EDUCATIONAL POLICY

§ THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (LORD NEWTON)

My Lords, no major debate in your Lordships' House on education could really be complete without a contribution from my noble friend the Leader of the House, and indeed for many years there has not been one in which he has not spoken on behalf of Her Majesty's Government. In his unavoidable absence I am the inadequate substitute—I will not say say understudy—but your Lordships will have been relieved to learn that my noble friend Lord Dundee is to wind up from this Box.

I have become fairly accustomed to the problems involved in answering for Departments other than my own, but I find speaking about education particularly difficult, for two reasons. The first is that at any moment of time many nuances of educational policy reflect in an important degree the philosophical ideas of whoever happens to be Minister, and it is far from easy to expound another man's philosophy. The second is that on a subject such as education one is bound to have one's own personal views. However, I shall try hard to prevent my own personal views from obtruding.

§ SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS

Why?

§ LORD NEWTON

Because I am speaking on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, not on behalf of myself.

§ LORD LINDGREN

Tell us what you think of the Government.

§ LORD NEWTON

The noble Earl, Lord Longford, has framed his Motion in wide terms; indeed they could hardly have been wider. I have no doubt that your Lordships will take legitimate advantage of this situation and that your oratory will range freely. I propose, and I hope this will have your Lordships' approval, not to deal specifically with higher education—in fact to say very little about it—but to leave that to my noble friend. On the other hand, I should like to say something in reply to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, since he asked me to do so, and also because it is a subject—the supply and training of doctors—in which I do have a Departmental interest.

723 The noble Lord talked about the Willink recommendations, and I ought therefore to remind your Lordships that in 1961, nearly two years ago, the Government felt satisfied that the prospective demand for medical services would justify a rise in the intake of 10 per cent. over the level which the Willink Committee recommended, and accordingly the University Grants Committee were asked to consider the possibility and cost of such an increase. The University Grants Committee's view was that the increase could be secured from the existing medical schools and that there would be no need to develop new schools. However, they did recommend that additional capital and recurrent grants should be made available over and above the main grant authorised for university expansion, and the Government accepted the Committee's advice that the recurrent sums to be provided should rise from £135,000 in 1962–63 to £245,000 in 1966–67, in addition to capital grants totalling about £100,000.

In the event, the intake increased in the autumn of last year by more than 16 per cent. over the Willink figure and by more than 14 per cent. over the intake for 1960–61. Indeed, the number of doctors in the hospital service in England and Wales has been increasing steadily. Between 1949 and 1962 there was about a 51 per cent. increase. In the case of junior staff the increase was about 64 per cent., and the number of consultants has increased by 70 per cent. As far as general practitioners are concerned, the total number has increased every year since the Health Service began, and apart from 1959–60, when a number of doctors were retired on qualifying for National Health Service pension, this increase has always been greater than the corresponding increase in the population.

In December, 1961, a memorandum was issued to hospital authorities setting out the action to be taken to implement the recommendation of the Joint Working Party on Medical Staffing Structure in the Hospital Service, and the Boards were asked to undertake a review of medical staffing in their hospitals. This is the first comprehensive review to be undertaken since the early days of the National Health Service. The Boards were asked to assess the 724 number of doctors needed at each level, both immediately and over the next five years, and to report their conclusions to my right honourable friend. A similar review is taking place in Scotland. Those reviews are going on. To summarise what I have been trying to say in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, about this question of doctors, it would seem that the current estimated need for medical students in Great Britain is being met by places in existing medical schools, but the position will be kept under review, and if there has to be a revision the suggestions of the noble Lord will, of course, be considered with others.

§ LORD AMULREE

My Lords, may I just intervene for one moment? Does not the noble Lord think that my suggestion that more doctors might be coming here from the developing countries will mean that a new medical school may be necessary?

§ LORD NEWTON

I have not at the moment any evidence which would justify me in departing from the recommendation of the University Grants Committee.

My Lords, no Government can frame its educational policy in a vacuum, and by this I mean that the amount of money available is not, and never will be, limitless. There are other deserving competitors, and your Lordships will not be surprised if I say that the National Health Service is one. It is no good anybody trying to ignore the fact that educational advance is now putting a considerable strain both on central finances and on local government finances. I would ask the House to realise that in recent years spending on education as a whole has been rising two or three limes as fast as the gross national product, as the noble Earl himself recognised. The figure set by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the current year is only £100 million short of the figure which the former Minister, my noble friend Lord Eccles, speaking in 1960, thought would be reached in the early 1970's.

A sharply rising trend in expenditure like this cannot be painlessly absorbed, however it is financed. But my right honourable friend the Minister of Education has recently declared that the expenditure on education should rise rather 725 faster than the gross national product; that personal construction should rise a little more slowly; and that the Government are prepared to face that situation. It does not follow, of course, that those who will have to foot the bill, under any Government, whether as ratepayers or taxpayers or both, will necessarily agree. Therefore, I think it behoves all of us who believe that the standards of the educational service should go on rising to be articulate about our reasons.

Are we achieving the aims of education and what are those aims anyhow? Those are questions which have continually to be asked, even if they can never be finally answered. I dare say that this afternoon some of your Lordships will ask them, and the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, certainly gave notice that he was going to ask them. They are questions which are capable of endless academic argument, but they are far from purely academic questions. The answers which one gives to them have a direct bearing on such essentially practical matters as the 11-plus examination and the school-leaving age. If, to give an extreme illustration, one held the authoritarian view that the purpose of education is to produce in the right numbers men and women sufficiently qualified, and no more, to do work which the State would assign to them, then the most rigid system of selection and streaming would be justified. But, of course, one does not hold that view about the purpose of education.

At the Annual Meeting of the Association of Education Committees in Belfast on the 5th July, my right honourable friend Sir Edward Boyle stated what he thought the educational service should be trying to achieve. He said: Education is about children. We have to be concerned with every child, the intelligent and the stupid, the bad and the good, the eager and the reluctant. We have to do our best by each one of them. We have to keep reminding ourselves of the individuals behind the statistics, the personalities inside the streams. Some people think education is about class and snobbery, or about power and political rivalry; others think it is about getting on, or getting in. I believe that if we separate children at any stage we must do it because it is better for them that way, not because it pleases their parents, and not because of any social or class—or, let me add, colour—distinotion. Later in the same speech he said: If I were asked to put as shortly as possible why I attach such importance to 726 education, I think I would give two main reasons. First, the most valuable assets we have in this country are the potential abilities of our young people; and secondly, as a matter of social policy, I do believe we should work towards a situation in which every child has an equal chance of developing its interests and personality to the full. Those statements by my right honourable friend seem to me to explain very clearly the Government's view of what the aim of educational policy should be. They do not, of course, answer such questions as whether it is my right honourable friend's purpose to produce good citizens. I would certainly agree that a system of education that produced only bad citizens would be a bad system, but anybody who maintains that educational policy should be framed by the Government with an eye to the production of good citizens is presupposing that the Government knows best what a good citizen is, and that is not a proposition that appeals to me.

There can be no doubt that good schools can do much to draw out from children abilities that are latent in them. Because he recognises this, my right honourable friend has explicity stated that he does not start from the assumption that potential intelligence and ability are distributed very unevenly among different sections of the community; rather does he assume that there is a very large potential reserve of ability still to be tapped. I do not suppose there are many who would dispute that, but it does not mean that all children could ever do equally well at school. This brings us up against the 11-plus examination, about which the noble Earl, Lord Longford, gave us the philosophy of his Party.

Those who demand its abolition mean one of two things: either that there should be a different method of selection for secondary education, or that there should be no process of selection at all. To those who mean the latter—and I fully understand the force of their arguments—it is necessary to point out that, however long one postpones the moment of truth (and much can be said in favour of postponing it as long as possible), the moment will surely come, even if one is educated in a comprehensive school. One cannot for ever opt out of competition: sooner or later one has to learn that one is stupider than one thought, or than 727 one's parents thought. I learned that lesson nearly thirty years ago at the feet, metaphorically speaking, of the noble Earl, Lord Longford.

I am not, however, suggesting—far from it—that the 11-plus examination is immutable: indeed a number of local authorities have got rid of it or modified it, mainly because of its bad effect on the curriculum of the primary schools. As your Lordships will know, my right honourable friend has expressed his opinion that the strictly educationalist case for moving away from formal methods of selection is now well established. And that case is the one that matters. Its premise is that, compared with other animals, human beings mature relatively late and that a child's performance at the age of 11 is not necessarily a pointer to what he will be capable of a few years later. One must remember, too, that some children start at a disadvantage—I am thinking especially of those who are members of large families and may be growing up in overcrowded surroundings: we must see to it that they also rank for the best that our educational system can provide. That is in the long-term interest of the nation as well as their own.

