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Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): I say amen to the considered, well argued and well informed speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan), who knows and cares a great deal about the issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) and the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) also made important speeches and raised many issues which deserve answers. I hope that the House will forgive me if I stick to a wholly local issue: the proposed relocation of West Lothian college to Livingston.
I am not casting aspersions on the motives of those who have made the proposal. I do not doubt their good faith and I understand perfectly well the attractions of a college under one roof on a single site rather than the difficulties that inevitably arise with an institution based on two separate sites, although it may not be such a serious problem to have two sites for a further education college which, by its very nature, would be concerned with full-time learning rather than part-time courses. But any such move would tear the heart out of the proud town of Bathgate.
Those of us in the area of Bathgate have accepted that the police headquarters, the council headquarters and a number of other important institutions should move to the new town, but at some point we must ask questions about the centres of old boroughs. The Minister should take it from me, as the local Member of Parliament and a local person, that the removal of that college from Bathgate would be a serious matter for the town and for that part of West Lothian. I therefore have five questions to ask.
First, what are the responsibilities of the board of management of the college to the Scottish Office? Perhaps I should know, but I am not the only one who is not clear about that. Secondly, the proposal has leaked out, but has the Scottish Office been consulted--it may not have been--and, if so, what did it say? Thirdly, what has the Scottish Office advised about staff and resource requirements? As my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West has said, there is a desperate shortage of resources and so many other urgent priorities. Has the Scottish Office been consulted about the proposal as a priority for the use of scarce resources and, again, what has it advised?
Fourthly, what consideration has been given to the proposal by planners in the Scottish Office? West Lothian council has not been consulted about the rebuilding--if there is to be rebuilding--or new building on the St. Mary academy site and on the land above the college which, as far as we know, is free land on which major building work could take place. Has consultation taken place about that proposal?
Fifthly, as I understand the current proposals--I am open to correction--the builders are to erect a new building on the Livingston site. In return, West Lothian college proposes to give--I repeat, give--the current buildings and land to the builders, though not the old academy, which I believe is listed, because it belongs to the people of Bathgate. We are uncertain about who the people of Bathgate are in that respect, other than the successors to the old West Lothian county council. That is a grey area. As I understand it, West Lothian college will then lease--I repeat, lease--the new building and equipment from the builders. If I have understood it right,
and if other people have understood it right, that arrangement raises a few eyebrows. What does the Scottish Office think about the leasing proposal?
Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill):
I wish to add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan) on obtaining this debate on the subject of further education. The subject has been much neglected in debate in the House and it is high time that further education, especially Scottish further education, got a thorough airing. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) spoke about equipment and facilities for people undertaking skills training and I fully support all that he said.
I wish to raise an aspect of further education that has always been neglected--the wider general education of students in further education. Everyone who has ever worked in further education knows, as the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) will confirm, that there is not only a long-standing lack of appropriate funding, but sometimes a problem, unfortunately, with the attitudes of the traditional craft teachers, who regarded any time spent on general education as a waste of students' time. It has always been a struggle to provide appropriate general education for students who come straight from school and spend some years on day release or block release.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West mentioned the fact that teacher numbers in FE were dropping, he filled me with alarm. I taught in FE for some years and I remember what happens when there are not enough teachers to serve the students' needs. Teachers get landed with timetables that have far too many class contact hours and they cannot get through timetables of that size without using devices to overcome the problems, such as doubling up classes; that is not good for the students, but it is one of the strategies that teachers are forced to adopt when they have marking or preparation to do for other classes.
Teachers are also asked to teach subjects that they are not qualified to teach. I recall my first week in FE. I had spent several years acquiring an honours degree in economic history, with English as my second subject, but I was given a timetable that included four periods of chemistry. I went to the head of department and said that there must have been a mistake. He said that the students were only studying chemistry at a low level and that I need be only one chapter ahead of them. I refused point blank to teach chemistry because I had not spent all those years acquiring my qualifications to end up teaching a subject that I could have taught equally badly when I left school. I failed science in my third year at school and never attempted it again.
It is nonsense that teachers can be asked to teach subjects that they are not qualified in, but it happens. I was able to resist the request because I was in a full-time, permanent post and I had a union that could back me up if necessary. But now, when so many people have short-term, impermanent posts and contracts, they find it difficult to resist such nonsensical suggestions.
Such problems will lead to a failure to educate young people in further education so well as they could be educated.
Another problem is the discontinuation of courses because there are not enough staff to teach them. Another danger, which has not yet been mentioned, is the requirement that a course must have a certain number of bodies in the classroom to be taught. If a small number of students genuinely want to do a course and are appropriately qualified for it and keen to get started, they might be disappointed unless the number of bums on seats can be increased.
What happens is that people for whom that course is not really appropriate are persuaded by unscrupulous persons to enter that course, which might not be right for them because it is either beyond or beneath their capacities. It might not be a suitable subject area for them. In some instances students will be directed to the course merely to get it started. If they later fall by the wayside, too bad. Some will say, "At least the course was started." We must avoid such nonsense taking place in further education. We know, of course, that they arise because of shortage of funds.
I should like to know--the Minister will probably not be able to tell me when he replies, but the information could be set out in a written answer--what is spent per head on further education and higher education students. We know that HE necessarily costs a great deal of money. We have seen the results of underfunding in FE, however, which can be grotesque. I spent several years in a business studies college, which was virtually asked by the local authority not to use so much paper. That was a nonsensical request of a business studies college. We were not making paper aeroplanes. Paper was being used for work.
Anyone who has taught general education in an FE college will recognise the Wilt syndrome. Tom Sharpe wrote about the experience of a general studies teacher staggering from block A to block D with 20 copies of "Shane" in his arms. Tom Sharpe was not exaggerating and he was not joking. Students do not have the funds to enable them to buy their own books. I remember ancient and battered copies of texts that we had to cart from room to room, or even block to block, so that we might give work to students. We had constantly to spend time devising our own materials or finding them because there were insufficient funds. That time could have been spent on teaching. Those are examples of what happens when there is underfunding in further education.
The market has been brought into further education and, as a result, colleges are competing with one another for courses instead of adopting a more sensible planning approach to ensure that colleges play to their own strengths and teach the subjects which are traditional to them and which they are accustomed to teach. A planning approach would ensure that students' needs were better met than at present. Students now are even more disadvantaged than they were 20 years ago when I was involved in FE.
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