Page 4387 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Parenthetically, may I say that I take it that that was the basis of the legal possibilities. I continued:
It was the paper included in the briefing material to argue against so-called "small" schools. No paper was presented to argue the case in favour of so-called small schools. In other words the briefing material was loaded to produce a result. It was not impartial advice to a government, on the basis of which a government would make careful decisions.
I will return to this question of smallness in a moment. As a result of all that and as a result of the distress of the three members of the Residents Rally, we insisted upon an independent inquiry. That independent inquiry, eventually accepted by the Chief Minister, administered by the Minister for Education, came to be the Hudson inquiry.
I want to stress that that was an inquiry that we had been instrumental in achieving. You have to realise, then, what our obligation was in accepting what that inquiry would produce. I do not for a moment believe that Mr Hudson was seen as an umpire, although some had that point of view. That is their right; they could have that point of view. Certainly, though, having insisted upon such an independent inquiry, based on what we regarded as inadequate evidence before that, we had an obligation to accept that inquiry one way or another - at least to look at it very seriously; at least to recognise what Mr Hudson had to say.
So, then, we had the several weeks of the Hudson inquiry. I want to stress at this point that, even with the eventual report, I do not necessarily accept all that is in it. I do not wish to attack it. I just want to say that I think it is very deficient in its attempt to deal with an educational philosophy. But I tend to forgive Mr Hudson for that. It sounds rather patronising; but what I mean is that, after all, he had five, six or seven weeks to look at all the material that we had - there are mountains of it - and try to come to some conclusion based on financial and economic data and social contexts data. It would be fair to say that he did not have time to deal with the question of educational philosophy.
But there was one problem within that, and that was this question of smallness, to which I now return. In my own submission I said to Mr Hudson:
These for me are the basic questions.
I had given him some questions. I went on:
They therefore relate to the whole question of "smallness". I feel that you have an obligation to consider the literature on that matter. I am not a professional educationist, but I am aware
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .