics. As we know, they often have the greatest difficulty in understanding the society in which they live and work.

There is a great need for us to have good citizens with a feeling for history, with some knowledge how government works and how society is constituted. This kind of citizen can give wise counsel in all types of organisations. This kind of citizen enriches our community and gives it a solid base, and that is why we must encourage the development of such people. How much encouragement are the Government giving to this development. The WEA has widened its services while it keeps up its traditional classes. Today it also caters for special groups: for the unemployed, the disabled, for the newly literate, for ethnic minorities and—a matter I would especially mention—for women with young children who need a creche alongside the class to escape for a brief hour into the adult and rational world.

The Government appreciates this work. Nobody has put it better than Dr. Rhodes Boyson. The lavishness of the praise contrasts with the paucity of the contribution. It reminds me of a story known to all journalists about the publisher of a weekly paper who went into the newsroom one day and said to a reporter: "Pullen, you wrote a beautiful story for the paper this week. I am proud to work on the same paper as you. Tell me, how much are you getting?" Pullen hopefully replied, "The union minimum, Sir". The publisher shook him by the hand and said, am glad Pullen!—I am glad!" That is what the WEA is getting—the minimum, and that minimum is shrinking. The DES is imposing a phased reduction of 8.3 per cent. over a three year period, and the splendid extra-mural departments of universities, which run joint tutorial classes with the WEA, are having their grant cut by over 14.3 per cent. in the same period. They are being required to pass on part of their burden to the WEA, and the rate-capped municipalities are also reducing their grants. The WEA have put up their fees but they are near the point of a diminishing return.

The WEA and the university extra-mural departments must not merely be sustained; they must be encouraged. They are part of our splendid heritage which encourages self-help. They are not just professional teachers; they are missionaries, and they deserve to be sustained. I can only regard the cuts that are being made as wasteful economies.

Lord Henderson of Brompton

My Lords, so much has already been said that I can be brief. I should like particularly to draw attention to the terms of the Motion, which points to an urgent need for expansion of adult education, and vet almost every speech has lamented the decline in adult education due to the squeeze on local authorities and financial constraints imposed by central government. So far from getting an expansion, it looks as if we are getting a reduction of these essential services at a time when they seem to be more and more necessary. There are more people unemployed than ever before. There are a higher number of immigrants who need to learn the basic skills of the English language, which they have to acquire before they can get a job, however intelligent they are. This is the kind of help which the adult and continuing education service—and only they—can provide.

I should like to echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said when she asked whether or not the local authority adult education services should not now become statutory. I think this is the only educational service in the country which is not statutory, and it should now become so. I should particularly like the noble Earl the Minister to address his mind to that aspect and to consider, for instance, whether or not he would be sympathetic if there were to be introduced next Session a Private Member's Bill to amend the Education Act to that effect.

I think the only other thing I can do in the very short time available to me is to draw attention to the Corporate Plan 1984–88 of the Manpower Services Commission, the extraordinarily fine report which has just been published in time for this debate. I am surprised that it has not been referred to so far, because it is highly relevant. It is an extraordinarily stimulating document which is greatly to the credit of Mr. David Young and the members of the commission. In the MSC's projections of expenditure, they go up—and this is, if the Government will agree, some encouragement to all the rest of us—from £ 1.7 billion now to £2.4 billion in 1988. This is how the chairman introduces the document in his foreword: The document presents the MSC's corporate plan for 1984– 1988. It has been approved"— and these are the operative words— subject to the availability of resources". I should like to ask the Minister: what do those words mean? The plan has been approved, subject to those words, by the Secretary of State for Employment, in consultation with the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales and for Education and Science.

In the light of all the speeches that have been made so far today, something must be done to integrate the further education and training scheme as between the Department of Employment and the Department of Education and Science. It seems to me that it would be only sensible if the MSC reported not just to the Secretary of State for Employment but jointly to the Secretary of State for Employment and the Secretary of State for Education and Science. This would, of course, then have to be done in consultation with the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales. It would be a very great improvement to have a report to the two Secretaries of State because one cannot dissociate vocational education from cultural education. That is a division which we all, I think, regard as totally artificial. With that, I hope, positive suggestion, to which I should very much like the Minister to address his mind. I give way to the next speaker.

7.52 p.m.

Baroness Vickers

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for putting down this Motion because I particularly want to discuss the question of foreign languages in education. I have recently been fortified by three letters in The Times—one on 12th June and two on 18th June—advocating that more foreign languages should be taught.

Professor Thody of the University of Leeds and Mr. David Royce, Director-General of the Institute of Export, both suggest that it is absolutely essential that we learn more foreign languages. In July 1981 the Foreign Affairs Committee criticised British diplomats for their inability to speak foreign languages. An independent inquiry was then set up and it is understood that the recommendations of the report—Language Training in the Diplomatic Service, published in June 1982—are now being put into effect. I suggest that those in industry should take up the challenge, especially those in the export trades, and try to train more people in foreign languages.