So far as selection procedures are concerned, my right honourable friend has no wish at all to interfere with the experiments of individual educational authorities. The 11-plus exam does cause difficulties for many primary schools and it is only right that individual local education authorities should resolve them in the manner that seems best to them. The Government have no hostility in principle to the establishment of comprehensive schools—indeed quite a number have been established with the Government's full approval, especially in new housing areas and in rural areas which are sparsely populated. There were 86 comprehensive schools in 1958, and in 1962 there were 152. How ever, in my right honourable friend's opinion, it is important that in every comprehensive school the academic element should be strong.

Certainly the Government are not prejudiced in favour of any particular pattern of secondary school organisation. It is too early to be dogmatic about what will be best for the future, but my right 728 honourable friend does not consider that the bipartite system should be regarded as the right and usual way of organising secondary education, compared with which everything else must be stigmatised as experimental. Wherever there are grammar and modern schools, children just on either side of the line will be virtually the same as each other in terms of ability and potentiality and will need the same kind of education. Not only, therefore, must there be opportunities for transfer; both types of school must also recognise their special obligations—the modern schools to do their best by their ablest pupils, and the grammar schools not to concentrate only on their most promising scholars. There is room for more overlapping between the courses provided in different types of school and more opportunity for children to move freely within the secondary school structure as they develop at different ages. Those who demand the complete abolition of selection have got to understand that it could not be brought about without closing the many well-established grammar schools all over the country. They have got to face that. My right honourable friend would certainly be opposed to a wholesale slaughter of the grammar schools. He prefers to accept the need for a degree of selection for secondary education, provided that there is wide provision of overlapping courses and ample opportunity for pupils, of all secondary schools to rise to the limits of their capacities.

I should now like to turn to building policy. The school building effort since the war has been one of great magnitude (and I think the noble Earl recognised that), but it is, of course, easy enough to make a case for more school building. Half our schools date from the nineteenth century and do not conform with present-day standards. And we have to meet the needs of a school population which, having already increased by 2 million since the war, is now expected to rise by more than another 2 million by 1980. In the face of problems of this kind, it is clear that more school building will be needed as far ahead as can be foreseen and that there will be good reason to build at an increased rate.

Only this month, my right honourable friend announced the allocation of a 729 further £5 million for school building starts in 1964–65. But educational building in the period beyond 1964–65 is now has main concern and a new policy is being formulated. It is necessary to decide how much building will be required to accommodate both increased numbers of children and shifts of the child population through new housing schemes. And there is the related question of how much can be spared to replace and improve our schools. The inadequacies of existing schools and the cost of remedying them are now much plainer as a result of last year's survey: a report on this will be published in the autumn. Thus the next phase of building policy will be related more closely than in the past to ascertained needs.

The claims of school building will, as always, have to be weighed against the many other claims in the public sector; already these have caused the level of all public service investment to rise from £735 million in 1959–60 to £1,095 million this year. First, in the educational field itself, there are the pressing needs of higher education, which are certain to be given greater emphasis by the publication of the report of the committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, this autumn. Outside the educational field, everyone agrees we need more housing and more roads. And, of course, the long-term plans for more hospitals and the development of the health and welfare services must go ahead. Your Lordships will not expect me, I hope, to agree that the claims of the Health Service should be denied, even in the interests of education. Moreover, the size of the task ahead must not be allowed to obscure the very considerable achievement in school building since the war. More than 3 million new school places have been completed and 3½ million have been started. Projects started since the war total in value £900 million for building work alone, and well over £1,000 million if architects' fees, furniture and equipment are included. More schools have been built than in any comparable period of educational history. And when the 1964–65 programme has been completed no all-age schools will remain. Well over £100 million will have been spent on replacement during the five year period 1960–61 to 1964–65, 730 and £200 million worth of improvements to schools are currently being undertaken.

These achievements in terms of quantity have been matched in terms of economy and quality. Mainly through the example of the development group in the Ministry of Education, new schools to-day cost, at constant prices, little more than a half their cost in 1949; yet they provide an environment for teaching and learning which is the envy of other countries. This very good story of value for money has been told before, and I make no apology for telling it again. It is doubtful whether many people in this country to-day realise the impact which our new schools have made abroad. In 1960 the top award at the Milan Triennale went to a three-class primary school system which is now being used in Germany and Italy. In 1962, 60 countries attended an International Educational Building Conference in London, and every year parties come from many countries to see our schools and discuss our school building techniques. This summer, for example, two large parties, headed by senior administrators, have come from France and several more from Australia. We are continually being asked to send experts abroad to advise the developing countries in particular.

Furthermore, the idea of the development group which originated in the Ministry of Education and under which the user, the administrator and the architect work closely together has spread to all the other forms of public building in this country and to many countries abroad. Spectacular savings in school building costs have already been made, but enlightened development work in educational building still has a valuable contribution to make; and the Ministry's development group has some very interesting work under way.

One interesting project is the investigation of the needs of maladjusted children and the design of a boarding school for them. As the special schools programme gathers pace, an appreciable number of such schools will be needed, and the experience of designing boarding accommodation will be of general value. Thus quality and value for 731 money are engaging a great deal of attention, and so are the problems of quantity and a fair share of public resources. A long-term effort is still needed to modernise our schools, but there is a firm base of past achievement, experience and current work from which to proceed.

My Lords, I want now to say something about the important question of teacher supply. In the period 1952 to 1962 the supply of teachers more than matched the huge increase in the school population. During this period the school population increased by 18 per cent. and the supply of teachers by 27 per cent. As a result, the proportion of pupils in oversize classes dropped from nearly a half to nearly a third: from 47 per cent. to 34.6 per cent. The biggest improvement was in the junior schools, where the proportion of pupils in oversize classes fell from two-fifths to under one-fifth. The current school year has not been an easy one since, as a result of the lengthening of the training college course in 1960, output into the schools was very much reduced last summer, and gloomy forecasts were made about the disasters which were bound to happen this year; but, in the event, the schools are weathering the situation much better than many people had feared.

A number of factors contributed towards this. First of all, the training colleges offset the reduction in their regular output by recruiting more older students who qualified for shortened courses, and were thus available to the schools in the autumn of last year. Secondly, a campaign, begun in 1961, to attract married women back into the schools as teachers, in anticipation of this year's difficulties, gathered momentum and recruited some 10,000 teachers in the first two years. Thirdly, many teachers who were contemplating retirement stayed on for another year to help the schools out of their difficulties. Fourthly, the quota system which had brought about a much fairer distribution of teachers since its introduction in 1956, ensured that the areas which find it most difficult to attract teachers were protected from any serious setbacks in their staffing standards. We are now in the middle of a major expansion of the teacher-training colleges on which we embarked 732 in 1958. The intake to the training colleges in the autumn of last year reached the record total of 17,000, which was a fine response to my right honourable friend's appeal to the colleges, in the spring of 1962, to step up their intakes by taking more day students and by other emergency measures. On present information, recruitment to courses beginning next autumn will exceed 20,000.

My Lords, this indicates the progress already made in carrying out the current expansion programmes of the training colleges. These programmes would have increased the training college population from some 28,000 in 1957–58, to 65,000 by the second half of the present decade. But they have now been superseded by the Government's decision, announced in January this year, to set a new target of 80,000 to be reached by 1970. This will represent a total expansion of almost three times the size of the training colleges only five years ago. It will enable colleges each year to take in over 25,000 students on three-year courses and still leave some room for their other functions, such as offering training to graduates and further training to teachers already qualified.

In order to achieve such a rapid rate of expansion we shall require further capital investment. For this the Government have authorised another £7 million, to be spread over the next three years, and this means that the value of building starts next year will be £9 million, compared with £6 million this year. There will also have to be measures for increasing the productivity of the colleges by more intensive use of their facilities. Since the Government's announcement, individual colleges have been considering and reporting to the Ministry their own plans for the further stage of expansion.

My Lords, this programme of further expansion was the Government's practical response to the long-term forecast of teacher supply and demand made by the National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers in May, 1962. Their report showed that, although conditions in the secondary schools were expected to improve quite substantially, the really severe problems would lie in the primary schools. This was because those schools rely most heavily on women teachers: all teachers in the infants schools are women. It is the increasingly rapid loss of young women, 733 either on marriage or, more commonly, to start their families, which is the main factor that limits the growth of the teaching force and largely counteracts the measures taken to increase the annual recruitment of teachers.

