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OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT
Brazil
Mr. Llew Smith : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what meetings Ministers or officials of his Department's Overseas Development Administration had with representatives of the Brazilian Grupo de Trabalho Amazonico (GTA) and other representatives from Brazilian rubber tapper groups during their recent visit to London.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd : The chief natural resources adviser and officials of the Environment and Latin America departments of the Overseas Development Administration met Juan Carlos Carrasco Pueda, executive secretary of GTA, and Atanagildo Matos-Gatao, president of the Rubber Tappers Union, on Monday 8 March.
Chlorofluorocarbons
Mr. Simon Hughes : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the United Kingdom's outstanding contribution to the multilateral fund of the Montreal protocol set up to help developing countries phase out CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals ; and when it will be paid.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd : The United Kingdom's full share of the multilateral fund is US $13.8 million. We have paid the equivalent of US $4.4 million to date. The balance of US $9.4 million will be paid up to financial year 1995-96 against a disbursement profile provided by the fund managers.
Cambodia
Mr. Simon Hughes : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much financial support he has committed to the United Nations appeal for Cambodia since the appeal in Tokyo in June 1992 ; and to which sectors it has been committed.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd [holding answer 11 March 1993] : In June 1992 we announced that our total aid pledge for
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Cambodia had been increased to some US $30 million, including all bilateral support since November 1991. Since June 1992 some US $13 million of this pledge has been allocated, mainly to the areas of humanitarian aid, food aid, repatriation, human rights, demining, health, English language teaching and urban and rural water supply.FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS
Central Asia
Mr. Elletson : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about the effect on United Kingdom interests of Turkish diplomatic and commercial activity in central Asia.
Mr. Douglas Hogg : We are aware of the high level of Turkish commercial activity in central Asia. British companies are also looking at investment opportunities in the region. Some British companies are considering the merits of forming joint ventures with Turkish companies, as John Laing already has with the Turkish contracting company, Alarko, in the redevelopment of Ashkabad airport. We welcome the diplomatic influence that Turkey can bring to bear in central Asia in helping those states to develop free market democracy.
Pakistan
Mr. Gordon Prentice : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information has been received from the Pakistani authorities by the High Commission in Islamabad concerning the murder of Mohammed Afzal in Juarah village, Pakistan, on 4 October 1992.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd : The British high commission has still not received a report from the Pakistan authorities. The high commission will continue to press the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a full report.
Moscow Airport (Transit Passengers)
Mr. Cousins : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information he has on the numbers of transit passengers from Britain via Moscow airport being made to go through customs ; how many representations he has received from passengers about this practice ; and what representations he has made to the Confederation of Independent States or the ambassador of the Russian Federation.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd : We have no information on numbers of British transit passengers being made to go through customs at Moscow airport, nor have we received any representations about this. Any serious complaint would be taken up with the Russian authorities by our embassy in Moscow.
Kurile Islands
Mr. Elletson : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the effect of the dispute between Russia and Japan over the Kurile islands on Japanese participation in western arrangements for aid and investment for Russia.
Mr. Douglas Hogg : We hope the dispute over the islands can be resolved quickly and to the satisfaction of
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both parties but it has not prevented Japan from taking a close interest in the progress of economic reform in Russia along with other G7 partners. Japan hosted the Tokyo conference on assistance to the former Soviet Union in October last year. As G7 chair this year, Japan is considering with other colleagues what more the west can do to support reform in Russia and invited the Russian Deputy Prime Minister for talks with senior G7 officials in Hong Kong over the weekend.Hong Kong
Mr. Cox : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he expects the Democratic Reform Bill for Hong Kong to be published ; and if he will make a statement.
Mr. Goodlad : The Governor of Hong Kong, with the advice of his Executive Council and our full report, published the draft legislation on electoral arrangements in Hong Kong on 12 March. We have made clear since September last year that we are willing to hold talks with the Chinese side without preconditions. That remains our position.
Despite our best endeavours, it has not so far proved possible to resolve our differences with the Chinese side over the arrangements for talks. We particularly regret this, as we consider that these differences could and should have been resolved quickly.
We told the Chinese side that we were prepared to talk on the basis of the Joint Declaration, the principle of convergence with the Basic Law, and the relevant understandings and agreements reached between Britain and China. We consider the Governor's proposals to be wholly compatible with these.
We also made plain that in any talks the British team would include the necessary Hong Kong officials with the relevant knowledge and experience on the same basis as other officials taking part in the talks. Hong Kong officials have participated in past discussions with the Chinese side as members of the British team, including during the negotiations on the Joint Declaration and in the joint liaison group.