It is a well-known fact that English is the most widely spoken language in the world. However, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, French, Chinese and English are the working languages of the United Nations. Every delegate, whatever country he is from, is expected to be able to speak in one of those languages. Therefore, I suggest that the learning of these languages should have priority in any future syllabus, because the people from the nations I have just mentioned are less likely to speak English. Therefore, we should have people who are educated in their languages.

Sweden is a very good example of how they educate the masses. They encourage the masses by having an organisation, which is a free organisation, where people from political parties, trade unions, churches, and others study in groups. It is quite free to all the people who are studying. It is a vast educational service for the local people and it is made operational for them. On the other hand, there is just one restriction, which is imposed by the state on the administration; namely, the number of people in the groups, the educational content, the duration, and the quality of the teachers concerned. There are, of course, many other experiments but there is not time to mention them today. There is one in Stirling in Scotland, one in Bournemouth and another in Nancy, France. I mention these because they are all very interesting experiments.

Modern Languages in Further Education was issued by Her Majesty's Inspectors for the 16 to 18 year-olds. It is subtitled Matters for Discussion. Her Majesty's Inspectorate said in the document that there were differences in systems of organisation, staffing and resources in England and Wales, that the quality of the colleges needs to be considered, the strengthening of their work, and the quality of the course management. It also states that the students' achievements varied considerably in different areas.

I should like to mention a number of very good books which have recently come into the Library. I have had a lot of research to do, and I mention some of those which I believe will be useful in the future. There is the Autonomy of Foreign Language Learning,. Identifying the Needs of Adults; Learning a Foreign Language; and Foreign and Second Language Learning. The last is a particularly interesting book by William Littlewood, of Swansea University College. He also wrote Communicative Language Teaching, which also gives a list of studies of the interaction between learners and native speakers.

I have one final point. In the city of Plymouth we started an experiment. We asked the men and women teachers of foreign languages in all the schools if they would be willing to bring their pupils to a competition. Each year we have a competition which is open to all the state schools and the private schools. This has been going on for 15 or 16 years. It works extremely well. I mention this in particular because there are prizes, certificates of commendation and also free tickets to go across on the Roscoff Ferry so that they can speak French in France. The scheme has been well supported quite voluntarily by the teachers and I am glad to say that the local authorities are now taking it over and it is being supported by business and others, who are producing the prizes. I feel that we can do a great deal on our own to help people in this way. I therefore suggest that in this day and age it is an easy scheme, if one can get the co-operation of the teachers—and I have never found any difficulty. I recommend it to the people listening to this debate so that it might be considered in their areas.

7.57 p.m.

Lord Graham of Edmonton

My Lords, at about 11 o'clock last night I rose in my place to address 70 or 80 Members of the Government Benches of your Lordships' House. I knew that when speaking in the debate on trade unionism I was declaring a unique interest. I was a member of a trade union and therefore could speak with a little authority. I want first to congratulate my noble friend Baroness Lockwood on giving us this opportunity, and again to declare a unique interest. I am proud to say that I am a graduate of the Open University. I know I am not the only one in your Lordships' House. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, is also a graduate of the Open University—perhaps the only other noble Lord who is.

As the noble Lord, Lord Perry, has so rightly said, what a joy and a pleasure it must be to him, as the first vice-chancellor of the Open University, to realise not only that there is support for the Open University but universal approbation for all that it has done. I believe that the Minister recognises, so far as the Open University is concerned, that there are many friends of the university here tonight. I certainly believe from my knowledge of him that he would want to count himself and his colleagues among those who want to see the Open University continue to prosper.

I served on the council of the Open University with the Member of Parliament for Ealing, Harry Greenway. For the past years we have been regaled with the continuing problems facing the Open University. It is a saddening experience that, despite some of the statistics which have been given to the House this evening—despite the university's proud record, the justification for it and its accomplishment of all that it was set to do 14 or 15 years ago—we still have the situation that has been outlined this evening. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, pointed out that we should be discussing expansion. Sadly, we are discussing not so much expansion but the possibility of severe curtailments.

May I read into the record a devastatingly candid and, from my knowledge of the present vice-chancellor, an honest and serious, attempt to portray the picture of what is facing the Open University today. As a graduate I receive a newsletter, and in the newsletter of June 1984, Dr. Horlock writes as follows: In the year that has elapsed since I last wrote to all graduates, the Open University's situation has become critical. A further cut in this year's grant from the Government was accompanied by a proposal to make two further large reductions in 1985 and 1986. If this indication becomes reality the University faces a massive cutback in its activities: thousands of student places will disappear, courses will have to be dropped, services to students will be reduced, and many staff jobs will go". I ask the Minister who is to reply to say whether in all seriousness he and his colleagues believe that what I have just read out is what the Government set out to achieve when they set the budgets for this year, next year and the year after. The vice-chancellor continues: I am sorry to begin in such gloomy terms, but there is no doubt that your University is facing the most serious threat to its future that it has yet encountered". The position is very serious indeed. Those of us who support the Open University beg the Minister—something which he is often asked to do—to take a message from your Lordships' House, personally or in any other way, to the Secretary of State. It is that, unless there is a real and genuine attempt over the next few months to arrest the gloom and depression that exists in Open University circles, something very serious may happen to a priceless asset which was created not by any one party but supported by all parties over the previous years.