However, since the National Advisory Council's report was published, official forecasts of child population have been revised upwards. We have now to reckon with 750,000 more children in the schools by 1980 than was earlier forecast. The latest evidence about the loss of women teachers (your Lordships will notice that I am trying to avoid the word "wastage") also suggests that it is increasing more rapidly than had been assumed. Both these factors, though they may testify to a welcome spirit of optimism among our young people, add to the difficulties of staffing.

If these losses and the birth rate continue to rise, even mare of our teaching resources will have to be devoted to holding current standards, with correspondingly less to spare for improvement. In this situation it is not sufficient to tackle the staffing problems of the schools simply from the angle of teacher recruitment. It is just as important to examine how the available resources of professional skill, experience and wisdom among the teaching force can be deployed most effectively. This entails a readiness to re-examine many traditional assumptions and practices about the organisation of our schools. Some of the main issues which will arise were put by my right honourable friend in his recent speech at Belfast to the Association of Education Committees. He posed these questions: Is there not room for more flexibility in the sizes of the groups to be taught? What are the limits of an acceptable balance between men and women in the different stages of the schools system? Most important of all, what are the true functions of a highly trained teacher? Are their skills and experience at present being dissipated in tasks which might well be delegated to other hands? If so, has not the time come to provide the schools with helpers of the right kind, in the classroom as well as outside it, to enable teachers to concentrate on work which demands their professional attention? My Lords, I would suggest that these are questions which will have to be discussed in future by all who are concerned with education.

Meanwhile, efforts to recruit more teachers from every possible source must 734 continue with vigour and with persistence. The campaign, conducted jointly by the Government and the local education authorities, to persuade married women to return to the profession, has met with a welcome degree of success, and the schools are adjusting themselves to assimilate the growing number of teachers who are willing to give their services if they can find part-time posts. Much of the initiative for this kind of recruitment must rest with the schools and the local education authorities. But the Government can help, particularly by commissioning research into the obstacles to be overcome and into the most fruitful lines of development. To sum up the situation I should like to remind your Lordships of what my right honourable friend said the other day: No Minister of Education, with the best will in the world—and whatever his political Party—can offer anything but painfully slow and dauntingly costly progress towards the goals we all have at heart—many more and better qualified teachers and much smaller classes all round. The world of teacher supply that we have to live in contains two brutal and stubborn facts—the birth rate and wastage. We shall be deceiving ourselves if we say that these are merely excuses for not getting on faster, My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, talked about the sizes of classes. I should therefore like to tell your Lordships that, to get all class sizes down to 30, we should need 110,000 more teachers. Because of the loss of young women teachers to which I have referred, even the decision already announced to work up to a capacity of 80,000 students by 1970 will mean a net addition of only 5,000 teachers during the decade. So, my Lords, in the face of that, I think that to suggest that, in the immediate future it is possible to have another 110,000 teachers in the schools or anything like it, is a rather unreal promise.

§ THE EARL OF LONGFORD

I did not make a promise for the immediate future.

§ LORD NEWTON

No. Well, I hope that after what I have said the Opposition will be even less inclined to make such a promise.

§ THE EARL OF LONGFORD

I am very glad that the noble Lord has at last referred to my speech. Up to that point I thought he could not have heard it.

§ LORD NEWTON

My Lords, I think I have dealt, at any rate so far, with many of the subjects with which the noble Earl dealt. After all, the noble Earl put on the Paper a very widely-drawn Motion; and, although I think that Motion is the noble Earl's property until then, once he puts it down it seems to me to be public property. I have no doubt that your Lordships will wish to discuss many aspects of educational policy this afternoon, and I do not really see why I am not entitled to do the same thing. These matters which I have been discussing up to now are, of course, relevant to the raising of the school-leaving age to 16. The Crowther Report pointed out the need for carrying out this reform towards the end of this decade. My noble friend Lord Eccles, when he was Minister, promised that the Government would make a statement about it during the lifetime of this Parliament. That is still the Government's intention; but more than that I cannot say to-day.

My Lords, I think it would be nonsense for anyone to pretend—and the noble Earl, Lord Longford, did not do this—that there has not been a very real measure of improvement in the education services during recent years. When this House debated the Crowther Report and further education in March, 1960, my noble friend Lord Hailsham looked forward to an expansion of public spending on education to the figure of £1,000 million by 1964. In the event, we have already passed that figure comfortably, and, with expenditure on universities included, have reached a level approaching £1,300 million in the current financial year. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, referred to the proportion of the gross national product devoted to education, and I think that is a good guide to the magnitude of our effort. Between 1951 and 1961, the proportion rose from 3.1 per cent. to 4.4 per cent. It is currently estimated, as he said, at 4.9 per cent., and it will undoubtedly reach, by 1964, the 5 per cent. which my noble friend the Leader of the House expected. Put in another way, the proportion has risen as much in this Parliament as in the previous two together, and nearly as much as in the previous three.

Sixth forms have been growing, and so have the standards of achievement, as measured by examinations, both in the 736 schools and in the technical colleges. The number of boys and girls staying on beyond the statutory leaving age, in all types of secondary schools, has continued to rise steadily, and more and more of them are passing on from the secondary modern schools into more advanced courses, either in the sixth forms of the grammar schools or in the colleges of further education. I am not here this afternoon to say that there is not still a long way to go before we can claim that the 1944 Act has been fully implemented, but I am saying—and I hope your Lordships will agree—that there is much progress of which to be proud.

§ VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, I rise to address your Lordships briefly on one question only—the question of raising the minimum school-leaving age. This is the first occasion on which I address your Lordships' House. I took my seat only six weeks ago, and had intended to wait until the next Session; but, when this debate on educational policy was arranged I thought that it was perhaps a suitable opportunity to make my maiden speech. I must confess that, having finished one career as a colonial civil servant, I have been for the last fifteen years a university lecturer and professor, in widely differing countries overseas—in the United States, in South Africa and in Israel.

I feel that my late father would have approved my "cutting my teeth" on this subject. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was a great parliamentarian. He was also a very kindly man; and before he died he told me that he had bequeathed to me his Parliamentary robes. He told me that, when they were made a quarter of a century ago, he had purposely arranged for them to be let out later, as I am somewhat taller than he. But, even in its original size, his mantle is too large for me. He was a man of stature. I regret that I cannot follow him on the Liberal Benches. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for much good advice on how to take my seat We are old friends of 50 years' standing; and, as the respected Leader of the Liberal Party in your Lordships' House, he did his best to persuade me to sit on the Liberal Benches—and I think that perhaps he has still not given up hope.

737 My noble friend Lord Longford mentioned many educational problems that face this country—the 11-plus controversy and the problem of comprehensive schools, and also that of technological training and the universities. All have claims for attention; all have their protagonists. I shall speak on only one problem—that of raising the minimum school-leaving age. The minimum school-leaving age was, of course, raised by the Education Act, 1944, to 15, and that Act gave the Minister of Education power to raise the age to 16 when it was found desirable. My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Longford said, nearly twenty years have passed since 1944; and still the age has not been raised. The only change was made last year—to abolish school-leaving at Christmas. Even so, boys and girls stay on, at the latest, until they reach the age of 15 and 6 months, and some leave at the age of 14 and 11 months.

In the Government White Paper of 1958, Secondary Education for All, the Government's declared preference was to encourage voluntary staying on after reaching the 15th birthday; and certainly a great deal has been achieved. The Minister of Education recently stated in another place that two-thirds stay on after their 15th birthday; but that is not for the whole year. The actual figure is that in England and Wales last year 266,000 15-year-olds stayed on voluntarily until their 16th birthday. That is excellent. But half a million children did not; and that is not so good.

I admit that some children would not benefit from education beyond the minimum school-leaving age. They go happily to work, and they increase the productive labour force. Some benefit by day release; some go to evening classes. Others would benefit; and their parents are willing. The children are bright but bored; and boredom, my Lords, often leads to juvenile delinquency. In this connection, it is interesting to note that the peak of juvenile delinquency is always one year before the minimum school-leaving age. Now why are teenagers bored? The type of teaching they receive is often unimaginative; many resent the strict school discipline and, in particular, having to wear school uniform. I suggest that more attention should be given to the problem of teenagers in school: how to capture their interest and to retain it—and I am confident that it can be done.