We have also said to the Chinese side that Sir Robin McLaren, the British ambassador to China, would be the British representative, supported by a team consisting of Mr. Michael Sze, the secretary for constitutional affairs, Mr. William Ehrman, the political adviser, Mr. Peter Lai, the deputy secretary for constitutional affairs, and Mr. Peter Ricketts, head of the Hong Kong department in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. There would be no distinction between members of the team from Hong Kong and from London.
Having received a positive response from the Chinese side in early February on the principle of talks, we and the Governor, with the advice of the Hong Kong Executive Council, decided to postpone the Hong Kong Government's original plan to publish the legislation on 12 February. But we made it clear to the Chinese side that there could not be an indefinite delay, given the practical need to press ahead with legislation so that the 1994- 95 elections can take place on schedule. We proposed an early starting date for the talks. Despite the absence of a solution to the remaining difficulties, we and the Governor with Exco's advice
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decided to delay gazettal for a second time on 19 February, for a third time on 26 February, and for a fourth time on 5 March. The Governor explained to the Legislative Council in Hong Kong on 5 March that we wished to go the extra mile and give the Chinese side every opportunity to respond.Unfortunately, by 12 March the outstanding differences had not been resolved and we still had no date for talks. We had not even been able to obtain agreement that an announcement about talks could be made early the following week. Having deferred gazettal on four occasions, we and the Governor therefore decided with the advice of Exco to gazette the draft legislation on 12 March. We shall have to judge, in the light of subsequent developments, when to introduce the draft legislation into the Legislative Council.
We remain ready to hold talks with the Chinese side without preconditions. The remaining issues are matters which, given the will, could be solved quickly. We still hope that they can be.
Yugoslavia
Dr. Godman : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent discussions have taken place with his counterparts in other member states of the European Community concerning the effectiveness of the embargo on trade with Serbia and Montenegro in relation to regulation No. 1432/90 and decision 92/285/ECSC ; and if he will make a statement.
Mr. Garel-Jones : Sanctions are essential pressure on Serbia and Montenegro to co-operate with the peace process. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State discusses regularly with his EC colleagues the effectiveness of these EC measures to implement United Nations Security Council resolution 757. He did so most recently at the Foreign Affairs Council on 8 March.
Baltic States
Mr. Flynn : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he is making to the Commonwealth of Independent States to encourage the acceleration of repatriation of former Soviet troops from the Baltic states.
Mr. Douglas Hogg : We have pressed the Russian Government repeatedly at the highest level on this issue. We welcome the Lithuanian-Russian agreement of September 1992 on a withdrawal timetable, and we look to Russia to agree and implement similar timetables with Estonia and Latvia without delay and without linkage to other issues. We are pleased that withdrawals are continuing despite the Russian announcement in October 1992 temporarily suspending them.
EDUCATION
National Curriculum
Mr. Cousins : To ask the Secretary of State for Education what considerations underlay the withdrawal of health education and personal and social education from the national curriculum core subjects ; and what steps he is taking to monitor the practice of teaching this subject.
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Mr. Forth : Health education and personal and social education have never been core or foundation subjects of the national curriculum. Aspects of these topics are, however, included in several core and foundation subjects, and must be studied by all pupils. My right hon. Friend will look to the Office for Standards in Education to provide him with information and advice about all aspects of education provision in schools.
Dyslexic Students
Mr. Cousins : To ask the Secretary of State for Education what provision is made for dyslexic students in guidance given for public examinations, and for the national standard tests.
Mr. Forth : Examining boards for GCSE and A-level examinations advise schools and colleges that candidates suffering from dyslexia may be given up to 25 per cent. extra time to enable them to read the paper, to plan and to correct their answers. Additional facilities, such as the use of a reader, amanuensis or a word processor, are also available.
The School Examinations and Assessment Council (SEAC) has advised schools through their school assessment folders that similar arrangements may also be made, at the discretion of the head teacher, for national curriculum tests. If the pupil does not have a statement of special needs, approval must also be sought from the LEA or, in the case of non-LEA maintained schools, from SEAC.
The main vocational awarding bodies have special arrangements for dyslexic students and are continually monitoring the situation both with centres and individual students.
Funding Councils
Mr. Eastham : To ask the Secretary of State for Education what appeals procedures are available to institutions to challenge the decisions of the new funding councils.
Mr. Boswell : Any institution which is dissatisfied with a decision of the Higher Education Funding Council for England or the Further Education Funding Council is free to make representations to that council.