Let me say one or two words about the record of the university. In 1971, it had 19,000 graduates; in 1983, the number was 66,000. The number of graduates who have received a BA is 63,000, and the number of science degrees is 27,000. The Government constantly appeal for a turn-round of the nexus between the arts and the sciences. That has been achieved. Fees have been doubled over the years. The Open University wants a period of consolidation in which it can look forward to providing that which it was set up to provide. Over the next period it is facing a crisis. Its grant funding is to be drastically reduced, and potential students will be deterred by higher fees. The teaching that they receive for their money will deteriorate, and those subjects which the Government want the university to teach will be too costly to teach. Its efficiency and cost-effectiveness will both suffer.

At one time the Open University was called the university of the second chance. It is fast becoming the university of the last or only chance. At one time it was called the university of the air. There is a danger that it may become the university of the thin air; it could very well disappear unless the Government recognise—which I do not believe that they have fully recognised—the potential danger that exists over the next short period.

I do not believe that it is too late. I know that initiatives are being taken for the Secretary of State to receive people from the academic and administrative level at the Open University who wish to plead their case. Together with Harry Greenway, I am very seriously considering whether it is possible to put together a deputation of parliamentarians, such as those of us who have spoken here, to aid and abet the representations made in another place. I beg the Minister to take very seriously what has been said tonight and to give us some hope when he winds up.

8.5 p.m.

Lord Henniker

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, for raising this very important subject. I think that everyone who has spoken tonight gives one the feeling that, far from cutting the resources given to further education, they must be expanded. I dare to speak of a small sector, because I come from Toynbee Hall, where I have the honour to be deputy chairman. Around us we have the traditional East End, where by any standards the deprivation is as serious as anywhere in the country.

I think that Toynbee Hall has an honoured place in the field of adult education. It was its prime purpose to bring the ancient universities into contact with the East End and to ensure that the East End had more opportunities of higher education. People who have worked there have national names, such as Beveridge. Tawney was there, and the Workers' Education Association started there. Unfortunately, since the war, owing to difficulties of getting finance—and I think too a too hopeful view that the state would look after all the needs of education—it has had to stop its educational function.

There are three points which I want briefly to make. The first is that this year is the centenary of Toynbee Hall and of the whole national and international settlement movement. That celebration centenary has been my personal responsibility. Before we celebrated it, we wanted to find how we could respond to the needs of our immediate area, how we could do something which was nationally necessary, and how we could set the course for the next hundred years, so we commissioned a feasibility study. The unanimous recommendation of that feasibility study, from everyone spoken to in the area, was that more education and training were the key to Tower Hamlets' problems.

Tower Hamlets is an educational priority area, where the Inner London Education Authority spends a great deal of effort. It has very good schools, as I know, but a great many of the youngsters there lack any knowledge of the simplest forms of communication and, above all, self-confidence. I just give one statistic. At the end of the last academic year, only 25 youngsters from that enormous borough went on to permanent higher education. The situation may improve when the immigrants who have come into the area have all had their full education in our own schools, but the demographic trend is upwards and the schools will have more to cope with. I want to make my first point, which is that there is an obvious and demonstrable need, and from all the courses that have been put on for people in that area, there is also a demonstrable demand and ability to cope.

The second point I want to make is that we talk a lot about regenerating the inner city and never more than of Tower Hamlets. But it does not make any sense to do so if the youngsters growing up there do not have the first and most essential prerequisite of being able to work and improve the area. For that the young have to be properly equipped. It is no good going for a job if you know that when you get there the door will be closed against you because you do not have even the most elementary educational qualifications.

Tower Hamlets has I think the highest unemployment in London, but there are considerable possibilities of jobs. The docklands is providing jobs. The High Street multiples—Tesco and Marks and Spencer—are moving in, and just over the road are the towers of the City. One would have thought that Tower Hamlets might be the natural reservoir from which people came for jobs in the City, but there is practically no contact between the two. If people were trained for the jobs, it could be an immense resource, and it would be tragic if in the future the jobs were filled by commuters coming at enormous expense from elsewhere and the people just outside the City walls were unemployed.

Lastly, Spitalfields and Whitechapel have traditionally been a reception area for immigrants, first the Huguenots, then, when Toynbee Hall was founded, the Jews from eastern Europe, and now the Bengalis from Bangladesh. At this stage of immigration, they need above all second chance education. Perhaps the father speaks English, perhaps the mother speaks none and owing to the exigencies of her culture does not go out much into the world. The children start in one culture and spend their educational period trying to get used to another. Many of the trades with which they came, such as leatherwork and clothing, are declining, and they need new skills. All the evidence is that with training and education, they are a very valuable component in the population.