738 Then there are bright school children who want to stay on but whose parents are not willing to forgo their wages. In this age of affluence there is a strange paradox. There is instalment buying, often with instalments in arrears, and many parents still have instalments due on the "telly", on their washing machines and on their "fridges". It is true that parents get allowances. But 15-year-old children often earn much more outside when they go to work; often too much for their own good; and the only way to cope with that problem is to raise the minimum school leaving age to 16. My Lords, these are the children whose cause I advocate. They need your special sympathy; they have no vote and they cannot make their wishes felt. It must be very frustrating for a bright child not to be able to continue his education after the age of 15. Fifteen is a very tender age. The noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, in the debate on the Peerage Bill, invited your Lordships to cast your minds back to the age of 21; I would ask your Lordships to do something more difficult and to cast your minds back to the age of 15. I think you will agree with me that the 15-year-old still needs some form of guidance; it is an impressionable age.

This country is now a Welfare State and the gap between classes is narrowing; there is social mobility upward. Ignorance no longer breeds ignorance, and the bright son of helpful parents can get right to the top in one generation. But this possibility imposes an obligation on the State to allow no talent to remain unexploited. It is not enough to wait for talent to show itself; we must go out to find it and develop it. That can be done only by raising the minimum school-leaving age. Other countries have done it; why not Britain? In the United States, 16 is the school-leaving age in many States; in some of them it is 17 and in a few it is even 18. The average is 17; and yet Britain still allows children to go to work at 15. The Government claim that Britain cannot yet afford to keep all the children at school until they are 16; that there are not enough teachers and not enough buildings. Is it not incredible that this great country cannot afford to keep all its children in school until their sixteenth birthday? This is not in the national interest. It is incredible, in my opinion, that Britain should lag behind.

739 My Lords, this is a competitive world, and many new countries challenge Britain's supremacy. We need every good brain available. We cannot possibly increase the number of scientists and technologists at the top without increasing the number of boys coming out of secondary schools; and it is essential to widen the base as soon as possible. But I must point out to your Lordships that we shall shortly be facing a new and even graver problem—technological unemployment; the result of automation in industry. This has already hit the United States, who are faced with a possible 25 per cent. unemployment rate permanently in their labour force in the next few years. This will be chiefly the unskilled labour, the Negro population, the Puerto Rican immigrants and the young. I fear that a similar phenomenon will overtake the United Kingdom later.

I should like, if I may, to read one sentence from a letter I recently received. It is from a member of the National Coal Board, who sent me some information about automation in the mines. He says: It is already apparent that the main job of the miner in the future will be that of a maintenance fitter or electrician. We are on the threshold of a great step forward as the result of automation; it is the Second Industrial Revolution. The machine will raise further the standard of living; it will reduce further the hours of labour; but there will be no place in this new world for the uneducated, and we must make desperate efforts at once to raise the minimum school-leaving age before we are overwhelmed. We must equip the next generation to take their place on the stage of the new world of automation. Recently when I was in the United States on a visiting professorship I saw teenagers being trained at school, not only in typewriting and in the use of adding machines, but in the ancillary skills for computers. Here, I find few local education authorities have ever heard of such a thing.

It is necessary to raise the school-leaving age not only to equip our children for the new age. There are two other advantages. Keeping teenagers in school will reduce the number of unemployed and the number of unemployable. Also, there will be more leisure. There is a great danger in leisure unless one is 740 trained for it, and teenagers need to be trained to handle leisure wisely. They must be provided with intellectual resources on which they can fall back, or their leisure will mean more looking at the "telly", more loafing around and mischief. My Lords, these are compelling reasons for us to take bold steps forward now to raise the school-leaving age to sixteen. When I say "now" I mean within the next five years; and there will be a golden opportunity when the dip in the size of the age group will come into effect between 1968 and 1970. But the decision must be reached now. An immense amount has to be done: more school buildings, more teachers, more teacher-training colleges. All that is in addition to reducing classes to 40 and 30, which, in itself, demands more teachers and more teacher-training colleges. A great deal has, of course, been done by the present Government. Twenty-four thousand extra places have been provided in teachers' training colleges; 5,000 married women, ex-teachers, were recalled. But still not enough has been done to raise the school-leaving age to 16 in the next five years. A really superhuman effort is needed.

Your Lordships will recall that during the Second World War Britain turned out tens of thousands of fighter pilots and bomber pilots at short notice; and teachers can be turned out in numbers if we want to do it and if we decide to do it—in other words, if there is a high enough priority. Raising the school age to 16 is ultimately a question of money. Every Ministry needs more money, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Newton, has said, health, defence, roads, all jostle with education for money. Even within the education budget, the cost of raising the minimum school-leaving age must jostle with the needs of university education, technological training and adult education. Great Britain already devotes a large proportion of the gross national product to education. The figure has already been mentioned; it is 4.9 per cent. But several European countries are spending more: the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Finland all spend between 5.2 per cent. and 6.3 per cent. Why should Great Britain spend only 4.9 per cent. or even 5 per cent.? I claim that any country can afford to educate all its children to any 741 standard if it really wants to. It is a question purely of priorities.

My Lords, I come to the end of my modest contribution to this debate. I would only mention that the Minister of Education in another place undertook to make a statement on education policy before the end of the present Parliament. I only hope that he will find room in that statement for a declaration now that the Government are raising the minimum school-leaving age to 16 within the next five years. I know I am not supposed to be controversial in a maiden speech, but I cannot omit to say that I fear that the Government have not much time left. Do they want to leave this important reform to their successors? This is not really a Party matter. Everyone wants better education for the children of this country. The only question is the speed of advance. I urge full speed ahead. Time presses.

§ LORD ECCLES

My Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, has done the House a service and himself great credit in choosing to address your Lordships for the first time in this educational debate. Long ago, when I was at the university, I learned to admire the wisdom and statesmanship of his father and I am sure that that remarkable man would feel that his robe, whether altered or not, had this afternoon been well and worthily worn. I think that your Lordships will wish to hear the noble Viscount often in our debates.

I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for introducing this debate. I do not know whether his speech was good politics; perhaps it was. But I have some critical remarks to make upon its educational content. I thought it was likely that the organisation of secondary schools would occupy a central place in his speech and in this debate. This is a problem that raises a great conflict of political principle, which those who are for and those who are against the comprehensive system should, I think, try to face more directly and, if possible, more objectively, because we have here a very great dilemma.

Men have always desired equality, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes 742 for bad, but in our generation, by one of those contradictions which make human nature so fascinating, men are also exhibiting an unprecedented passion for education. And education is civilisation's most formidable engine for discovering and enhancing the inequalities between man and man. In the days before there were any schools at all, I imagine that your Lordships' ancestors were distinguished by physical strength and natural cunning, but education, when it came, put us all in a long order of trained ability and skill, and this process, whether we like it or not, goes on inside every single school. It is quite true that when children first arrive they are put into the same class, and that for a few years they are kept together in their age groups, but it is not long before it is patently unjust, both to those below the average level as well as to those above the average level of intelligence, to go on teaching them the same lessons in the same class. And so the able are given their heads. They draw farther and farther away, and the better the methods of selection—and they are becoming better all the time—the more efficiently will the sheep be separated from the goats.

The authors of the Education Act of 1944 did not try to belittle or disguise education by reference to ability as the basic principle of the secondary schools to be provided under that Act. Indeed, they laid upon the Minister—and Parliament fully agreed—a specific duty to see that every child is offered an education suitable to his or her ability and aptitudes. That obligation is just. We should be ashamed if every child were not treated as an end in himself—that is to say, as a person who has a right to be educated to become as different from any other child as his gifts and application will make him. Once this is accepted as fundamental, then secondary education has to be organised on a selective principle. In theory, it would not matter whether the selection is achieved by some kind of examination at 11 or 12 leading on to different types of secondary school, or by promoting the able child out of turn inside a comprehensive school, such as Kidbrooke or Eton. But there is here a very big proviso. We should have to be sure that the quality of education offered 743 to children of different levels of intelligence was the same under the comprehensive system as under the tripartite system or in the independent schools.

I do not doubt that anyone who has first-hand knowledge of the maintained secondary schools in England and Wales, of their staffs, of their buildings and of the child population in every area would agree that a rapid changeover to the comprehensive system, even if it were desirable on other grounds, would damage educational standards. Only experts could measure the damage in each area. We are very fortunate that my noble friend Lord James of Rusholme is to intervene in this debate, because there is no one in this country who knows more about this complex subject than he. Out of my small experience, I cannot help observing that the preparation of children for the sixth form and the growing range of subjects which nowadays should be offered to children in the sixth form involve problems of staffing and organisation which could not be solved in any rapid changeover to the comprehensive system. But, of course, that does not worry the extreme advocates of the comprehensive system They tell us that the social effects of preserving the grammar schools and independent schools are so injurious that we should accept some lessening of standards in sixth-form work as the price of getting rid of these schools.

