§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science, pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East on 12 November, if he will state which two schools have teachers whose salaries are paid for by parental contributions; what are the teachers' duties in each case; what is the cost to the parents in each case; in what circumstances the parents decided to pay the teachers' salaries; and if he will make a statement.
§ Dr. BoysonThe schools are Lewknor county primary school in Oxfordshire and Eastry county primary school in Kent. The teacher at Lewknor is a full-time primary school teacher. Following a drop in pupil numbers in 1979, the school's staffing entitlement fell from a head teacher plus two teachers to a head teacher plus 1.3 teachers. A trust was set up, financed by parents, a local firm and a national magazine, to pay 0.7 per cent. of the cost of employing a second teacher on a full-time basis. The annual cost to the trust is £4,340. At Eastry, the teacher is a music teacher working 3½ hours per week. The post was cut from the beginning of the current school year and the teacher is now paid privately from money raised by the parent teacher association. The cost to individual parents is not known in either case.