I am sure that what happens in Tower Hamlets happens in many other cities. So we, in Toynbee Hall, have set ourselves this year a three-pronged programme bringing vocational and cultural education together, perhaps starting an education programme and a training programme for vocational work in specially designed workshops, and a special scheme whereby we help the handicapped and also train young handicapped people. In all this, we have acted in full co-operation with the local authorities, ILEA and Tower Hamlets council, and with the City Polytechnic just across the road which perhaps most closely responds to the vision of Canon Barnett, the founder of Toynbee Hall, that the first requirement of the East End was a university of the East End.

We have already started. The indications are good. Bangladeshi women have begun to take courses. They find it easier I think in an informal atmosphere rather than in the more formal atmosphere of a school. But we need more resources. We know that we have to help ourselves. We have launched a great appeal. It is however very difficult to make serious plans when one does not quite know what the future government of London will be. It is difficult, with a different scheme to the normal, to break through the bureaucratic tangle that one finds in dealing with training schemes. I echo strongly the suggestion of the noble Lord. Lord Henderson, that it would be valuable if the Manpower Services Commission was responsible both to the Secretary of State for Education and to the Secretary of State for Employment. I apologise for taking more time than I should. I am however a fairly infrequent performer in this House, and I have not been able to reduce my speech sufficiently.

8.13 p.m.

Baroness David

My Lords. I am sure that we all much enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord. Lord Henniker. As my noble friend Lady Stewart has decided not to speak, there is plenty of time left. In the last three years there have been six reports on adult and continuing education, three from the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education, one from Leverhulme, one from the Labour Party and the last from the UGC working party on continuing education. All are well researched documents. All come to the same conclusions: that there is a large, unsatisfied demand for continuing education and part-time degree courses, that there should be easier access to courses and that the outdated grant system should be changed. There has been no positive response from the Government. I have heard no refutation of the powerful evidence in these reports. Do the Government accept it? Do they agree that there is this unsatisfied demand and that it would benefit not only the individual but the country if it was met?

Instead of a positive response, there has been a reduction in resources and a reduction of opportunity, and promises of more reductions to come. Mr. Brooke said in a speech at Leicester that they were planning provision for higher education at the lower level of demand projected in the Report on Education, No. 99. Is this true? Does this mean that access without the standard qualifications for higher education will not be easier? Is there to be provision for more part-time degrees? Is credit transfer to be encouraged? All these are essential if those who traditionally have not been part of the higher education scene—women, ethnic minorities and social classes 4, 5 and 6—are to have a better opportunity, to say nothing of the need for retraining the workforce.

The Open University and Birkbeck cater for part-time degrees and ask for less formal qualifications; and they allow a longer period to get a degree. The Open University allows credit transfer. It produces graduates at £ 4,000 less than conventional universities, and it does give very good value for money, to repeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, says, if that is what the Government want. My noble friend Lady White has described what it is doing in responding quickly to changing need. But its reward, as many speakers have said, has been a damaging cut in grant and its future is seriously in doubt. Can Ministers please have a fresh look, if only at the time-scale of the cuts? They are asking for these reductions to come very quickly. Indeed, can the Secretary of State visit the Open University? I was very surprised to hear that he had not done so, although invitations had been sent.

I shall confine my remarks on local authorities to their provision of adult and community education. According to Cmnd. 9143, Government expenditure on adult education will be reduced from £91 million, or 0.71 per cent. of total expenditure on education in 1983– 84 to £ 73 million. or 0.58 per cent. in 1984– 85. The major part of that adult expenditure is through local authorities. I would remind your Lordships that the Russell Report recommended that it should be increased from 1 per cent. to 2 per cent. of the education budget. We are below even the 1 per cent. of 1973. Adult education is always the first thing to be cut when times are hard. As it is uncertain whether it is a statutory duty to provide the service, and as this Government have, alas, decided not to legislate to clear up the matter, local authorities can get away with a reduced service. I was pleased to hear several speakers ask that the Government should consider yet again whether they could not make this a statutory duty.

What has happened is that the non-vocational courses have become virtually self-financing. The result is a two-tier service with leisure provision for those who can pay and special provision, usually under-funded, for groups with some sort of disadvantage. There are fewer full-time staff and courses are shorter. The 1984 edition of Social Trends says that enrolments at local authority adult education centres fell by 431,000, or 20 per cent., between 1978– 79 and 1981– 82. What has been lost? A great deal, I think. The adult centre in town or village where people of all sorts, kinds, incomes and interests came together to enjoy the company, and to learn something new, was a fine and imaginative idea, socially as well as educationally. This has gone in many areas.

Mr. Brooke said: Evening classes are not valued enough because they are too cheap". That I deny. I wish that he could have seen the countless letters that I have received from Londoners, pensioners, young mothers and others, who feel that their life and sanity-saving courses might go with the abolition of the GLC. VAT on courses is to be deplored. My noble friend Lord McIntosh has spoken about that. I believe that it is completely wrong. Fun classes are necessary. It is important for us to hold on to the liberal, civilising side of education—the help in developing a whole and complete person that adult education at its best has always striven to give. I agree with everyone who said that the vocational and the cultural should run along together.