I remember receiving a deputation from a county borough, one which had long been in Socialist hands, who wished to abolish their grammar schools and go comprehensive. They did not advance one single argument to show that the children would be better educated, or even as well educated, if their proposition was accepted. They rested their whole case on the divisions and jealousies among parents, which they said the existence of grammar schools created in their city. That, of course, was not an adequate argument to bring to a Minister of Education, who has a statutory duty to look after and provide for the children. But it is also not an argument to be brushed aside, lying as it does at the very heart of the conflict between doing justice to every child and meeting the desire for greater equality. We have to try to resolve this conflict, and I hope that I can show 744 your Lordships that we can make progress to the extent that the desire for equality is charitable in origin; by which I mean, that it is a genuine wish to treat every person as an equal and a friend.

Of course, if everyone were to feel like that about his neighbour, then the able would never despise the stupid and the stupid would never be moved to resent the able. But, as your Lordships know, the desire for equality is not always a Christian feeling: it is often founded on jealousy and resentment that anyone else's child should go to a better school or have a better start in society than one's own. This kind of pressure for equality plays havoc with educational standards. Instead of putting all their energies into raising the level of the maintained schools, and into bringing closer together the two systems, the independent schools and the maintained schools, some people, in their impatience (and I am sorry to find that the noble Earl, Lord Longford, is one of them) would like us to get rid of the grammar schools, and the independent schools, perhaps, by an Act of Parliament.

§ THE EARL OF LONGFORD

I did not actually deal with the independent schools. I do not know why the noble Lord thinks I said that. I left that to my noble friend Lord Attlee.

§ LORD ECCLES

I beg the noble Earl's pardon. But it is bad enough to get rid of the grammar schools.

§ THE EARL OF LONGFORD

I did not say "get rid of". The noble Lord is reading something into my remarks which I did not in fact say. If he will stick to what I said, he will get on very well, and I will reply at the end.

§ LORD ECCLES

The noble Earl said that he wished to have an entirely comprehensive system, and he can decide for himself what would then happen to the grammar schools.

§ THE EARL OF LONGFORD

Will the noble Lord give way again?

§ LORD ECCLES

Certainly.

§ THE EARL OF LONGFORD

I explained that you might proceed along the Leicestershire line.

§ LORD ECCLES

Well, we will see. My own comment on this policy of 745 levelling down, done one way or the other, is that it would recoil upon its sponsors. For one thing, it fails to take account of the wishes of a great many parents. I discovered, when I was the Minister of Education, that British parents are very ready to call for a system of education which offers equal opportunities to all children except their own. When it comes to their own children, they want, and want with a passion that goes beyond reason, something more than a fair share. One saw parents going to any lengths to get a place in the favoured primary school in their area; others pressing the local authorities with the utmost conviction—and, in my view, rightly—to increase the number of denominational schools; and others pinching, scraping and denying themselves luxuries in order to have the means to ray fees at an independent school.

My Lords, this instinct for the family is deep and sound; and if in the field of education it sometimes finds expression in ways which preserve or create social divisions out of keening with the kind of free and open society that we should like to see, the remedy is not to prohibit parents from doing what they think best for their children, but to widen the choice of schools, where discipline and good manners are good, and where parents can be convinced that the instruction is suitable to their own children. A satisfactory choice of good secondary schools need not be anything like so difficult to attain, or take so long, as many people still fear. Of course there is a great deal still to do—we all agree about that; and perhaps nobody knows more about what is still to be done than I do. But the rate of progress, if one looks at it in comparison with what we had before the war, or across the Channel, is striking; and I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Newton for the excellent way he put the record right.

Educational reforms are bound to take time to bear fruit; that is in the nature of this service. The principal Act was passed only in 1944. Since then the expansion in school places and in the number of qualified teachers has proceeded at a pace (and I know this from having conducted the administration) which would strain any organisation, 746 however well-founded. Less than twenty years ago there was not a single secondary modern school as we know them, in existence. Now they are everywhere. As my noble friend said, year after year these schools are keeping more children after the age of 15, and turning out thousands and thousands more boys and girls capable of going and willing to go on to some kind of further education. The story of academic success in the grammar schools is the same. I do not think that the next generation of children—the children of those now coming out of the maintained schools—will, when they grow up, have much difficulty in meeting your Lordships' children and grandchildren on any ground where education counts.

Nevertheless (and this is my next point) the independent schools to which most of us here—and a good many members of the Party opposite in the other place, as well—send our children should not sit back and wait for the maintained schools to catch up: they ought to go halfway to meet them. Much thought is being given, and with much good will on all sides, to the problem of how to make entrance to the boys' public schools—the position is not too bad for the girls—easier for a child who has been to a primary school. Children mature a whole year earlier than they did before the war. Very few public schools today, admitting, as they still do, their boys at 13, can get a single treble voice for their chapel choir. Therefore, I should like to see the dates for leaving primary schools and for entrance to public schools coming together, around 12, and the public schools entrance exam, containing no subject which would be a bar to a boy who had been to a primary school. All that is now being thought about, and I hope that action will follow. In fact, if we continue to raise the standards of the maintained schools, as is happening now, and set about removing the artificial barriers between the two systems, in quite a short time a great and salutary change will have been effected.

I want to turn now to a serious and intractable problem. The improved opportunities for education are creating another social division which I take to be more dangerous than the remnants of snobbery to which so much attention is given. It would not be the first time in 747 our history that the results of science and engineering had divided the people. Disraeli deplored the two nations, the rich and the poor, who were thrown into such hard relief by the spread of manufactures and inventions during the Industrial Revolution. Disraeli insisted that stocks and shares, like land, carried obligations; and he charged the new moneyed men with failing to do their duty by their neighbours. I wonder what obligations he would have attached to the form of wealth which is growing so fast in our generation, and which is not money or property, but university degrees, diplomas, professional qualifications and all those career advantages which the clever children are now deriving from a system of free education.

Just as in the nineteenth century nothing could stop the Industrial Revolution from creating a great many new fortunes, so in our day nothing can stop education by selection from creating a superior and growing minority of qualified people. Each year it is going to be easier to identify the academically unsuccessful. How will the two new nations, the commissioned officers with their bits of paper in their hands, and the non-commissioned be able to understand one another? Indeed, now that all the bright boys have been picked out by selection and put on the moving stair to the university, one may well ask from where will come the men able and willing to take responsibility on the shop floor?

This brings me back to the heart of educational policy. Your Lordships have heard already in this debate—and you will hear a great deal more outside in the next few months—about the urgent need to expand higher education. Of course, noble Lords opposite cannot have it both ways. They cannot both say that our universities and technical colleges are far too small to offer places to all those who deserve a place, and then go on to say that the secondary schools are a failure. The truth is that the extra pressure which is producing this critical situation in higher education is due to the fact that the number of passes in G.C.E. in the secondary schools steadily outstrips the rise in the school population.

§ LORD TAYLOR

My Lords, the noble Lord is attributing thoughts and words to this side of the House which have 748 never been uttered. Nobody has said that the secondary schools are a failure. Everybody knows that the present problems of higher education are due to the successes of the secondary schools.

§ LORD ECCLES

We have heard nothing but tales of the bad record of education. Also, we are told all the time—the noble Lord need not shake his head—that we ought completely to reorganise the secondary schools. Would anybody want to do that if he thought they were not a failure?

I was talking about the expansion of higher education. All Parties will join in accepting the arguments for that, and very large sums of money will be voted. Thus we shall set in motion a further powerful instrument for sorting out the able from the rest. Of course, it will be right to do this. This expansion will be both just and useful—just to the young people and useful to the nation. But we cannot leave it at that. I want to ask the Government to accompany the expansion in higher education with action to bridge the gulf between the new rich and the new poor; between those who have been given and those who could not be given a higher education. What parallel action could we now take? Nothing can replace the charitable desire for equality which makes a clever man feel that his neighbour is his equal and his friend; and whether it is a question of two people, one with brains, and the other not, or of someone in authority having to deal with those under him, what counts is the will to communicate and the manner in which the communications are made.

There is also a great deal that we could do through educational policy specially to help young people who have left school early and gone into employment. Technical and adult education began as attempts to make up to those who had been to the old elementary schools something of what they had missed in school. Since those days, secondary education has improved out of all knowledge; and many more boys and girls now leave school interested in various aspects of education, and wanting the chance to go on enjoying what they had been enjoying in their last years at school. Surely, in this field three excellent meeting grounds between the able and the not so able 749 are waiting to be developed, to great advantage: adult education, sport and the arts. It may be said that adult education languishes to-day. If that is so, it is not so much because Governments have not had a regard for it, but because the techniques are fifty years out of date. The future is with television, with week-end discussion groups, and with other new methods.

