Mr. Philips Price:

asked the Minister of Education whether he is aware that a number of secondary schools in Gloucestershire urgently needing extensions and improvements have been struck off the list of schools prepared by the Gloucestershire County Council for inclusion in the next two years' improvement schemes by his Department; and whether he will state the reason.

The building programme which has been approved for the Gloucestershire local education authority for each of the next two years is more than twice as large as that for 1959–60, and about three-quarters of it is for the improvement or replacement of secondary schools. However, the authority submitted so many projects that it was not possible to find room for all of them.

Mr. Price:

Will the Minister give an assurance that when the next list is submitted those schools which have been left out in this way will have a chance of coming on the list and being approved?

I can certainly give the assurance that they will have the chance. I think that many of the authority's proposals which have not been included in 1960–62 will find a place in the later years of the five-year programme. I assure the hon. Gentleman of that, but I think that Gloucestershire has not done too badly as a proportion of the whole.

The hon. Gentleman says that there will be a chance. What are the odds?

I would not like to estimate the precise odds, but if the right hon. Gentleman will look at the rest of my answer to the supplementary question he will, I think, find that I was being reasonably encouraging.