Blind Students
Mr. Steinberg : To ask the Secretary of State for Education what percentage of further and higher education funding is allocated to equipment and resources for blind students.
Mr. Boswell : From 1 April the Further Education Funding Council and the Higher Education Funding Council for England will be responsible for distributing public funds for further and higher education to individual institutions. Neither earmarks funds specifically for blind students. However, they are both taking forward initiatives to improve access to further and higher education for students with learning difficulties and disabilities. It is for institutions themselves to decide how to provide appropriate facilities for students from within the total resources available.
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Teachers' Salaries
Mr. French : To ask the Secretary of State for Education what percentage of each education authority's budget is spent on teachers' salaries.
Mr. Forth : The information for 1990-91, the latest year for which information on actual spending is available, is given in the table.
Percentage of teachers' salaries to net
recurrent expenditure 1990-91
|Per cent.
-----------------------------------------
City |6
Camden |61
Greenwich |53
Hackney |45
Hammersmith |60
Islington |53
Kensington |42
Lambeth |43
Lewisham |50
Southwark |48
Tower Hamlets |49
Wandsworth |48
Westminster |40
Barking |59
Barnet |57
Bexley |55
Brent |45
Bromley |52
Croydon |50
Ealing |44
Enfield |53
Haringey |44
Harrow |50
Havering |58
Hillingdon |48
Hounslow |55
Kingston-upon-Thames |57
Merton |55
Newham |52
Redbridge |52
Richmond-upon-Thames |57
Sutton |51
Waltham Forest |54
Birmingham |56
Coventry |55
Dudley |58
Sandwell |55
Solihull |58
Walsall |55
Wolverhampton |55
Knowsley |49
Liverpool |55
St. Helens |56
Sefton |51
Wirral |53
Bolton |56
Bury |52
Manchester |56
Oldham |57
Rochdale |54
Salford |60
Stockport |54
Tameside |56
Trafford |51
Wigan |61
Barnsley |55
Doncaster |56
Rotherham |60
Sheffield |54
Bradford |56
Calderdale |54
Kirklees |55
Leeds |58
Wakefield |58
Gateshead |55
Newcastle upon Tyne |53
North Tyneside |56
South Tyneside |58
Sunderland |59
Isles of Scilly |43
Avon |53
Bedfordshire |52
Berkshire |52
Buckinghamshire |47
Cambridgeshire |53
Cheshire |51
Cleveland |56
Cornwall |51
Cumbria |54
Derbyshire |54
Devon |54
Dorset |53
Durham |55
East Sussex |53
Essex |54
Gloucestershire |52
Hampshire |54
Herefordshire |56
Hertfordshire |56
Humberside |55
Isle of Wight |51
Kent |56
Lancashire |53
Leicestershire |54
Lincolnshire |53
Norfolk |55
North Yorkshire |53
Northamptonshire |56
Northumberland |55
Nottinghamshire |54
Oxfordshire |49
Shropshire |55
Somerset |54
Staffordshire |56
Suffolk |59
Surrey |53
Warwickshire |54
West Sussex |55
Wiltshire |53
Notes:
1. Figures are derived from local
education authorities' returns of their
spending to the Department of the
Environment.
2. The table shows for each authority
teachers salaries as a percentage of the
authority's net recurrent expenditure on
education.
Pupil-Teacher Ratio
Mr. Steinberg : To ask the Secretary of State for Education what measures his Department will take to reduce the number of classes of over 30 per teacher ; and what pupil to teacher ratio his Department has as a policy objective.
Mr. Forth : Our policy is to provide greater autonomy for schools so that they can make their own decisions on the deployment of resources. It would run counter to that policy to seek to impose a view on what the pupil to teacher ratio should be, or to introduce measures based on some arbitrarily determined maximum class size.
Teachers' Salaries
Mr. French : To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will set out the scale of basic salaries for classroom teachers and the range of incentive allowances and incremental enhancements available.
Mr. Forth : Qualified teachers other than head teachers or deputy head teachers are paid on a 10 point standard scale :
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Scale point |Annaul salary
|£
------------------------------------------
1 |11,184
2 |11,775
3 |12,366
4 |12,954
5 |13,839
6 |14,721
7 |15,606
8 |16,488
9 |17,664
10 |18,837
A teacher not at the top of the scale can have the value of his or her incremental point enhanced by £294, £591, £885, or £1,173, provided that the next scale point is not exceeded by more than £3. Discretionary scale points may be added to the top of the standard scale up to a maximum of £3,225 and awarded in the light of a teacher's performance.
