Schools : eighth report from the Select Committee on Estimates together with the Minutes of Evidence taken before Sub-Committee E and Appendices, Session 1952-1953.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Estimates
Date:
1953
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Schools : eighth report from the Select Committee on Estimates together with the Minutes of Evidence taken before Sub-Committee E and Appendices, Session 1952-1953. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    57/256 (page 37)
    11 February, 1953.] [Continued. than 90 per cent. of your official accommo- dation. In other words, the number of children in your schools can never exceed 90 per cent. of your official accommodation figure by reason of the territorial spread, unless they are born in nice groups of forty in each place. It assumes that these schools are going to be overcrowded from the day they are built. That is what it assumes. In other words, you get your average by accepting that in many cases your new schools are going to start by being over- crowded. 406. The Ministry assume that?—That is the assumption that the Ministry make, that many of these new schools are going to be overcrowded from the start. 407. Would they agree that?—-They do. that 408. They agree they do make assumption?—Yes. 409. That the new schools are going to be overcrowded?—In many cases they will be above regulations in size of classes from the word “go”, and they cannot provide the necessary places to comply with the regulations. The defence is that as other schools are overcrowded these might as well be overcrowded too. Mr. James Johnson. 410. What we are being told is that the Ministry merely make a mathematical calcu- lation. They have got a school population of 6,250,121 youngsters in 1954. At the moment they have got 6,100,000. The extra is the difference between the two totals. That is the global total over the whole country?—And as a result the Minister has repeatedly said that, while she claims the number of places matches the number of children. It may not obtain in any particu- lar area, it cannot obtain, and that means an acceptance that in certain areas there will not be school places for the children requiring them. That is accepted. Mr. Norman Cole. 411. I have taken 1,150,000 children as representing something like 2,000 schools. That is on the basis of 500 per school. That means that your 2,000 schools are providing extra places for 100,000 more children, which means 50 more children per school. Is that the burden of your argument?—It would not be done that way. 412. That is the sort of figure?—That is the sort of order of the thing. 413. In other words, something between 40 and 70 extra places per school built on the programme?—That is the effect of it, but what it would mean in fact would be additional schools having to be built. 414. The other way round?—That would be the effect of it. Mr. James Johnson. 415. Was not this always the case, even before the war?—Never. 416. You built a school for 320 children, and you found that you had to put 367 children in it within a year or eighteen months perhaps. This is nothing new?— That would not be true of a well planned area. I rebuilt schools entirely in an area I administered from 1935 to 1939. Quite literally every school in the area was rebuilt, either scrapped and a new school built or it was so substantially altered as to be vir- tually a new school. The basis there was that they would meet the need for at least ten years ahead. That was the basis of the plan because obviously it takes you a long time to build schools, and therefore you budget ahead. That means that a school for 480 was occupied in the first instance by about 360 children, but it became full in the course of the next few years. That is the obvious way to plan. At the moment what we are doing, through, if you like, shortages of materials, manpower and money—I accept the reasons—is to say “We cannot provide enough school places to make the Minister’s regulations opera- tive ; it cannot be done; and therefore let us accept that we are going to have large classes and build schools accord- ingly.” That seems to us to be a defeatist policy. It is an admission that there is no prospect of operating the regulations, never mind this talk about reducing the size of classes. The present regulation of the Minister is that a class should not exceed forty. They build schools for 240—six such classes in fact—and accept the fact that there will be 280 children there from the start, that it will get bigger, and that when it bulges out the whole place will have to be altered or perhaps another school will arrive to meet the situation. We say that the present claim of the Minister that this programme is adequate to meet the immedi- ate needs is not true. It is inadequate to meet the immediate urgent needs of the birth rate and the housing estates. Chairman.) J think we can pursue that question a little later because you then mention it in more detail. Brigadier Peto.] I should have thought you were verging more on a question of policy rather than finance. If that is the Minister’s view it is not for us to say anything about it. That is not our function. Miss Ward.] I suppose the argument pos- sibly would be that, if you spent a little more now, you would not possibly have to make up with another new school to meet a particular situation later on.