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Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I am privileged to raise the role of religious education in schools under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. A number of colleagues have joined me for today’s debate; I thank them.
First, may I state that I know that the Secretary of State for Education takes very seriously the issue of enabling every child—whatever their background—to achieve their full potential by promoting the highest quality of educational standards? He is doing a sterling job in that regard and I thank him for that.
I turn specifically to religious education in schools. Hon. Members will all be aware that RE in schools is, and has long been, a compulsory subject. The Government do not intend to change that. That is good. If RE is important enough to be compulsory, why not include it in the English baccalaureate? In late 2010, the Secretary of State announced that the new E-bac certificate will be awarded to students who achieve grades A* to C in English, maths, science, a foreign language and a humanity. Of the humanities, the choice is history or geography. Why not add RE to the humanities choices?
In response to that question, the Secretary of State has answered:
“because it is already a compulsory subject. One intention of the English baccalaureate is to encourage wider take-up of geography and history in addition to, rather than instead of, compulsory RE.” —[Official Report, 7 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 10.]
That sounds laudable, but there are serious concerns that that will produce unintended consequences. Since school league tables will now take into account the percentage of students awarded the certificate, the E-bac is increasingly being emphasised as the primary qualification for 16-year-olds, and the teaching of RE in schools risks being undermined. Indeed, according to new research by the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education, one in three schools, in a survey of nearly 800, say that they will significantly reduce the amount of resources and numbers of teachers dedicated to teaching RE in the approaching academic year. In a recent joint letter published in The Daily Telegraph, leading academics revealed that 45% of university teacher training places in RE have been cut. Therefore, non-specialist teachers will be left to teach the subject.
One reason for varying quality in RE provision in the past—less so today—has been the lack of RE teachers who are subject specialists. There has been considerable progress in increasing their numbers, due in part to the popularity of the subject at GCSE and A-level. If that progress is reversed, the overall quality of RE teaching, even as a compulsory subject, could suffer. The status of the E-bac means that, already, fewer pupils are opting to study RE, as discussions that I have had in my constituency have shown.
Why is RE so important that so many people are asking for a reconsideration and for its inclusion as a core E-bac humanities subject? Before I explore that question, I should say that the many people I refer to include 100 MPs, who have signed an early-day motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), calling for just that. That was doubtless prompted in large part, as I have been myself, by constituents’ letters, representations from local schools and a public petition signed by more than 115,000 members of the public. That petition was promoted by the REACT campaign, which stands for putting religious education at the heart of humanities, and it has successfully united religious leaders from a number of faith groups, including Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.
Why is RE important? It is important because it is a subject taught distinctly from other humanities subjects. It is quite different from the RE, or scripture, that many of us of a certain age may have studied by learning passages from the Bible by rote. Admittedly, that sometimes produced unintended consequences—some humorous, such as the answer in an exam paper that an RE teacher told me about. In response to the question, “Who was most disappointed at the return of the prodigal son?”, a pupil wrote, “the fatted calf”.
Today’s RE has moved on, as I know from closely looking at the subject with one of my sons, who is a GCSE RE student. Today’s RE is not about promoting one religion, but about understanding many and understanding many other aspects of life from a faith perspective. My son tells me that RE includes topics such as environmental issues, discrimination, law and punishment. It also includes an understanding of the cultural and religious values of different peoples and faiths. One sixth former, who recently studied GCSE RE along with total of nine GCSEs, told me:
“it was the only subject in which I got to discuss current affairs and responses to them.”
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Perhaps RE has become so wishy-washy that it is not worth preserving.
Fiona Bruce
I dispute that. My hon. Friend would, I think, respect my view, on which I shall elaborate now.