Incentive allowances may be awarded at one of the following rates :
Rate |Annual amount (£) ------------------------------------------------------ A |1,296 B |2,097 C |4,194 D |5,595 E |7,692
Mr. French : To ask the Secretary of State for Education what is the maximum salary payable to a classroom teacher inclusive of incentive allowances and incremental enhancements.
Mr. Forth : The maximum salary payable to a classroom teacher at the top of the standard scale--excluding London allowances--is £29,754. This includes an incentive allowance at rate E and discretionary scale points worth £3,225.
Mr. French : To ask the Secretary of State for Education what percentage of education funding goes towards teachers' salaries.
Mr. Forth : The great bulk of central Government support for local authorities is through unhypothecated
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revenue support grant. It is therefore not possible to say how much of this support is for teachers' salaries. Decisions about how much to spend on teachers' pay are for local authorities and, under local management and grant maintained status, individual schools. Teachers' salaries represented about 55 per cent. of LEAs' total net recurrent spending in 1990-91, the latest year for which outturn information is available.Text Books
Mr. Steinberg : To ask the Secretary of State for Education what was the amount spent on textbooks per pupil in primary and secondary schools for each year since 1982, in real terms.
Mr. Forth : The available information on expenditure per pupil on books and equipment for years up to 1990-91, the latest year for which information on actual spending is available, is given in the table.
Per pupil expenditure on books and equipment at 1992-93 prices
|Nursery and primary|Secondary |Combined nursery,
|primary and
|secondary
|(£) |(£) |(£)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1982-83 |36 |63 |50
1983-84 |38 |65 |51
1984-85 |37 |67 |52
1985-86 |37 |67 |52
1986-87 |41 |83 |61
1987-88 |42 |86 |62
1988-89 |41 |90 |62
1989-90 |46 |95 |67
1990-91 |46 |89 |64
Notes to table:
1. Real terms figures are at 1992-93 prices, repriced using the GDP (market prices) deflator index.
2. Figures are derived from local education authorities' returns of their spending to the
Department of the Environment, and of their pupil numbers to the Department of Education. The table
shows combined figures for books and equipment because not all authorities' returns identify
separately spending on books from that on equipment.
3. Expenditure on nursery and primary schools was not collected separately for years after 1986-87.
A comparable combined nursery and primary figure is therefore given for each year.
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Grant-maintained Schools
Mr. Sproat : To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will list the name of all the schools which have achieved grant-maintained status, or been given permission to go ahead.
Mr. Forth : The details requested are as follows :
Operating schools
Abbotswood Grant Maintained Middle School
Acle High School
Adams' Grammar School
Aloeric Grant-Maintained School
Angley School
Ash Green Grant-Maintained School
Audenshaw High School
Avonbourne School
Aylesford School
Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School
Baines School
Balcarras School
Bankfield High School (GM)
Barnehurst Infant Grant-Maintained School
Barnehurst Junior Grant-Maintained School
Bassingbourn GM Village College
Baverstock Grant-Maintained School
Beaconsfield High School
Beauchamps Grant-Maintained School
Beaverwood School for Girls
Beechen Cliff School
Belmont Primary School
Bingley Grammar School
Bishopshalt School
Borough Green Primary School
Borrow Wood Junior School
Bourne Abbey Primary School
Bournemouth School
Bournemouth School for Girls
Brentside High School
Bridgewater Hall School
Brindley Hall School
Bromfords School, Wickford
Brookmead School
Bruton Primary School
Budmouth School
Bullers Wood School for Girls
Burgate School
Burntwood School
Caistor Grammar School
Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School
Carre's Grammar School
Castle Hall Grant-Maintainted School
Castle View School
Chalvedon School
Charles Darwin School
Chatham Grammar School for Girls
Cheam High School
Chellaston School
Chelmsford County High School for Girls
Chipping Campden School
Chosen Hill School, Gloucester
Christ Church CE School
Churchdown Grant-Maintained School
Cippenham Middle School (Grant-Maintained)
Claremont High School (Grant-Maintained)
Clifford CE Grant-Maintained School
Clitheroe Royal Grammor School
Collingwood Grant-Maintained School
Colyton Grammar School
Coopers School
Copland Community School and Technology Centre
Costessey High School, Grant-Maintained
Cranbrook School
Crofton Junior School
Crofton School, Fareham
Cromer High School--Grant-Maintained
Crompton Fold Primary School
Crossgates Primary School
Crosshall Infant School
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