Orders of the Day — EDUCATION BILL [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 1 July 1964.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Dr Horace King Dr Horace King , Southampton, Itchen 12:00, 1 July 1964

I am always prepared to listen to my very good friend on the Front Bench. I was coming to that. He argued that one way by which we could get out of the dilemma would be by asking Plowden to anticipate its own findings on this issue and whether it would make this the first remit from the Minister. I think that it would be folly to anticipate the findings of Plowden on this, but I would nevertheless emphasise one or two points.

I heartily agree with the Secretary of State when he expressed the suspicion that many of our educational reforms had been carried out for non-educational reasons. Almost every educational advance has been for a bad reason. We first had the expansion of secondary and technical education because Lord Haldane discovered that Germany was a military force and we had to educate Britain to cope with the scientific and economic might of Germany. The whole theory of the tripartite system of education depends on the buildings which existed in 1944. We have made educational decisions on financial grounds—the number of teachers that we can afford—rather than on any educational basis. I hope that no one will use the elasticity of the powers that Clause 1 gives to the age of transfer to transfer children from any other age than that which the law at present lays down unless the reason is an educational one. Merely to transfer from primary to secondary because the building suits, or because it would be cheaper to have teachers this way than the other is the kind of reason which I hope will not enter into the mind of any local authority. If Clause 1 comes into operation, I hope that it will be for educational reasons and not for administrative convenience.

I am delighted that there is to be no tampering with the age of entry. The glory of British education is that ever since 1880 every British child has gone to school at the age of 5. Indeed, we have slipped back since my childhood. A reading of the Secretary of State's own pamphlets on primary education shows that thirty of forty years ago most of our children were getting to school between 4 and 5, but there are children in England today who do not go to school until the term after they are 5. I hope that some day when we consider this age of entry we shall endeavour—and we do not need an Act of Parliament to do it—to see that every child gets into school at the beginning of the year in which his fifth birthday comes. Infant education has been compulsory since 1880.

I would say, as I have said before, that infants' schools have played a great part in the development of British education. Many of the experiments in freedom, in pedagogy, have taken place in infants' schools. The broad aims of the infants' schools are pretty clear and I think that I will carry every hon. Member with me when I say that the infants' teachers know the purpose of infant education and are carrying it out magnificently. In the same way, junior education presents a definite picture. School from 8 to 11 has a sense of unity and purpose with which there should be no tampering unless the reasons are really valid and substantial. As was suggested in another place, it may be one of the reasons for the downward trend of the age of puberty.

It may be that as we raise the secondary leaving age to 16, we shall have to reconstruct education with infant education from 5 to 7, with nursery school education before that as soon as we can get it and afford it, and with junior education from 8 to 11 or 12. The Association of Education Committees suggests 12, but for a bad reason. I am certain that if junior education were freed from the bugbear of selection at 11-plus, it would have new worlds to conquer and a great expansion and development. The Clause makes experiments in that direction possible.

I said that I hoped that the reasons would be valid, and I say that because I am distressed by the attitude of the Association of Education Committees to the subject of the age of transfer. We need more men teachers, but the A.E.C., making its recommendations to the Plowden Committee, mixed up teacher supply with education advantages. It put forward what I regard as a bastard theory. It suggests that it would be good to raise the age of leaving primary school to 12 or 13—it finally settles in favour of 12—and at the other end to raise the entry into school to 6, on the ground that the older children in a school are, the greater the status of the school and the more attraction it has for men.

I must protest with all the force I can command at this concept that the status of a school depends on its size, or on the age of the children in it, or that there is something more dignified about a man teacher than about a woman teacher. I thought that we had ended the hang-over of sex inequality in education and that we were moving away from the concept that the smaller the children, the more there could be packed into a class and the less the teacher need be paid, and the lower his status. If we are to change the school transfer age, let it not be tied up with the question of attracting men, especially if the argument for attraction is fallacious.

I will enter one last caveat. I am all for experimentation, but the teaching profession is afraid that too much experimentation can lead to fragmentation. Families in Britain are mobile. When a father and mother leave one area to go to another, they do not want to find a system of education so different that the child is handicapped in the transfer. This is why I am glad that the Minister himself must be satisfied about the reasons which prompt any change in the age of transfer. This is why I sympathise with the point of view of my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North. We do not want direction of education by the Minister from the centre. We want this marriage of local and central authority to continue in what I regard as a very pleasant and happy state.

However, if we are so afraid of uniformity that we go to the opposite extreme and have too much variety in the system of education as between one part of England and another, children will be deprived, especially those who have to move, of equality of opportunity. Leaving one area for another is a trying enough experience in a child's educational career, but to leave one system of education for an entirely different system could be devastating for the child transferred.

I hope that the Bill has an easy passage. We could have had a much bigger Bill, but this is not the political or Parliamentary time for it. I am glad that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has brought in a useful reform in Clauses 2 and 3 which rights an injustice and I hope that the authorities will use the powers of Clause 1 with care.