Nottingham University's department of adult education produced a very interesting report—Changes in Student Participation in Adult Education. This found there was a large unmet need and a greatly reduced participation between 1976 and 1981. Those who dropped out were the manual workers, the old, the retired, the housewives. The common thread linking the main changes in participation was an economic one, and, rather than adult education making inroads into the working classes, the opposite is the case, as the middle classes maintain their hold on adult education. I had intended to speak on the WEA, but it has been spoken of so well by my noble friends that I shall not repeat what they have said, although I agree with all they have said.

Extra-mural departments are suffering a 14.3 per cent. cut in grant over the next three years. Can the Minister please tell us about plans for the extra-mural departments and responsible body status? Is the DES grant to be spread more thinly over more universities? I understand that the basis on which the grant will be calculated is to be changed. What effect will that have? Will the aim be to provide vocational-type courses, targeted at audiences who can pay, and will these take precedence over traditional liberal education courses which, again, can be pushed out into the cold? What is the Government's policy in this area'? Have they one, or are they reacting to events as they come along?

What I suspect we shall hear from the Minister is that a long, hard look is being taken at all the grants, that these have grown up in a haphazard way, that not much attention has been paid to value for money and the ability of the customer to pay. Mr. Brooke told the extra-mural departments at their Sheffield conference that they were trying to allocate their limited resources to those areas where they think they are most needed. As a result. grants have been increased to the adult literacy and basic skills unit—another half a million pounds over the next three years. A £2½ million programme, again over three years, is designed to improve the educational provision for the adult unemployed. Of this, only about £700,000 is to be spent on development projects, and most of the rest on nine regional field officers. A central steering group of eight at the DES will administer these field officers. No representative of the WEA or the EMDs or trade unions or voluntary agencies is on that group—central Government again to the fore! One cannot help thinking that there are going to be rather more chiefs than Indians. How much of that money is new money? Is it not, in large part, a reallocation of the WEA and EMD grants?

The National Institute of Adult Education has become the National Institute of Adult and Continuing Education. I hope that will mean more than a change in name. I confess that originally I thought it was a sop because it was decided not to set up the development council which the Advisory Council on Adult and Continuing Education had recommended to succeed it. The £50,000 which the NIAE was to get to perform its greater role seemed a derisory sum—as somebody said, enough to fund a couple of television programmes. There are unsatisfactory features about the proposals. NIACE, as it is now called, is not a representive body. Its executive committee does not include all the major interest groups in adult and continuing education, and therefore its present structure is inappropriate as a vehicle for the major development work in continuing education which has been proposed for a national development body, and which is necessary.

Nor should this body still be merely advisory, as my noble friend, Lady Lockwood said. We have had the advisory side; now we need the development side undertaken by an active body. If the Government are really going to take seriously the established need for a proper expansion of adult and continuing education, which is desperately needed, a national development body is required. None of the existing bodies is capable of the very, big job that has to be done, and I hope that the Government will come to recognise this.

8.25 p.m.

The Earl of Swinton

My Lords, although noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have spoken in this debate have all been extremely good in keeping to time, so that I may have slightly more than my 20 minutes, I still do not think I shall have time to answer every single point that has been made in debate. I hope that any noble Lord, noble Baroness or, indeed, noble Countess whom I do not mention will not mind too much. I shall study the debate with interest and shall write in answer to any points I do not cover.

It has been a very interesting debate. I must say that the overall impression I have gained from around the House is that the Government are cutting back the grants they make available for adult education, or even that we have some kind of bias against it. I think this is the impression that any listener would have gained from this debate. But I must refute this completely; really, it is nonsense. In fact, we have increased the direct grants for specific adult and continuing education purposes which the Government have made available since 1979; and I mean increased in real terms after allowing for inflation.

In 1979– 80, the total expenditure on such grants was £7.2 million, and in 1983–84 it was £12.7 million—an increase of 76 per cent. compared with the increase of 45 per cent. in the retail price index over the same period. Planned expenditure for the current year and subsequent years is equally revealing. The estimated expenditure is expected to rise from £14.7 million in 1984–85 to £16.3 million in 1986–87—an increase of 28 per cent. over the 1983–84 figure. The story is one of sustained growth in both the past and the future. How, then, do the Government come to be beset with accusations of cuts, cuts, cuts, from all around the House? I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, who suggested that we were cutting off our nose to spite our face.

The answer lies in the fact that we have not been content to continue grants in the same old, comfortable way that has grown up over the years. We have gone through the various grants one by one, submitting them to a rigorous examination. In some cases we have thought it right that the taxpayer should be asked to contribute less towards the provision. In others, we have increased the grant and provided funds for important new developments. In short, the strategy has not been one of cuts, but one of redirection of resources and overall increase. I was delighted to hear my noble friend Lord Vaizey say that this was in the right direction.