Religious issues are frequently at the top of any news agenda. Today’s RE helps young people make sense of that and wider world affairs. It also promotes community cohesion, as it allows young people, who are growing up in a diverse society, to discuss and understand the views and opinions of people whose beliefs and values differ from their own, in the safety of the classroom environment. One RE student told me:
“many societies and cultures have strong religious foundations and understanding their methodology and thought was very helpful. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
Enjoyment is key to learning well. We all learn better when we enjoy it, and GCSE RE is popular. In the past 15 years, the number of students taking GCSE RE has quadrupled from 113,000 to approximately 460,000. The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, has said:
“In an increasingly confusing world, Religious Studies gives young people perhaps their only opportunity to engage seriously not only with the most profound philosophical questions concerning human existence and the nature of reality, but also with the most fundamental ethical dilemmas of our day”.
Where else will our young people obtain that? To put it more grittily, I cite a real life example from a teacher of almost 30 years’ standing, who has taught near where I have lived for much of my life. She has been a deputy head teacher with management responsibility for developing spiritual, moral, social and cultural values policy in schools. She recalls:
“On the day after 9/11, a 12-year-old Muslim girl ran to me in tears saying that she had been taunted, chased and threatened on her way to school. Other pupils and youngsters, many older than her were accusing her of being responsible for the destruction of the twin towers and multiple murders. She was identifiable because of the colour of her skin and she wore a scarf. Up until that day, there was no evidence of…any problem. She had received interest and questioning, but she never experienced hatred. Overnight, the media’s coverage and the need to find someone to blame meant that she became a target. She was the only Muslim child in a mostly white school. There had to be an immediate response to identify the main bullies, but for many weeks, through RE, there was specific teaching about Islam and Islamophobia. The outcome was positive, with the girl being accepted and becoming a senior prefect who was respected and valued by others.”
Cultural diversity is explored through teaching RE. Pupils are able to share their beliefs, arrange church visits, demonstrate how a turban is worn, demonstrate how others pray, bring in homemade food for festivals and share the meaning of specific rituals. As well as promoting community cohesion and giving young people an insight into their own and other cultures and heritage, RE also supports pupils in articulating moral judgments and dealing with misfortune, death, loss, and issues in their neighbourhoods and workplaces. It prepares them for adult life.
As one teacher told me:
“good RE teaching can promote positive values for young people and society.”
She cited the example of James Delaney, a twelve-year-old boy from a Traveller family, who was murdered in Ellesmere Port in Cheshire. She speaks from a close perspective, with experience of teaching in the boy’s area. She said:
“Traveller children often have strong religious views…however, if they move into communities, there can be hostility…often their children in school…are exposed to bullying in response to what they may hear their parents and other adults saying. Getting pupils to empathise and ‘step into the shoes’ of a family whose 12-year-old son was murdered…because he was a traveller, proved to be a powerful way of challenging perceptions and wrongly held views, as children should not be held to blame for things their parents do.”
RE lessons also develop transferrable skills such as critical analysis, essay structure and general written and verbal language skills. Those benefit other subjects as pupils learn how to express and articulate their views and, equally importantly, to respect those of others. Questioning, reasoning, empathy, philosophy, values and insight are all highly valuable skills fostered within RE learning. One student told me:
“It focused my thinking on areas of abstract thought, it improved and developed my analytical skills and logical reasoning”—
quite powerful points, in his own words, from a student who has recently studied GCSE RE. Another pupil told me how each essay is commented on according to the qualities of K, U and E——knowledge, understanding and evaluation—which appeared in the margin of all his essays and had to be demonstrated.
Research among 1,000 16 to 23-year-olds has found that 83% felt that RE could promote understanding of different religions and beliefs, while more than half agreed that it had had a positive influence on them. So what would be the negative results, however unintended, of excluding RE from the E-bac as proposed?
Currently, most state secondary schools arrange their timetables with a humanities bloc of geography, history and RE. An experienced teacher told me that
“under the new system if RE is not part of the E-bacc, I can foresee that schools will no longer want to pay exam fees as it will not be acknowledged in the new targets or E-bacc. Pupils will be forced to study either geography or history and will not have space on their timetable to study a full GCSE in RE. Whilst RE remains a compulsory subject, it will have to be taught, but it will be relegated and in pupils, parents and many teachers’ eyes, it will soon become the Cinderella subject it was many years ago.”
