HL Deb 13 July 1994 vol 556 cc1811-3

Lord Judd asked Her Majesty's Government:

What are their estimates of the number of teachers likely to be declared redundant as the result of the Government's not meeting in full the cost of this year's 2.9 per cent. pay increase and their cutback in funding under Section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966.

The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Blatch)

My Lords, the Government accepted the recommendation of the School Teachers Review Body. Decisions about teacher numbers fall to be taken at the local level and it is for individual employers to judge how best to implement the award. It is for each recipient of Section 11 grant to decide how to proceed in 1994–95, although an encouraging number have notified the Home Office that their projects will continue unaffected. Information is not held centrally about the particular arrangements to be adopted by grant recipients in managing any staff reductions.

Lord Judd

My Lords, is the Minister aware that, according to research done by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, as many as 5,000 teaching posts in the country as a whole may have been at stake? Is she further aware that the teachers most affected are often the more experienced and mature, and that their deployment to alternative posts is frequently blocked because of the appointment of younger, less experienced, cheaper teachers? Is she also aware of the damage being done to the work of integrating children of ethnic majorities in places such as south London and the West Midlands? What detailed research was undertaken by her department on the implications of all that before the present course was undertaken?

Baroness Blatch

My Lords, the survey of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has not yet been borne out, and so we do not have, nor indeed does it have, information as to whether those figures are true because they are speculation on its part. We all know that it is better to have real evidence, and therefore I reserve comment on that matter. All I can say about the information that the noble Lord presents about mature teachers and schools taking on younger teachers is that it is very much a policy to be determined at local level by the governing body as to who it employs. We do not wish at government level to interfere with teacher employment and recruitment: policies.

On Section 11, there is a good deal of evidence that local authorities are ensuring that, if their need to employ teachers to help children with second languages is a priority, they are doing so.

Lord Orr-Ewing

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that rather than a cutback, since we came to power there has been a huge expansion in expenditure on education, from £25 billion in 1979 to £32.6 billion this year? Rather than a cutback, that is an increase in expenditure on education in real terms of £7 billion. I am sure that that is good value for money.

Baroness Blatch

My Lords, I agree with the figures given by my noble friend, and I can add to them. The real terms increase in teachers' pay, discounting inflation, is 57 per cent., and in case someone should stand up and say that the number of pupils has risen, there has been a 50 per cent. increase in real terms over 1979 on the amount spent on children. Class sizes are smaller than when we came into office in 1979 and more teachers are employed. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has just said, there are 2,000 more teachers on the payroll today than there were this time last year.

Lord Monkswell

My Lords, I am sure that the House was interested to hear that it is the job of teachers' employers to manage the situation. Is the Minister aware that there are two categories in this area? The first is school governors, who have cash limited budgets on an annual basis and who are not permitted by law to overspend their budgets, and the other is the LEAs, which are in some respects employers of teachers but which have no power to intervene at the school level. When the Minister says that the employers should manage the problem, do the Government visualise giving more powers to LEAs to enable them to do that job or relaxing the restrictions on school governors so that they can do the job?

Baroness Blatch

My Lords, I am not absolutely certain what message the noble Lord is giving in his question. Is he, on the one hand, asking for a totally open-ended budget for education? If that is the case, I would argue that it is not possible to divorce education from the need to live within the means of the country as a whole. Secondly, in terms of recruitment policy, the people best equipped to know what kind of teachers, competencies and expertise they need to employ at school level are the schools' governing bodies. That is where the power to recruit lies.

The Lord Bishop of Ripon

My Lords, does the Minister accept that, if the funding under Section 11 is cut back and channelled through the single regeneration budget, it is unlikely to be returned in full measure to all schools that receive it? Does she further accept that that would do grave damage to the capacity of schools, particularly those with a high proportion of ethnic minority pupils, to deliver a proper education for their youngsters?

Baroness Blatch

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is right to address the fact that a tension exists, because the single regeneration budget which will operate from next year is a wholly new system. The Department for Education is most anxious about how that should operate and that it should not operate seriously to disadvantage those areas of the country in which English as a second language is a particular priority. But we are not yet convinced that the reduction in the support for Section 11 spending is a serious issue and is resulting in large cutbacks in the numbers of teachers involved. However, the right reverend Prelate is right to be vigilant about how the new system will work.

Lord Judd

My Lords, the Minister says that she would rather rely on facts than speculation. Is she aware that as regards the schools specifically surveyed by the ATL, no fewer than 1,732 notices of intended redundancy had been issued, and that extended to the country as a whole that brings us to the figure of 5,000? What does the Minister's department intend to do about the loss of the most experienced teachers, the adverse effect on class ratios and the damage to the work in integrating children from ethnic minorities?

Baroness Blatch

My Lords, if I went back over the past 10 or 15 years to look at what was happening at this time of year I should find similar speculation about the loss of teachers. Each year the situation is never as bad as people speculate that it will be. We can all carry out surveys and extrapolate their meaning across 25,000 schools. I make no apology for being more concerned with facts than speculation, because only facts will tell us what is happening out there. While we know that there are tensions about funding and spending, we also know that more money is being spent and more teachers are being employed. Those figures were given by my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing. The situation does not live up to the doom and gloom that are being peddled by the noble Lord.

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