§ LORD GREENHILL

My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, may I say that numbers in adult education are steadily rising? And those who are taking advantage of adult education are of a higher educational level than ever they have been before.

§ LORD ECCLES

My Lords, I used to study the budget for adult education, and it was my great regret that, while the costs went up, the numbers attending did not do so in anything like the same way. I am convinced that what is now needed is a real reform in the approach to adults who wish to improve their skills or hobbies.

I do not wish to keep your Lordships much longer, but I should like to refer to sport, which includes all outdoor activities. Sport is a great mixer of the able and the not so able, and I know that my noble friend the Lord President of the Council has that very much in mind. I put in a plea also for the arts. Take Coventry Cathedral. Only a handful of men and women, with very special talents, designed and decorated that great church; but every day thousands of ordinary people—and by "ordinary people" I mean someone like myself, with no particular creative gift—go there and enjoy the artists' work. The traditional love that we have for flowers and gardens is to-day being extended to many other forms of beauty. Who are chiefly responsible for this? My Lords, it is the secondary modern schools. Three-quarters of all the children in the country are now taught art in the secondary modern schools, but their parents had no such advantage. We can begin to see, in appreciation and taste, the results of this revolution. Can anyone imagine a better or a broader bridge than the arts between the intellectual minority and the large majority who could not enjoy the full benefits of higher education?

750 In conclusion, therefore, there ate four great aspects of educational policy which seem to me at present to be outstanding. The first is that we should go on improving the level of the maintained schools; the second, that we should bring together the maintained and the independent systems by removing all artificial barriers between them; the third, that we should expand higher education; and the fourth that we should devote, to adult education, to sport and to the arts as much care and resources, as we shall to higher education. If we did that, we should go a long way to fulfil our public duty towards the less able members of the community. That, in itself, would encourage the private citizen to entertain not a jealous but a charitable desire for equality.

§ EARL ATTLEE

My Lords, I should like to join with the noble Lord, Lord Eccles, in congratulating the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, on a very interesting and well-informed maiden speech. I hope we shall hear him very often. I want to offer a few considerations on a subject rather outside the general run of education, that is, the public schools. At one time, our Party regarded the public schools as nothing but hotbeds of snobbery and privilege, and many people have said we should abolish them. I do not think that is so to-day. It is not our habit in this country to abolish old institutions—we merely transform them slightly, and change them into new uses. At the present moment it is anomalous that you should have a system quite outside the State system altogether. Historically, it grew up, apart from the oldest established public schools, largely as a product of Victorian England and of the rise of the middle class. Public schools have many virtues, and no doubt some drawbacks, but I think our object should be to see how we can carry the virtues of the public schools into our new system of society.

What are the characteristics of the public schools? Apart from Westminster and St. Paul's, very largely the first characteristic is that they are boarding schools. The second characteristic is that most of them are essentially national institutions and not local schools at all. Eton does not depend on Buckinghamshire for its pupils, Harrow on Middlesex, or even Haileybury on Hertfordshire. 751 They draw their pupils from a very wide range, and that is a distinctive contribution to our society. When I was at my own school, 60-odd years ago or more, our boys came from every single county in England, a great many in Scotland, Ireland and Wales and also a great many came from overseas. That gave it a particular flavour. And every public school, of course, has its own traditions and its own distinctive characteristics. That, again, is a great advantage, because I think that one of the dangers in the world to-day is too much uniformity, and the more we can get individuality into it the better.

That being the case, what are we to do now? Public schools are essentially class institutions. Shortly after the First World War efforts were made to see whether we could not rather broaden the basis of public schools. I think they broke down for two reasons. First, because there was then a rather strong prejudice among working-class people against the middle and upper class habit of sending children away to school at an early age. I suppose one can trace that back to the Middle Ages when young nobles were put out into other nobles' establishments to learn the way of life. But there was that strong and invincible prejudice. The second reason of course was the expense and the natural dislike or disinclination of a local authority to put up scholarships for their boys to go to a particular institution. That well-meant effort to broaden the basis of public schools broke down; yet in other spheres to-day there has been a remarkable break-down of class distinctions.

When I was young and at school the country's civil servants and Army officers all came from the old-established public schools, and Oxford and Cambridge were mainly filled with people from the public schools. There has been a remarkable change in that. I looked a few years ago at the heads of the Civil Service and noted that there were only two who came from the old, recognised public schools; one from Eton, the other from Hailey-bury. The others were almost all from grammar schools—and none the worse for that. It is the same if you look at Oxford and Cambridge athletic teams. In my day all the members were from the old public schools, but now it is very 752 difficult to find one. A few squeeze in, but the others would be mostly Indians from overseas. In my day—and I think it is true to-day—the public schools also had boys from the Commonwealth, which proved a very valuable link. In the case of my own school we had particular affiliations with India. There were always Indians in the school, and I also remember some Siamese.

This brings me to the consideration of what should be the future of the public schools. I do not think they can be woven into an educational system which is based on the county and the county borough, because they have this particular national character. On the other hand, I think they could be worked in particularly to have both a Commonwealth and an international outlook. It is here that the boarding school system gives a great advantage because that is what is wanted when you have people coming from abroad. I know that there are already exchanges between the Commonwealth and Britain, and between the United State of America and Britain, and I should like to see them extended because in the world to-day, where we need to be more closely linked, one of the best ways is by common education.

I remember, when I was at Oxford, the starting of the Rhodes Scholarship Scheme, which I think has been immensely successful. I was recently over in the United States of America, where I was entertained by the younger members of the Administration, and among whom the number of Rhodes scholars was particularly high. I think we must get the same in the Commonwealth. I think that what we want for the public schools to-day is something comparable with the Rhodes scholarships. I should like a kind of Rhodes scholarship system for our public schools, not only with the Commonwealth but with other countries abroad and also with schools at home, in order to get a proper mixture of backgrounds of people who come to our public schools. That will mean scholarships; and I mean national scholarships. It cannot be done with local scholarships. There is no reason why a locality should want to put its people into a particular public school.

I think it is a national need to broaden the basis of the public schools by making 753 them more representative of the community as a whole, helping to fuse classes, and also to bring in boys both from the Commonwealth and from abroad, because I hold that we in this country have certain traditions and certain institutions that are of great value to the world, and it is to our credit that we have spread certain British ideas widely over the world, particularly in Commonwealth countries, as we see to-day when they become independent. I think we can still provide that service and doubtless profit by it.

I think it is true that, with a broad view of the public schools, not as local institutions but as national institutions, Commonwealth institutions and international institutions, they can continue to perform the kind of service which they did most notably during the nineteenth century when the need was particularly for skilled administrators. The public schools supplied so many of them, and the tradition of service all over the world. We are not now supplying rulers to other nations, but there is still the need for advisers, for sympathetic friends, technicians and other workers; and I think the background of a public school, with those old traditions, can still do extremely useful work for this country, the Commonwealth and the world.

§ THE LORD BISHOP OF NORWICH

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for introducing this subject of educational policy and for introducing it in wide and general terms. The growth and change in education in the last twenty years has been one of the most significant and most remarkable post-war developments in this and other countries. It has, on the whole, been a liberating movement. It has opened up opportunities for the children of this generation far wider in extent and diversity than their grandparents could have dreamt of as being possible. We are in debt to those who designed the 1944 Education Act and those who carried it through with the backing of the nation. Many benefits have emerged from that Act, implemented by a wealth of thought and care by the Ministry of Education, the local education authorities, and of course principally the teachers themselves.

But whilst there has been this undoubted advance in the range and 754 character of education in schools, colleges, universities and further education, and whilst we are debating, among other things, the character and speed of future developments, there is one feature in our educational system, a very important one, which gives grounds, I contend, for great uneasiness and anxiety. This is difficult to define in other than very general terms, and it would be easy enough to instance many individual exceptions which could be advanced to disprove this contention. So many young people have zest and ability and openness, and this must, at least in part, be credited to those who taught them. But over too many important issues, issues of right and wrong, issues of personal relationships, issues of the end and purpose of life itself, a large number find themselves, or so it would seem, in a state of considerable confusion and uncertainty. In the past there was sufficient of a common mind in society for those responsible for education to be fairly sure what were the values for which society stood and which would be recognised as acceptable. There was a unity of purpose in the national life and in education which was far-reaching in its implications. But that is not so now. I believe at present the greatest need is to look for and to commend a unity of purpose such as may give direction to an educational policy.