RE, even as a compulsory subject, might be increasingly merged with PSHE—personal, social and health education—and citizenship at key stage 4, something I understand Ofsted does not appear unduly concerned about. If those subjects are merged, to overcome a timetable or time issue, staff might not be specialist RE teachers, and the more media-focused or sensational topics within PSHE and citizenship might dominate. Scaling back might also affect the post of RE adviser, a role that ensures that appropriate importance is given to the content of the RE syllabus in response to the needs of a local community, taking into account such factors as the numbers of a particular religious or ethnic group.
RE might not be taught or advised on by specialists to the standard of other subjects, and fewer students and teachers might be able to understand and communicate the impact of religion on culture, society and current affairs. Without that guidance, young people might find it more difficult to cope with the more difficult moral, philosophical or cultural challenges that they find today; to form good relationships with others, especially those of a different cultural background; or to maintain secure values and beliefs enabling them to make good rather than bad choices, in particular in early adulthood. It is also argued that without RE, the influence of simplistic or extreme sources of information on religion could increase, at the risk of greater stereotyping and prejudice; a less tolerant society might ensue.
If faith schools continued to prioritise GCSE RE, they might fall down the school league tables. Some schools might even stop offering GCSE RE as a separate subject or course, putting resources into priority E-bac subjects to raise or maintain the school ranking. Students who devoted time to study GCSE RE could be penalised, as it does not qualify as an E-bac subject.
What am I asking the Minister to do? Primarily to protect, support and sustain the increasing improvement of religious education in our schools, ideally by including the GCSE full course on religious studies as one of the humanities choices in the E-bac, in addition to geography and history. Students could be able to opt for any one of them, or, under a changed specification, to take two of the subjects, so that history and geography retained the same status as currently proposed under the E-bac. Whether or not the Minister responds favourably to that request, which, as I mentioned at the outset, has huge public support, RE will remain a compulsory subject for all school students, even if they do not study GCSE RE, so I ask the Minister to consider my next points as well.
It is critical that RE should not be unintentionally downgraded, that the teaching of RE as a compulsory subject, quite separately from the teaching of GCSE RE, should be accorded the priority it merits, and that appropriate signals should be sent out to such effect from the highest level. Will the Minister kindly consider how the Government can ensure that the appropriate resources are applied to the teaching of RE in schools and that an appropriately robust approach is taken regarding the nature of such teaching and of the Ofsted inspections for the provision and quality of RE? That would reaffirm the important role of RE in schools and its vital contribution to the whole school curriculum. It would recognise RE’s importance to pupils as a preparation for the character that they will require in adulthood, as well as throughout the whole of a child’s school life.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Brady.
I have been contacted by a wide number of constituents, local schools and educationlists who are concerned about the Government decision not to include RE as a humanities subject in the new English baccalaureate, or E-bac. I cannot express those concerns better than by quoting a few of the individuals directly, beginning with a recent communication from Mrs Robson, head teacher of Archbishop Runcie Church of England first school in Gosforth, in my constituency:
“students qualifying with GCSE full course in RS are young people who demonstrate knowledge and understanding of a variety of contemporary world views and who have demonstrated skills of discernment and evaluation of religious and philosophical issues and arguments, qualities much needed in today’s world.”
She continued that the consequence of not including RE as a humanities option
“would be disastrous for many schools and students and for the future expertise required to teach the subject…The unintended consequence of not including GCSE Religious Studies as an option in the E-Bacc is that many schools will cease to offer RE at GCSE altogether; this in turn will have a very negative impact on the number of students taking RE at A-Level, and therefore on the applications for theology and religious studies at degree level. This means that there will be a corresponding decline in candidates for teacher training and so on teacher supply for RE, a subject which is already lacking in specialist teachers.”
Alison Miller, head teacher at St Mark’s Roman Catholic primary school in Westerhope, expressed her concerns about the Government’s decision, stating that it would be a “retrograde step” to exclude RE from the E-bac, in particular in light of
“the excellent progress that has been made in the teaching of RE at GCSE level over recent years”.
