The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Neil Mac-farlane):

I want to express my appreciation of the very important contributions made from both sides of the House in this most useful debate. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry will read the debate carefully to take note of the many constructive arguments put forward on this very important occasion.

I intend to respond to the various matters referred to by hon. Members, and then I shall go on to detail some of the conclusions that we have reached at the Department of Education and Science. I have to tell hon. Members on both sides that I shall refrain from dealing too much with Department of Industry matters because the educational impact has been emphasised and I do not want to run the risk of overlapping too much the province of that Department.

I deal first with the matter referred to by the right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. Silkin) and the hon. Member for Dunfermline (Mr. Douglas) about the forthcoming conference, and later in my remarks I shall develop the greater detail of that conference.

We have set up this two-day conference, and it is being run by a totally impartial committee. Here I must correct my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Ward), who suggested that the conference was being sponsored by the Department of Industry. In fact, it is being sponsored by the Department of Education and Science and it is being chaired by the former deput chairman of the National Enterprise Board, Mr. Dick Morris, with a totally impartial committee drawn from a wide background, which I shall describe in due course. We hope that the political aspects will be totally left out of this important conference, and in a moment I shall discuss some of the likely themes of the conference.

The hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Huckfield) was good enough to pass me a note to indicate that he had to leave early to fulfil a constituency engagement. However, I want to refer to one or two of the comments he made in his speech. He gave an interesting philosophical and Historical survey. I do not know whether he carried every hon. Member with him in his opening remarks, but from his own previous position at the Department of Industry he knows of the importance of industry and education. The unit, which has a close involvement with my own Department and the local education authorities, has made a not insignificant contribution to bringing that recognition into the classroom.

The hon. Gentleman referred to a shortage of skilled engineers. We all have views on that definition. One of the things that we have discovered in our travels around the cities of the United Kingdom during the past 12 months—no doubt Ministers in the previous Administration discovered the same thing—is that there does not seem to be a great shortage of first-degree engineers, whereas there is a tremendous shortage of skilled labour and technicians. What worries me so much about the curriculum in our schools is that against a background of unemployment there is always a pool of skilled jobs on offer in every major industrial town. That is something that worries us deeply, and that again brings us back to the question whether we are matching our national needs.

My Department is sponsoring a dozen or so conferences, to be held in the fall of this year, which are to be chaired by myself and ministerial colleagues. They will continue until early 1981. They will cover all 105 local education authorities, the regional CBI and the teachers' unions. We hope that that will be the second phase of the all-important dialogue that is still necessary to some of the previous initiatives.

There has been a very good reception so far from the many organisations that have been running exercises designed to improve co-ordination between schools and industry. However, over the past few years I believe that we have tended to rely too much upon the nationalised industries and multinationals for the links with our schools and colleges. I believe that the help that we received from the late Sir John Methven and hope to receive from the Association of British Chambers of Commerce—we shall be ex- panding our dialogue with chambers of commerce later this year—has played and will play a significant part. We now want to ensure that all sizes of companies and firms in manufacturing industry are involved in the schools. I hope that industry itself will march 50 per cent. of the way and that it will be met on the other 50 per cent. of the way by the schools, the head teachers, the chief education officers and the chairmen of the education committees.

Those are important initiatives. I welcome the dozen or so initiatives that are already in train, aimed at trying to improve secondment from teaching into industry and vice versa. I should like to see more industrial organisations adopting schools in their areas and providing equipment. When equipment becomes obsolete, it could be given to the physics or chemistry laboratories, or to the science teachers. Such initiatives could be undertaken, and they are not a great drain on resources.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ripon (Dr. Hampson) has over the past six or seven weeks spoken for the better part of an hour and a half on this subject. He was lucky enough to come second in a private Members ballot some weeks ago, and to a certain extent I was able to reply on that occasion. His record on this subject is second to none. In opposition, he made an enormous contribution with his own committee, and we are grateful for the wise counsel that he brings to the subject.

My hon. Friend talked about the pattern of education in our universities. I suspect that he was also thinking of the pattern in our schools. He was perhaps reflecting, as I have over the past year, that perhaps the Education Act 1944 was not so bad when it described the importance of the grammar school, the secondary school and the technical college. The great tragedy is that those have been phased out. We now have the comprehensive system. One of the great regrets is that possibly the Government and the country have never spent enough money on technical education in secondary schools.