In urging this, I am not concerned to argue that the standards of to-day are lower than they were. I do not think the position could be properly stated in such a form, if that were true. It is easy to exalt the simplicities of a bygone age to the reproach of the present one, in which such simplicities do not and cannot exist. My argument is not one of reproach. Indeed, some of our difficulties are due to our trying to achieve so many good ends and to obey so many demanding concepts at the same time.

The current debate on scientific and technical education, on over specialisation in sixth forms and universities, and on the over-domination of education by examinations, reflects our need and intention to keep up as a nation in a world rapidly passing through another technological revolution, to which the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, referred in his maiden speech, to which I listened with such admiration. This requires us to concentrate our resources on educating 755 the potential specialists upon whom our future economic prosperity will depend, and, in a world still relying politically on armaments, our national defence will also depend. This is a legitimate purpose and it appears to be forcing us more and more into a conception of education which is essentially one of the imparting of knowledge and the training of mind and body in the use of techniques, an education for the able.

At the same time, the extended sense of humanity, which is such a characteristic of our time, drives us to an increased concern for those who are the reverse of clever—the mentally backward, the educationally subnormal, the severely and grossly handicapped; and I listened with particular interest to the references made by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, to future plans for some of these children. We are conscious of an educational obligation towards these children all the stronger because we know now how much we can give them and how much we can help them by an education suited to their needs; and this sort of education is not fundamentally concerned with the imparting of knowledge and technical skills. It is not directed towards giving the nation potential producers to any great extent at all. It is directed towards giving some of the potentially least productive members of society the elementary equipment for a satisfying life within it, and this for no other reason than that we recognise their fundamental right as human persons to such a life if it can be given them.

Those are the two educational extremes, each requiring the provision of specialist buildings, institutions, equipment, and, above all, teachers. Each is costly; and a unified educational policy is needed to meet that cost. It would, of course, be a disastrous simplification if it were assumed that we educate the gifted for their potential service to the State and the handicapped simply for themselves alone. There is an important sense in which every child has to be educated for himself alone—this I believe to be commonly recognised—and equipped to live as a human being in a human society, or, as I should prefer to say, a child of God in a world which God has created and which is subject to His sovereign rule.

756 But here the confusion of our purposes becomes more evident. Perhaps in this field of educating children for life as a whole we have gone too far in our retreat from the imparting of traditional ways, standards and beliefs, and the training, as a deliberate act, of character and the will. If we have retreated, the reasons may be complex; an uncertainty—understandable enough in view of the rapidity of the social changes of the last seventy years—about what our traditional ways, standards and beliefs really are, or a weakening of our conviction in them, if we understand them; and an uncertainty, in the light of many conflicting hypotheses, about what training in character and the will really amount to, what this implies or demands; an uncertainty, indeed, whether such training is either possible or desirable. We are living with these uncertainties, and I hope we shall soon find a way through them in order that this part of our educational work, this equipping of men and women for life, may regain direction and momentum.

Many of your Lordships must have welcomed an assertion made in this House by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, in a debate on the Second Reading of the Children and Young Persons' Bill, that [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 244, col. 819]: the training of children of school age in the way they should go is fundamentally an educational and not a penal matter. I would endorse at least the positive assertion in that sentence, without entering now into the ramifications of it in the context in which it was delivered. And this is the main point of what I want to say. True education has an inalienable moral content. But if we accept this as a proposition, we must concede that at the present time there is great uncertainty as to what this content should be, great uncertainty about what is the way children should go.

I have alluded to our reluctance, or inability, or failure to commend our traditional standards and beliefs. We face great confusion to-day about what I may call, for the sake of discussion, the normal—that is to say, the average on the one hand, and the norm of conduct on the other. We could, with due allowance for error, establish the statistical normality of certain aspects of conduct if we wanted to. But this 757 concept of normality is not the same as the concept of the norm of conduct, a belief that because man is man and the world and society are what they are one particular mode of conduct, the norm, is proper to man; and that departure from it is in itself an impropriety—an act or default improper to man. It is in this loss of a norm, loss of a conviction that we know the way the child should go that our major uncertainties lie to-day.

The confusion is aggravated by the facility with which we publicise not only deviations from what Christians at any rate would call the norm, but also deviations from what any empiricist would reckon as normal or average. And I believe that we add enormously to the difficulties of our educators by the publicity which our society showers on the deviants. We exaggerate the incidence of what I must call "evil". We make it more difficult for the young to get either the normal, or the norms of life, in proportion. For the norm, the things that make for the fulfilment of man's proper end and purpose, gets confused with the normal, or what most people actually do. From there it is not a long step to thinking that what most people do is, in fact, the right thing; and the distinction between what man is and what he ought to be, is lost.

We have, furthermore, become incredibly apologetic about the moral values which we do possess, and, in particular, about our public witness to them. There are no doubt occasions when it is entirely proper for a judge, or a magistrate, to affirm that his court is not a court of morals. There are senses in which that dictum can be true; for it is no more in the public interest than in the interest of good morals itself to equate the sphere of the criminal law with that of morality. But this assertion can be made too lightly and too often. The administration of law is a function of justice; and we should be in a parlous state if we said there was no positive relationship between law, justice and morality.

It was said in another place earlier this month that "it is no function of the Criminal Law to articulate the conscience of society." Generalisations of this sort help us to build up the notion that there is no necessary connection between society and its good ordering, on 758 the one side, and the private conduct of individuals, on the other; that morals, so to speak, are a private affair and not society's business. I believe that this is a confusion which brings great difficulty to those who are engaged actively in education. This, together with our reluctance to make dogmatic assertions, or to try to impose our beliefs on anyone else, has meant that there has been a tendency to profess a new virtue of ethical neutrality. Yet what society has ever held together without a stock of common beliefs, without the will and conviction to hand them on from generation to generation, developed and enriched, certainly, with new knowledge and new insights, and with new sympathy and a new application to the changing conditions of life?

In the higher realms of knowledge, in what I might call the exact sciences, as well as in philosophy, we all know the degree to which morals, accepted by the worker as a personal discipline, are built into the very pursuit of truth; built into the scientific method itself. There would be no science without it—without convictions about the absolute obligation owing to truth, about the duties which scientists owe to one another and to their craft. But, my Lords, there is another danger here. It is so often assumed—and not necessarily, or even especially, by scientists themselves—that ultimate truth is an abstract, impersonal thing, to be arrived at by the empirical method, as in the natural sciences. We can take part in this process, without in a sense being involved in it. Only occasionally does it present us with moral choices involving the whole of our personality. And yet it is when we are presented with these choices which call for action that we are in a difficulty: for moral truth is not wholly susceptible to this method of investigation. Since the empirical method is so frequently held to be the highest, moral considerations are too often given a second place.

The morality of society rests very much upon expectations—what people may legitimately expect of one another in their social and personal relationships. In a stable society there is a general expectation that in given situations people will behave, by and large, in predictable ways. Without this expectation, and without its realisation in some degree, security—psychological, social, legal, political, and, 759 indeed, family security—are, in turn, undermined. Uncertainty about these expectations is, I suggest, a mark of our society to-day. I know how easily this concept of expectation can degenerate into moral stagnation. I recognise the futility of pleading for a return to the stabilities of the past in the same form they once took, or by the same presentation of the sanctions, by which they were commended. But I believe that we must work through to some new pattern of common expectations of social morality; and I believe that in so doing we may well create a new sense of the unity of purpose in education, and in political and national life.

Here, before I close, I would suggest one means by which I believe this can be given at least some effect within our present educational provision. For twenty years since the Education Act, 1944, was passed we had affirmed by Statute that our education must have a religious content. This principle, on a non-denominational basis, might have been expected to commend itself to those who, while finding Church dogma unacceptable, believed in the Christian ethic, at all events for the young. But is seems that we have got it the other way round: religious teaching has been given, but without ethical content. I do not believe that the majority of agreed syllabuses for religious education have, by and large, proved satisfactory for secondary schools. I believe that there is need for radical revision of the form in which religious education is presented in secondary schools; and I am thinking particularly of the maintained schools, and not of schools which are under denominational allegiance.

I do not think that the only reason why this subject has so often become the most boring, instead of the most interesting and exciting of all subjects taught in schools, is due simply to lack of qualified teachers, or to lack of effort by the teachers. I believe there is much to be said for the main contention of Sir Richard Acland's book entitled, We Teach Them Wrong, in pleading that religious education for the adolescent be presented more on the lines of "religion and life", with discussion, than with formal factual teaching, so that it may become apparent to the child that this subject has to do with the things which 760 are of particular interest and consequence to him personally and to his own world and experience.