I share my constituents’ concerns. We seriously lag behind the rest of Europe in our approach to education and our ability, through our schooling, to analyse issues and problems from a deeper philosophical perspective. I am concerned that the decision to exclude RE from the E-bac will reinforce that trend, when a better understanding and respect for different faiths, regardless of one’s own faith or practice, would be beneficial.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
At this particular time in our history, when there is so much conflict still in the world, many teachers and parents believe a spiritual literacy and understanding of religion is hugely important and must continue in Britain. Does my hon. Friend recognise fears that that will be diminished at the local level?
Catherine McKinnell
I agree with my right hon. Friend and thank him for reinforcing that important point. Religious education should not in effect be downgraded in this way, as a good understanding of all religions is essential to a well rounded education.
I wrote to the Secretary of State for Education on behalf of my constituents, urging him to rethink the Government’s decision. However, I received a very disappointing response from the Schools Minister, which simply reiterated the position that RE is not to be included because it is already a compulsory subject, “throughout a pupil’s schooling”. That argument has been demolished by Mrs Robson, the head teacher at Archbishop Runcie school, who pointed out the difference between statutory or core provision of religious education and the option for students to take religious studies as a full course to GCSE level.
The Minister’s response simply does not address the concern that his decision will lead to a downgrading of the importance of RE, because achievement in designated E-bac subjects will, understandably, become the overriding concern of schools, pupils and parents. Like me, many of my constituents and people throughout the north-east are dissatisfied with the Minister’s responses, and his apparent refusal to reconsider his decision. They include Mrs Pat Wager, head teacher at Sacred Heart Catholic high school in Fenham, which is my old school. She said:
“RS cannot be excluded from a domain entitled ‘Humanity’—RS is the pre-eminent humanity and yet it has no place.”
That is dispiriting for Catholic schools, which contribute so much to performance nationally. Whenever a Minister addresses us, we are told how wonderful we are and our exceptional achievements are celebrated, yet we are being treated disdainfully over this matter, which is so important to us.
For all the reasons outlined so articulately and persuasively by Mrs Wager, Mrs Robson, Ms Miller and the many other constituents who have contacted me about this important issue, I urge the Minister to stop or to pause, and to reconsider his decision not to include RE as a humanity in the English baccalaureate. We would all welcome that U-turn.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
I agree with everything that has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). As at least 12 hon. Friends wish to contribute to the debate, I shall be brief.
I am sure the Minister needs no persuasion of the need for religious education in the syllabus, so I suspect that the issues are essentially practical. I am also sure that the damaging and ongoing domino effect on religious education of being left out of the 2010 E-bac list has been explained to him on many occasions, as has been clearly confirmed by the survey by the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education.
My understanding is that the Minister’s concern is a practical issue and not about RE, because he wants to reverse the decline in history and geography, but that should not be done by undermining RE. Perhaps he will consider having at least a two-out-of-three option, which would add only 5% of time to the syllabus and could be easily managed. I hope that when he replies to the debate, he will not dig in but will start by saying that he has heard the mood of the Chamber, and that he will ask his officials to explore a two-out-of-three option, and return to him.
That is all the more important because under the review of the national curriculum, RE is not part of it. There is a distinction between the basic curriculum and the national curriculum. RE is the odd subject out, which does not help. As we move towards a greater number of academies—I think the Government’s perception of them is that they should be “independent” schools—we will not see RE written back into primary legislation for academies. If we are not careful, all that will undermine the position of RE.
RE teacher training has been hit by nearly 50% because of schools responding to the change in its position. I appreciate that the Minister is sympathetic regarding the question of RE in the E-bac, but I hope he will be able to square the circle because that is his ministerial task. Only religious education provides students with the opportunity to question and study spiritual and moral beliefs in a spiritual context.
I conclude by sharing with the House what I think is the clear and undisputed view of the Church of England, and which is clearly supported by other Churches. That was made clear to me when I went to the consecration of St Joseph the Worker Roman Catholic church in my constituency on Sunday. The Church of England
“is deeply concerned at the exclusion of Religious Education from the list of Humanities qualifications that are acceptable for the English Baccalaureate. It is already clear that schools are removing RE from the GCSE options for students as a direct result of this.”