Needless to say, the Benches opposite have concentrated on our decisions to reduce the contribution made from public funds, rather than on the various deployments of new or additional monies. I would not expect it to be otherwise. Equally, I am sure that they will not be surprised that I should try to set the record straight. Let me take the various areas of reduction in grant which they have mentioned, before turning to the new initiatives which the Government are fostering.

Many of the speakers in the debate mentioned the Open University. Among them were the noble Viscount. Lord Ingleby, the noble Baroness, Lady White, the noble Lord. Lord Perry, and the noble Lord, Lord Graham. If I have missed anyone, I apologise. The Open University receives the major part of its income from the Department of Education and Science in the form of an annual grant. The total sum for 1984 has been set at nearly £58 million, and there has been, in addition, a loan for £800,000 to help finance the university's programme for professional, industrial and commercial updating.

The total recurrent sums for 1985 and 1986, which have to accommodate pay and price increases, have been set provisionally at just over £59 million and £58 million respectively. The Government recognise that these levels of grant represent a significant reduction on previous funding levels and that the university will need to review its operations and programme of work. The university visiting committee, which advises my right honourable friend on matters relating to the Open University, has been asked to play its part in identifying and appraising the various options open to the university in adjusting to the new grant levels.

The Government see the Open University as continuing to play an important part in their overall strategy for higher education. They recognise that the university has achieved much in a relatively short time and has established itself as a major force in adult and continuing education, as was stressed by my noble friend Lord Vaizey. Again, to reiterate what my noble friend said, we feel that the university has now reached a stage of maturity at which a thorough review of its operations can be only beneficial.

Lord Graham of Edmonton

My Lords—

The Earl of Swinton

My Lords. I will not give way. I am limited for time. Noble Lords have all had their say. If any noble Lords have any questions afterwards they can write to me, but I really do not have time to give way. It is the Government's view that, with careful planning and attention to priorities, the new levels of grant should be sufficient to enable the University to continue its important work.

The noble Viscount, Lord Ingleby, and the noble Lord, Lord Graham, referred to the newsletter which they had received and which stressed the terrible state that the Open University was in. It would, would it not? If one is going to make out a case one is going to make out the bleakest possible case, and good luck to whoever does it. That is the whole point of trying to enlist support, as we all know, and of going lobbying. No one would dispute that anybody had the right to do that.

Lord Graham of Edmonton

My Lords, the noble Earl cannot refute the facts.

The Earl of Swinton

My Lords, I am just going to try to do so. The Open University describe their cuts in grant in two ways: that they amount to £3.5 million in 1984, £7.5 million in 1985 and £13.5 million in 1986: and that they have been cut by 20 per cent. since 1983. The two descriptions are not entirely consistent. On the basis of the first, the percentage cut should be 24 per cent. rather than 20 per cent., but perhaps the 20 per cent. comes from rounding it down.

The department has asked the Open University for a table showing how their figures are made up. They have replied that it is not possible to produce such a table because the figures were arrived at by exercising judgment in relation to an array of likely expenditures they believe will have to be met in the years in question. These expenditures include the Open University's estimate of provision for inflation and for additional costs over and above inflation. Describing the 20 per cent. or the £ 13.5 million as a "cut", therefore, is to give the word a special meaning. The Open University figures actually represent the difference between the grant that they have and the grant that they would have liked to have.

I was interested in the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Perry. I think that there is some hope here. We are in discussion with the Open University about the relationship between student fee levels and marginal costs. Following the noble Lord's letter to my right honourable friend, let me say that the matter is a complex one and it is not yet entirely clear what level of fees the university would need to charge fully to cover marginal costs. My right honourable friend has asked the university in its present reappraisal to consider the question of fee levels in future years and this is a question on which he has sought the visiting committee's advice.

There was a very specific point made by the noble Baroness, Lady White, and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, about the unfair way in which the Open University was treated over the Pickup Scheme. The Government policy towards professional, commercial and industrial up-dating—Pickup courses—is that they should be self-supporting. The Government recognise, however, that there may be occasions when initial pump-priming grant support is needed to initiate programmes in new areas so that they can develop speedily. Such was the case for the Open Tech programme. The Open Tech is not itself an educational institution: it is a programme which provides grants to educational institutions to meet the programme's objectives. There is nothing to stop the Open University from applying to the Open Tech for grants in the same way as to other educational institutions. Indeed, it has already received grant support from the Open Tech. It also receives grants from government departments and public bodies, such as the Research Councils, to develop courses which, for their own policy reasons, they believe merit some initial grant support.

The Pickup loan available to the Open University from the Department of Education and Science is an additional facility which is not tailored to any specific area of activity. It is provided in order that promising courses with commercial potential identified by the Open University, are not held back by the immediate lack of investment funds. The interest terms are not unfavourable. They are set at National Loan Fund rates and, as a concession, interest only becomes payable on 1st April after the funds are drawn.