I do not propose to develop this argument, as I have already spoken long enough, except to say that, as I understand it, the recently devised Certificate of Secondary Education, by its approach and its flexibility, and by the fact that it is child-centred rather than subject-centred, should make possible the kind of experiment (even at the risk of making mistakes) in the field of religious instruction which may help children to a positive grasp and understanding of standards and values of which, in many cases, they are often largely ignorant. Clearly, however, the problem of finding a unity of purpose in education cannot be resolved simply, or mainly, by Governmental action. What I do contend is that it is of the utmost importance that these larger issues about which I have ventured to speak should have Governmental, political, and departmental understanding.

§ LORD TAYLOR

My Lords, I hoped, when the right reverend Prelate rose, that he was going to chastise the noble Lord, Lord Newton, on the subject of the medical school for Norwich, which I notice the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, missed out; but the right reverend Prelate gave us something much more interesting and, I must confess, rather more difficult to understand. He was dealing in very deep waters indeed. His is perhaps the first speech which has got down to deep fundamentals. I must say that when I see young boys and girls reading to-days newspapers, and watching to-day's television, I contrast it with my own youth, and I believe that in a way they are much more fortunate. They learn about things that I had great difficulty in learning about. My youngest boy is 13, but he knows what a prostitute is, and I think that is a good thing.

I can well remember, when I was about 16, looking up in the Encyclopœdia Britannica, 1911 edition, trying to find out what a prostitute was, and not being able to discover what on earth it meant, because nobody had the courage to put it into ordinary simple words. I do not think it is bad that these things should be published—that, for example, children should know about homosexuality. But when it comes to their own behaviour 761 they do want new yardsticks, and simple Christian yardsticks. They want to know why: "Why should I behave thus?" And if it is a matter of sexual behaviour, you must explain either to the boy or to the girl that there are risks of pregnancy. Then you have to tell them that if a young girl is seduced by a boy it is very likely she will fall in love with the boy, and that although it may be easy enough for the boy to go off and leave her, it is a dirty trick on her. That is the simple, practical approach to these things that the young person understands. I find that the young are as decent and honest as ever they were, but they do not accept automatically Christian teaching, Christian ethics and Christian morality. I have said quite enough about that subject—perhaps more than I meant to say; but the speech of the right reverend Prelate was a very important one.

It is a good rule, when noble Lords are speaking in a debate that they should stay on to the end. I am going to break this rule to-day, for which I must apologise to the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. I have a long-standing engagement to lecture at London University to-night which I cannot break, and therefore I shall not be staying to the end of this debate. I do not think that I have ever done this before, and I hope that I shall not do it again. Incidentally, it is one of the ways to keep our number of speakers down, to make it a very good rule that we will always stay to the end; and I hope that we shall go on doing that.

I want also to add my congratulations to those of noble Lords who have spoken before me to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, on his admirable maiden speech; and I was particularly pleased that he spoke about the problems which automation must increasingly present to us in the field of education. This will be the the great change in the next twenty or thirty years. The work of the factory operative is going to change very much; it is going to become that of a rather dull machine-minding job, with very little craft in it at all: all the skill will be in the designing and the maintenance of the automated machine. This change of pattern is going to present an educational challenge.

Two years ago I rose in this House to call your Lordships' attention to the 762 shortage of doctors. That shortage still persists—in fact, it is getting worse. I was amazed, after I had slipped out for a minute, to come back and hear the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, say that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, had stated that the number of doctors had increased by 16 per cent. I do not think that Lord Newton said that it had increased by 16 per cent. I think he said that the number had increased by 16 per cent. over the Willink cuts. In fact the Willink cuts were a 10 per cent. cut in the number of admissions to medical schools. They were never fully carried out. Therefore, the Government have, in fact, restored the 10 per cent. cut and increased the entry to medical schools by about 6 per cent., or 8 per cent. at the most—but certainly not 16 per cent. over the pre-Willink figure. This is simply not good enough. However, it is not what I want to talk to your Lordships about to-night. We do, of course, need three new medical schools, as the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, said; and I should have thought Norwich a very good place for one of them to be placed. I should have thought also that one or two of them might be opened in the North of England, because that is where a very great supply of potential patients is to be found.

I hesitate to add one more to the concatenation of crises facing the Government, but I want to suggest that the shortage of university places is even more disastrous than the shortage of doctors. The Government can claim, and with some fairness, that this crisis is of their own making and due to their own success. They have been very successful in improving the achievement of sixth forms, and this crisis is the result of that improvement. My noble friend, Lord Longford, in his very wise and helpful introduction to this debate, quoted Sir Eric Ashby. Sir Eric is a very great man. The first time I came across his work was when I read his book, Scientists in Russia, written, I think, when he was Scientific Attaché to the British Embassy in Moscow during the war. It is a first-class book. He was at one time Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast, and I think that at the moment he is Master of Clare. On the 15th of this month he told the Congress of Commonwealth Universities in London: In Britain there is no pretence that university education is open to all who can 763 benefit from it. Even in the Government's plans for the 1970s only 5 to 6 per cent. of the age group will become full-time university students. We have evidence that 12 per cent. could successfully pursue university courses. In terms of human need this crisis will hit the Government, I think (I speak subject to correction) in the middle of September. And there will be an even worse crisis in September, 1964, whatever Government are in power. We cannot put this matter right as quickly as that, for it is in early September that the matching of the "A" level results and university vacancies will be complete.

Early this year the Universities' Central Council on Admissions received some 50,000 applications from sixth-formers for 27,000 available autumn places. I speak subject to correction; and if I make a mistake I hope that the noble Earl will correct me at once, because, as I have said, I cannot be present to hear him later. Therefore, if he wants to "have at me" I shall be only too pleased to give way. Of these 50,000, many will not get the minimum two "A" levels required, so the gap will not be 23,000 but perhaps 12,000, and nobody quite knows what it is going to be. Of those 12,000 people who have the minimum qualifications but for whom there will be no place, some may get into colleges of advanced technology, because the C.A.T.'s probably have some vacant places. I believe and hope that the Universities' Council on Admissions, which is doing very good work, will co-operate with the C.A.T.'s to see that that is the case. Nevertheless, there will, I estimate, be 7,000 to 8,000 boys and girls who will have achieved university entrance qualifications but who will be turned away this time; and, as I say, there will be a much bigger figure next year, and possibly the year after.

Now here is a human tragedy. It is a tragedy of aspirations unfulfilled, the like of which we have not seen before. The young people have, as it were, been led up to the gates of the university by the State educational system and then been turned away. It is a national tragedy and a national failure, because we are wasting our most precious asset, our resources of human talent. It would be less of a tragedy if we could be sure that the best had been chosen and the 764 less good rejected. At least everybody could feel that that was fair. Perhaps in one way it is best to feel that it is unfair. You can argue that you feel it is unfair, and that you feel that you may be of the best. That is certainly the position now because selection is by interview. We all know that the interview process is little, if at all, better than random selection, given people with corresponding qualifications; and this is a tragedy. But I think that is universally recognised, and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord James of Rusholme, will correct me if I am wrong about this. It is a very, very difficult thing to do, except to pick out the most brilliant. One can pick out a Goethe—

§ LORD JAMES OF RUSHOLME

My Lords, I think I ought to point out to the noble Lord that in fact some universities do select without interview and are severely criticised for doing so by some of the noble Lord's friends.

§ LORD TAYLOR

Not by me, my Lords, because I think that the interview is really a process which is not worth going through. Is the noble Lord agreeing with me on this? I will not say it is not worth going through, but it is not likely to yield a healthy assessment of a person.

§ LORD JAMES OF RUSHOLME

What I should really like the noble Lord to tell us is what is the proper method of university selection.

§ LORD TAYLOR

I can help the noble Lord there a little, although I am sure he knows as well as I do. I think our American colleagues, who really have studied this matter in enormous detail, have found that far the most valuable single factor, apart from ordinary examination performance, is the assessment of the child's school teacher if it is properly and decently set out. I think it is the general finding of the American universities that the highest co-relation in subsequent university performance, given equality in examination performance, is in the report of the child's teacher. I think it places a great burden on headmasters to do their assessing properly and to consult fully when they are making their recommendations on university entrance.

I do not know what the Government are going to say about the problems of 765 universities, and about the situation of these people who are not going to find their places although they have earned them. I do not know whether they are just going to tell us that it will be all right because the Robbins Committee will report in due cours