Grammar Schools

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 27 November 1964.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Quintin Hogg Mr Quintin Hogg , St Marylebone 12:00, 27 November 1964

I am quite aware that the comprehensive or a similar system was familiar in Scotland. I am not aware that it is any longer true, although it once was, that Scottish education is in every respect the pattern for English Educationists to follow.

It seems to me that we are not discussing today either the virtues of a purpose-designed comprehensive system or the virtues of a purpose-designed selective system. We are discussing two quite simple political issues. First, given that the Minister prefers a comprehensive to a selective system, to what degree is he prepared to coerce local authorities who, for one reason or another, have the misfortune to disagree with him? After all that the Minister has said, both on 12th November and today, and after what the Labour Party said in its election manifesto, the right hon. Gentleman cannot complain if local authorities want to know where they stand. He has not told them today where they stand.

The Minister may say as much as he will that it is his party's policy to reorganise secondary education on comprehensive lines, but, as far as I know, education is a local service and the Secretary of State has no power at all to organise central education on comprehensive lines. If he is seeking to coerce local authorities into adopting a pattern contrary to what their local voters want, he must tell the House and the country—and soon—exactly what additional powers he proposes to take and how he intends to use them. As to that, we remain wholly in the dark after the speech to which we have just listened.

It would not be at all a good thing if a Secretary of State for Education set himself up as a kind of educational pope coercing with infallible judgment local education authorities whose voters have elected them to adopt a system other than that which he prefers. The right hon. Gentleman has done nothing whatever to allay my disquiet.

The right hon. Gentleman must also realise that we are facing an equal and opposite danger. He was, I think, as aware of the dilemma as I am now as I speak. What we are faced with is not the danger of local education authorities slowly evolving to systems which have been wholly accepted by their local communities. We want to know the attitude of the Minister towards the much more immediate peril of attempts by local authorities, not to create a purpose-designed system, but to improvise and mutilate existing buildings and institutions to purposes for which those buildings and institutions were never designed.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston referred, as have done some hon. Members from Bristol, to the unhappy marriages which are sometimes arranged between schools miles apart. One headmaster is sacked. The two schools, which are separated by miles, are married and it is called a single comprehensive school. To what extent does the Secretary of State mean to use his powers either to encourage or discourage that kind of thing?

My case is that a Minister who intervenes in the first sense to set himself up as a pope or who fails to intervene on appropriate occasions in the second sense is in both cases failing to discharge his duties as a Minister. [Interruption.] I am glad that hon. Members opposite say "Ah", because I take it that they want me to ask the Minister what occasions he considers to be appropriate. That is what I propose to do. [HON. MEMBERS: "What do you think?"] Given a little chance—and I have very little time—that is exactly what I am proposing to do.

The Minister has referred to his powers. I should have liked him to have told us whether he thinks those powers are correctly designed or not, because I know there are many people who think they need re-examination. But his present powers arise either under Section 13 of the Act or Section 68 of the Act. Section 13 is the section which requires his consent to the opening or closure of a school. What is the opening or closure of a school? It is not so easy to answer the question as it appears at first sight, but I do not myself believe that the Minister's action should be entirely determined by that purely technical consideration. Section 68 gives him power to direct a local authority where it has acted unreasonably. It is, of course, that to which he was referring when he spoke in answer to my hon. Friends who asked him the question about the Bristol plan. I do not wish to embark upon the Bristol plan. I was very careful not to examine it myself and I think it would be rather inappropriate at this hour if I entered into the intricacies of it now. But I would try to set out what I would think to be the principles of reasonableness.

In the first place it seems to me that the Liverpool teachers said a very wise thing about the Liverpool plan: The future happiness"— they said— of too many human beings is at stake for hurried and mistaken schemes to be imposed under an arbitrary time limit. That is the first principle of reasonableness that there should be deliberation and proper consideration of plans before they are foisted upon a local community, and if the local authority fails to observe that, surely on any view it is being unreasonable. I should like to quote, although it is getting late, what The Times Educational Supplement said of the Liverpool decision. But it does seem to err against that particular principle.

Second is the principle of consultation, and by that I mean first of all consultation with the right hon. Gentleman's own Ministry. Many things can be done in the early stages by persuasion before parties have taken up firm attitudes in public which could not be done by force later on. I mean, second, consultation with the profession, which has not always been adequately followed, and Liverpool and Flint are examples. I mean consultation with the school governors. I mean consultation with the denominations. The right hon. Gentleman could not have failed to notice what the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool said in a recent article.

I mean consultation, too, with the parents, whom I was sorry to see treated with such contumely by hon. Gentlemen opposite. I do not regard parental choice as nonsense. Indeed, it is part of the law of the land, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston pointed out. I realise that it has been limited in the past and I realise that there will always be some element of limitation, but I would still ask that the right hon. Gentleman, unless he proposes to repeal Section 76—and if he does, I hope he will let us know—to regard parental choice as one of the vital principles of education, so far as it can be.

And lastly, as I have only about two minutes left to speak, I should like to say something about two other principles, first, the paramountcy of educational criteria over political, which was insisted upon in the Memorandum of the National Union of Teachers and the Joint Four published in October. The second is the principle of co-existence, about which I should have liked to have said a very great deal, if I had had time.

In my own constituency there are at least two good grammar schools, a good secondary modern, and a good comprehensive school, of which three, at any rate, are purpose-designed buildings. Parents have a reasonable choice between those three systems of education. I have never heard any complaint or any suggestion, outside the doctrinaire, that this is not the way upon which, in a great city, our educational system should be based. I would end by saying this, that hon. Members opposite have said a very great deal about the desirability of integrating our educational system. Well, in its own way I think this is a very worthwhile ideal—