I very much hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will listen to the Chamber today, and heed its collective voice.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
I apologise to the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for not giving her notice of my desire to contribute to this debate. I am here as a lay person, a practising Catholic and a great friend of Jane Savill, who runs the master’s degree course in religious education at the Institute of Education in London.
It strikes me that a poor excuse for excluding religion from the humanities topics in the baccalaureate is that we want to promote geography and history, because that is doing to RE what we did to geography and history. As most people know, when Ofsted comes into a school, it has a whole-school programme approach and will not notice the decline in RE as a topic until it is too late and it is in the same state as history and geography. Knowing that, and understanding the history, why would we want to replicate our current problems?
For me, religious education, far from being wishy-washy, provides an understanding of our place in society and of others’ views in society. In my suburban south London constituency, many people are new to our area and have different faiths, values and attitudes, and the study of religious education is important for our understanding not only of other people’s views, but of our own place in the world. Sometimes, the religious education that young people receive outside the classroom may be a cause for concern, and for radicalism, but that may be challenged in schools in an environment where people feel safe to challenge the views of others.
I implore the Minister to look at the matter again. What big society topic can be greater than religious education? It is a subject that makes us understand the basis of our constitution, society, history and values. If we want people to look outwards, to see their place in the world and to show responsibility towards others, religious education is the very basis of that action and those values. When people ask me why I joined the Labour party and why I became an MP, it is often difficult to answer because there are so many reasons for all of us. My faith is part of the basis of that, not because I am as understanding of my faith intellectually as some hon. Members on the Government Benches, but because I am a cradle Catholic and understand my values through my education.
I suggest that the problem for religious education will not be in the Catholic schools, because they will continue to have a core understanding that the teaching of religious education is imperative to pupils’ development. It is other schools that may have a significant problem, and I ask the Minister to think about that, because of the topic’s academic value, its value to individual development and its benefit to wider society in understanding not only our own history but others’.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on her debate. Obviously, hon. Members are speaking with considerable passion. I acknowledge that, of a number of things I have done in life for which I am barely qualified and have no genuine talent, one has been teaching RE. I taught it for quite a long time to bright adolescent boys, so I know a little about the matter.
Religious education is not an attempt to make people religious, and that must be clearly stated. It is not an attempt to instruct people on what they should believe. Religious education and religion are misunderstood and widely misrepresented.
It seems to me that a person adopts a religion because that provides a framework within which they try to understand their existence; they abandon that religion if and when it fails to provide that meaningful framework. A religion or faith is tested as one’s existence is played out day by day—religion is caught, not taught. Some people get by without using any traditional religious concepts to clarify their life and existence, and such people are called secularists. Most hon. Members present in the Chamber appear to be religious, but in general, people who are not religious are frankly indifferent to those who are. There are, however, an increasing number of angry and aggressive secularists who are filled with what can be described only as missionary zeal to ensure that people are as unreligious as possible. Some people make no attempt to apply a framework to their existence and live an unreflective life.
Within our existence we do a range of things—we study science and history, make moral decisions, listen to music. We join political parties, fall in and out of love, make speeches in Westminster Hall, get ourselves elected and so on. Those things are part of our existence, but they do not entail a particular view of what existence is about. We struggle; we sometimes wonder what we are all doing here. Happily or unhappily, most cultures have a particular view of how we should understand our existence. We call those views religions, and in a sense they come from the groundwork carried out by our forebears. The merits, strength and weaknesses of religions are discovered by those who adopt and try to live out such explanations for their existence.
We cannot teach a religion in a classroom, but we can teach about it and that is what religious education involves. RE may include a number of elements such as the history of religion to explain what people of a particular religion have done, how that religion began, how it spread and so on. The sociology behind religion may be taught to identify a religion’s social effects and the factors that influenced its growth. There may be elements of psychology in identifying traits that may—or may not—incline one towards a particular religion, and the effects of religious belief on a person. RE is not philosophy; its principal job is to clarify how religions, which exist all around us, endeavour to explain our existence and how adherents of a religion live their lives and are likely to act.
