My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carshalton (Captain W. Elliot) has made an honourable and gallant defence of HMS "Conway". One is bound to be impressed by the moving terms in which he has spoken of the school.

I find this a difficult problem with which to deal. My hon. and gallant Friend has set out the basic history of HMS "Conway". There is no need for me to go into that again. We have to start from the fact that in 1968, after many years of distinguished work, the school found itself in financial difficulties and the school governors made a proposal, under Section 13 of the Education Act 1944, that it should be maintained as a voluntary aided school. As we know, that proposal was accepted by the Secretary of State of the day.

Then the maintaining local education authority, Cheshire County Council, after four years' experience of running the school as an aided school, made a proposal and published statutory notices under Section 13(3) of the Education Act, 1944 to cease to maintain the school with effect from 31st August 1974. The local education authority's proposal was made in November 1972, as my hon. and gallant Friend knows. As he also knows, such proposals require approval, with or without modification, by the Secretary of State before they can be put into effect. The Secretary of State is not empowered to consider alternatives to the published proposal.

In accordance with the usual procedure, the Cheshire authority's proposal to cease to maintain HMS "Conway" was duly considered along with the objections to the proposal. Here I acknowledge that the objections to the pro posal that were received came from every corner of the United Kingdom and many from "old Conways" living abroad. There was no doubt that the type of education they had received was very highly regarded, as were the traditions and discipline of HMS "Conway".

However, my right hon. Friend announced on 10th October this year that, having taken account of the objections to the proposal and of the points made in favour of continuing the school, she had decided on balance to approve the local education authority's proposal to cease to maintain the school. In doing that, my right hon. Friend took careful note of the economic and educational considerations put forward by the local authority.

I must comment about those considerations, First, on the question of the size of the roll, the total complement of places at the school is 210. There had been a steady decline since 1969, and by 1972 the figure was down to 167. I know my hon. and gallant Friend said that about 800 boys applied for entry in that year, but we must face the fact, first, that many of these boys would not be sponsored by their local education authorities and, secondly, that for many of them the standards of "Conway" were too high. These are the standards which "Conway" no doubt rightly set down itself, but the boys were very largely not academically capable of undertaking the courses that were offered.

The decline in the roll has come to mean that the school is very small in relation to its age range of 13 to 18. The school's inability to recruit an adequate number of pupils capable of benefiting from the education offered has meant that from July 1968, when the school became voluntary-aided, to the present date, the authority has sustained a loss of some £242,534, which has been a heavy extra burden on the Cheshire rate fund.