The department wish the repayment of capital to be linked to the expected life of courses, but the university have raised objections to this and negotiations on the capital repayment period are continuing. In one respect grant funds for Pickup projects of the Open University are available from the Department—that is, for projects which are innovative and demonstrate transferable elements of general applicability. I understand that the Open University will be submitting proposals under this heading for the department's consideration.

The department does not prevent the Open University raising funds from elsewhere to invest in the production of courses. Indeed, the Open University recently received funds from Barclays Bank to develop a course.

Many speakers spoke about the WEA. Let me say that I also support the WEA and, in fact, I once did a "Going for a Song" programme to raise money for it in my own part of the world, and so I am no enemy of the WEA. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, mentioned it and the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, my noble friend Lord Vaizey and the noble Baroness, Lady David.

The cuts we announced in future grants to WEA districts and the extra-mural departments of universities have been referred to, as I have said, by many noble Lords today. But we should bear in mind that the level of our financial support for the extramural departments had been maintained in real terms since 1979 and, in the case of the WEA districts, had doubled in cash terms over a period when the rate of inflation has been less than 50 per cent. Our decision to reduce grant by an average of less than 5 per cent. a year for three years for the extra-mural departments and about 2 per cent. to 3 per cent. a year for the WEA districts, should be seen in that context.

Moreover, average fees are only about 50p per hour—low fees due to the high level of subsidy which has been attained over the years. It is surely not unreasonable to expect a larger proportional contribution by way of fees from those students who can afford to pay. Similarly there is some scope for rationalisation of provision when subsidy for courses has been related to tutor costs or contributed towards general administrative expenses rather than reflecting student take up. In other words, the grants have not hitherto been related in any specific way to success and efficiency. The arrangements for calculating grant are now under review. The Government aim to evolve a system, in consultation with representatives of the extra-mural departments and the WEA, which will reward those providers who, without lowering their standards, achieve the greatest success in attracting the public to their courses including those from disadvantaged client groups from whom little fee income is to be expected. And we want to promote varied approaches and responsiveness to new needs by them because we see them as a significant part of the pattern of adult education in the future. These changes are evidence of the importance we attach to the continuing contribution these bodies will make in the future.

Many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, and the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, have instanced particular reasons why the WEA grants should not be cut and others have been put foward in representations to the Government. There was specific mention of the work in rural areas; the provision for the unemployed and other disadvantaged groups; and the voluntary contribution. All these are splendid reasons for the maintenance of the WEA's activity, but they were similarly valid five years ago when the WEA grant was half what it is today. I cannot accept that the department's modest 8 per cent. cut hazards these benefits. Increased grant has brought expansion and it is now up to the students who can afford to pay to assume a greater share of the financial burden of their own classes and leave more of the grant available for those areas of provision which would fail without the subsidy.

The noble Countess, Lady Mar, raised the question of the LEA provision. While I am responding to the points made about the responsible bodies, the Open University and the rest of the direct grant aided sector. I must acknowledge that LEAs are responsible for the lion's share of adult and continuing education in terms both of cash and numbers of participants and it is changes in this sector which have the greatest numerical effect on provision.

But I do not accept that there is great cause for alarm. We estimate that there must be about 2 million enrolments per annum at LEA adult education centres and the November 1983 Census revealed some three-quarters of a million mature full-time or part-time students following courses at many different levels in major establishments. The 1984–85 rate support grant settlement is undeniably tough and all local authorities are facing difficult decisions about priorities. Nevertheless, a sum has been allocated to education within the RSG settlement which should allow the majority of authorities in aggregate to maintain the 1981–82 level of provision on adult education provided that local authorities can contain their costs. Over and above that general sum, we have added £2 million to help LEAs to meet the education needs of unemployed adults. It is quite understandable, also, if individual LEAs ask those who benefit from adult education and can afford to pay to contribute more. It is no service to adult education if the provision is undervalued and underpriced.

The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, asked about the legal basis of further education. The Government believe that the existing provisions of the 1944 Act are sufficient to enable authorities to seek updating of these schemes to reflect present and planned provision if they wish. New legislation would be complex and could well distract attention from current initiatives to promote increased efficiency and effectiveness in further education.

Such initiatives include the proposals in the White Paper, Training for Jobs, and projects such as that on college-employer links—CELP—which are being launched in selective LEAs; Pickup, TVEI, and the like. The work of the Audit Commission, whose recently published handbook for local authorities included a chapter on further education, is also relevant.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, and I think the noble Baroness, Lady David, mentioned the Advisory Council on Adult and Continuing Education, and the proposal that there should be a national development council for adult education. The Government rejected this proposal in favour of a more flexible approach suiting the mechanism to the development concerned. In some cases they have decided to undertake the initiative themselves, as in the case of professional, commercial and industrial updating (Pickup), or the programme for education for the adult unemployed. In others they have worked through specifically targeted units, such as the Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit, the Pre-Retirement Association, and the Educational Counselling and Credit Transfer Information Service. I do not believe that the existence of a national development council would have rendered any of these initiatives more effective within the scale of the resources available for them.