Religious education has historically been taught in a narrow way that simply explained the Christian framework. More recently we have had more of a Cook’s tour approach—I am sure that would disgust the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh)—and a whole range of religions are covered with a fairly light-touch approach. It is a hard subject to teach in a totally fair and scrupulous way.
Only once we understand how people view their lives will we know how to engage with them properly, which, I suggest, is what life is about. Therefore, understanding people’s religions is at least as important as understanding their history or geography. Arguably, it is more important than knowing about one’s own past or locale, although there is considerable benefit in understanding one’s culture, background and habitation. History, geography and religious education are all equally important subjects, and there is no convincing case for excluding one and including the others in the English baccalaureate. The reason given by the Secretary of State is that RE is a compulsory subject under law, but the grounds for that curious legal status are obscure and not explained. It is not clear—it seems a straight non-sequitur—why making a subject compulsory in the syllabus means that it does not need to be optional and given more intensive study in the baccalaureate. The blessings of compulsory status are mixed. In the average British school, subjects with compulsory status are often ignored or not explained, and even good schools feel licensed to provide minimal or poor-quality teaching, simply to comply with the law. The compulsory status of RE in this country has done little to stimulate genuine religious belief or interest. In the United States, where teaching religion in schools is absolutely forbidden, church attendance is higher and there are greater levels of belief.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Given the decline in attendance at church services across the United Kingdom and particularly in England, is there not a greater need for religious education and study in schools, so that the benefits of that will be felt by those families who do not have the chance to attend church on Sunday?
John Pugh
Given that people do not necessarily have an adequate understanding of what religions represent and involve, there is a case for teaching more about them in schools. I will go that far, but one cannot argue that it is the job of schools to make the nation religious. RE was made compulsory in schools due to a Victorian belief that an irreligious proletariat would be difficult to handle.
Whether or not RE is legally compulsory should not affect its inclusion as a humanities subject in the baccalaureate. The most interesting thing about humanity—we are discussing humanities—is not that we live, breathe, procreate and die, but that we seek to grasp what our existence is about and live accordingly. We are all religious in some sense or other. To make RE a statutory obligation risks diminishing its status, narrowing its scope and lessening its quality. It is a poor argument to suggest that, just because a subject is compulsory in one context, it cannot be optional in another.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I apologise for arriving late, Mr Brady, and I shall not delay hon. Members for long. I congratulate the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this debate. I hope that the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) will not mind my saying this, but he gave the driest version of what religious education might involve that I have ever heard. His speech included a lot of sentences that could have ended with the word “discuss” in an essay title.
I have four brief points. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), I am not a layperson. I was ordained in 1986 in the Church of England, and that remains with me although I resigned my orders prior to entering the House. I believe strongly that the most important place where people catch faith—to use the words of the hon. Member for Southport—is in the home; the best faith education happens in the home, in a family setting.
Last night, however, I sat next to a woman who told me that although she was a strong member of her local United Reform church, and in her words a very liberal Christian, one of her sons is now an ardent evangelical who believes that she will be going into the fiery pit, and her other son is a militant atheist. None the less, she felt that she had done a good job of religious education in the home.
The question of RE in schools is vital. The subject is not an add-on; it is essential to understanding so many other subjects. Few works of English literature—apart, perhaps, from that written in the past 20 years—can be properly understood without an understanding of Christianity. It is difficult to understand many modern British novels without knowing something about Islam. Most British music—indeed, most European music from the past 800 years—is dominated by religious themes. How can one understand the history of Parliament without some reference to the religious debates that started with rows about the Lollards and went through to the disestablishment of the Church in Wales in the early 20th century?
If we wish to respond to some of the challenges of militant religion, we should perhaps be better at discussing religion in the main Chamber. Some elements of geography cannot be understood without a knowledge of religion. The relationship of Istanbul—once Constantinople—with Europe cannot be understood as a geographical entity without consideration of the religious aspect. Few modern languages do not require an understanding of religion.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that without an understanding of religion, we are left only with labels, which is a huge problem for society?