I turn to the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer). I am almost inclined to call him "my hon. Friend" because in the last five or six years we have spent many hours together on the Select Committee on Science and Technology. He made a number of important points in his speech. He referred to the status of engineers and covered a number of issues that were dealt with in the Select Committee reports in the mid-1970s. Certainly, the hon. Gentleman's record is also second to none.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the role of schools and education, and the absence of engineers in senior boardroom decisions. Perhaps he will cast his mind back a few years to the time when we were studying small engine technology. He will recall that we took evidence from a major motor manufacturer and discovered that the seven board members present were accountants, lawyers or financiers. We tried to find an engineer but, alas, there was no engineer on the main board. I must beware because my master at the Department of Education and Science is a barrister. I must be careful not to get into trouble with him by criticising the role of the legal profession.

The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) referred to the status of the engineer, and also to engineering courses. He suggested widening the role and the curriculum which engineers study. The enriched engineering courses began three years ago, and are commonly known as Dainton courses. Although they do not receive a wide enough coverage in our universities and polytechnics—only seven cover that four-year degree course, a number give an extra year of language training, and Birmingham university does a business study course—some activity has taken place over the past few years, and that is important.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) rightly identified the importance of generalised engineering education. That theme has come out of the Finniston report, and also from the experts around the country. It is essential that engineering becomes far more generalised and that it should be underpinned by a sound knowledge of the basic subjects. That will come out of the curriculum survey which my right hon. and learned Friend announced as coming to fruition some time later this year. We shall invite local authorities to review their curricula. We acknow- ledge fully the points made by hon. Members on both sides of the House about the shortage of maths, science, physics and chemistry teachers. I would add a further shortage, namely, that of craft, design and technology teachers. There will be a serious shortage of science and maths teachers over the next few years, and there is no doubt that the position of craft, design and technology is equally worrying. Numeracy and literacy standards appear to have dropped. I would add another dimension—the teaching of dexterity. That must start at an early age in the classroom. The teaching of metalwork and woodwork is all-important as an early forerunner to entering the engineering profession.

We have tried to encourage and to recruit those faced with early retirai, and who hold a science degree, to retrain for teaching. We do not intend to lower the standards, but a number of ex-employees of private industry who retired in their early fifties have been recruited.

The hon. Member for Cannock (Mr. Roberts) said that the status of engineers was not recognised and that there was a shortage in many of our nationalised industries. Over the past five or six years we have had an extremely competent and able set of leaders in most of our nationalised industries. The engineering profession is well represented, especially in the area of energy. I hope that that sets the hon. Gentleman's mind to rest, because a number of engineers are heading the nationalised industries.

I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not mention all the points that have been raised. We are acting on the important points about teacher shortages. We are trying to encourage a recognition by local education authorities, through our conferences, of the importance of engineering subjects and the industry links.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline, in an informative speech, referred to the teaching company scheme of the Science Research Council. That has made an important contribution over the years. I have seen the precise work carried out by the engineering board of the Science Research Council. Hon Members may be interested to know that the council has approached me because it is keen, due to the increase in its engineering work, to expand its title to "The Science and Engineering Research Council ". The non. Member for Bristol, North-East will remember that that was once a recommendation of the old Select Committee on Science and Technology. The council approached us formally and asked my Department for its views on the desirability of such a change. My right hon. and learned Friend and I are considering the matter. I do not wish to prophesy what might happen, but I thought that it might be of interest to the House because it introduces another dimension.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline referred to the importance of women in engineering. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) referred to that matter as well. I am sorry that she had to hurry her speech towards the end to enable her right hon. Friend the Member for Deptford and me to come into the debate.

I was interested recently to receive the Royal Society's response to the report of the committee of inquiry into the engineering profession. I recommend hon. Members to read that report because it is an extremely effective document. The report coincides with many of my own views on the situation facing us. The report at page 6, paragraph 4, states : It is undesirable to treat education for engineering in isolation from education in science and its applications. We strongly support efforts to persuade more girls to tackle appropriate combinations of subjects leading to engineering careers. We fully acknowledge that point.

The role of the conference over the next few months will, I hope, be of interest to hon. Members. If I sketch in the background, it may be of interest.