One important area in which the Government have, as I have mentioned, taken steps to improve provision, separately from the NIACE development unit, is in relation to the adult unemployed. The £2.5 million development programme announced on 5th March recognises that there are a number of roles that the education service can play: improving the individual's employability; helping people to cope better with the reduction in material standards and related difficulties; opening their eyes to options which might not have occurred to them; providing opportunities for the constructive use of their time; and so on. We must recognise that different unemployed people will require different blends of these and other elements. Two major elements of our programme are the funding of development projects and the appointment of a team of field officers to be appointed and employed by NIACE.

Perhaps I might say a few words on the field officers, and this is very much in opposition to what the noble Baroness, Lady David, said, because she did not seem to think that they had a great deal to do. It seems to us that many practitioners in this area are working very much in isolation. We see field officers as forming an intelligence and advisory network to identify promising local developments which deserve to be more widely known and to facilitate contacts between practitioners who are engaged in similar work and may have much to learn from each other.

Another of the areas we are putting more money towards is, of course, that of adult literacy and basic skills. Before a central unit was established, somewhere around 10,000 students were receiving help and less than half the local education authorities made any special provision for adult literacy. Now there is a framework of provision in every authority's area and 100,000 students get help with literacy and other basic skills. Volunteer tutors number around 25,000. The Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit's active role has kept awareness of the problem to the forefront of the thinking of both central and local government and ensured that the momentum has continued. By international standards our record is a good one.

While much has been achieved, we have recently agreed with the unit that still more remains to be done. The existing activities of the unit which have proved so valuable will in general be continued—the advisory and consultancy functions, the involvement in training activities, the production of teaching and learning materials nationally which can be used locally and, on a somewhat reduced scale of activity, the special development projects designed to explore innovation and establish the range and variety of good practice. I say, "on a reduced scale" because we have now reached the stage where the lessons learnt from those innovative projects need to be spread more widely by introducing new provision designed to adopt the best practice pioneered in special development projects and local authority initiatives. This will be encouraged by a new fund for local development projects.

Another new fund will be designed to help new voluntary organisations get off the ground. The adult literacy programme could not have got as far as it has without the dedicated work of many volunteers—whether engaged by local education authorities or operating within a voluntary organisation. On behalf of the Government I should like to pay tribute to these volunteers. The fund will help to strengthen this voluntary principle as a valued complement to the expert work of the professionals.

All this has to be paid for. We have agreed to raise the grant to ALBSU in two stages to £2 million from its present level of £1.45 million—a substantial increase. We have also agreed to implement a three-year rolling programme from 1985 which will enable the unit to increase its activities with some security and go forward with confidence. These are positive actions which will benefit basic education provision.

I turn now to specifically vocational education and training for adults. The recent White Paper Training for Jobs gave our commitment to improving the supply of people with up-to-date skills, and we have said very clearly that progress will only come if education and training providers take up the challenge in co-operation and collaboration with the employers who are their customers.

The call for collaboration between education and industry has been a central theme of Pickup since it began. Pickup is all about improving and developing the contribution that the education service can make to adult training and vocational education, and is part of this Government's total approach. In the first few months efforts were concentrated on developing an awareness of the need for post-experience vocational education; and the potential problems, as well as the opportunities, inherent in trying to meet that need. The department recognised, and recognises, that much was being done by some institutions in some areas, but that there was a great deal to be gained from spreading the attitudes of the best to the rest. The message is that more and better provision is required, and that it is of material benefit.

A second major area of activity, support for curriculum development for post-experience work, is offered through the further education unit. The third and in many ways the most important element of Pickup is the team of nine regional development agents whose task is to stimulate the growth of Pickup in regions for which they are responsible. They are there to help the educational institutions to respond to the needs of industry—to offer advice, and help in their field.

During the two years for which the Pickup programme has been running, certain lessons have become apparent. One is the vital importance of real and effective working links between the users and providers of training at local level. In an attempt to bring about some rapid developments in this respect the DES and the MSC, together with the Scottish and Welsh Education Departments, are supporting a pilot programme of local collaboration projects to promote just this active co-operation.

To sum up then, with the present economic climate and the need to constrain public expenditure, it is a case of channelling scarce resources to where they are needed most. LEAs will, I am sure, be bending their minds to this. The Government do not underestimate the importance of maintaining the opportunities for adult and continuing education and the rise in total DES grant for adult education from £12.9 million in financial year 1983–84 to a prospective £16.3 million in 1986–87 and the careful targeting of those resources is an earnest of our intention. This is a period of development for adult education. The Government's record of progress is a good one, and it will be maintained.

Baroness Lockwood

My Lords, I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. The number of speakers has indicated the depth of interest in the subject by Members of the House and has also revealed a very real expertise in this whole area. I should also like to thank the Minister who has responded to the debate. The number of speakers has given him a very difficult task indeed, and I think that tomorrow all of us will study very carefully his figures and the points that he made. I doubt whether they will assuage some of the troubled thoughts that Members of your Lordships' House have put forward, but no doubt they will give us subjects for future debates. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.