Chris Bryant
I was coming to that point. However, before I do, I want to say as an article of faith—and I am not a fundamentalist, either in religion or politics—that I think spirituality is a river that one cannot dam. There are hundreds of different forms of spirituality, but any education worth its salt in this country needs to give young people an opportunity to understand and develop that spirituality, so that it is fully grown and mature, not naive.
The hon. Member for Congleton referred to “a tolerant society”. I hate that term. I do not want to live in a tolerant society, because it smells of people saying, “I am prepared to put up with you.” I would much prefer to live in a respectful society. If anything, the danger of the liberal—small “l”—Britain of the past 100 years is that we have been tolerant of other religions, but never learned enough about them to be truly respectful.
In addition, we have never learned enough about Islam, or any other religion, to be able to challenge bad religion. Heaven knows, there is plenty of bad religion in society today. It is not just the British attitude that one cannot possibly talk about politics or religion at a dinner party; it is that all too often we are fundamentally ignorant about the basis of most religions. I would include in that the fact that many young people are extremely ignorant about Christianity.
My experience of Catholic teaching in many Catholic schools is that sometimes it is good and sometimes it is appalling. There is one thing that I particularly dislike: I have heard Catholic teachers refer to “Christians and Catholics”, as if non-Catholics were not Christians. I always believed the word Catholic to extend beyond. I hope all that has moved on, but I think that in some cases it has not.
I want to refer to one final matter. I happen, bizarrely, to be an external adviser on the Oxford theology degree. One of my concerns is that the number of people applying to do theology at university is dwindling. In part, that may be due to social issues, but it may also be due to the respect with which religious education is treated in the curriculum in England, Wales and Scotland. I wish it would be accorded further respect, not least because the big danger is that otherwise the courses will end up just being vocational. In other words, somebody training to be a priest goes to read theology at university and is merely trained in that narrow, prescriptive way, and does not learn about other religions or extend the course. That is a vicious circle because fewer people who have an interest in religion itself, rather than a desire to go for ordination, will take it forward.
I wholly agree with what the hon. Member for Congleton said, and I congratulate her. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us about the value that he places on religious education in schools.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing the debate. I am mindful that many Members wish to speak. I would like to say that, although many of us have a religious persuasion, the issue is not about “God squad” people wishing to keep God in schools. I had a very interesting discussion with Juliette Lyle, deputy director of the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education. She came to speak to me, as a teacher in St Albans schools. We agreed that this taxing and pressing subject ought to be considered by people of faith and no faith.
“Religious education” is a misnomer, and that worries me. It is like calling maths, “sums”; it diminishes the subject. Some of the great studies throughout recorded history have been theological. Some of our greatest and most beautiful pieces of writing have come through the theological route. To diminish it by calling it “RE, and everybody does it” takes away the rigour of its study.
People have also queried its use and the good of studying it. As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, it could be vocational. I could also question the good of some complex mathematical theorems that one might have studied at 14 or 15. I used to be a teacher and, as a Member of Parliament, I have found my religious education O-level to be of far more use than the maths that I was pretty rubbish at. If nothing else, it has helped me to understand some of the faiths and backgrounds of people I serve in my community. My constituency is a proud cathedral city, but also has a 10% ethnic minority community, the largest of which is Bangladeshi. For all of us, even if we take it no further as a rigorous study, RE helps us in our lives to understand other people. That point has been well made today.
I hotly disagree with the opinion that the subject is wishy-washy. If it is wishy-washy in some schools, some rigour ought to be put back into it. By leaving it out of the baccalaureate as an option, we are continuing to give it a “sums” title of study. We should be saying that the subject is one of the pinnacles of university study, but it is increasingly not a university course of choice. With that comes the shuttered approach that we get in many of our town centres. Once a town centre is diminished, once there are no longer shops that people go to, people stop going there. If we do not give the subject the place that it truly deserves within the curriculum, as a rigorous option among the humanities courses, people will stop choosing it. Young people will stop seeing it as something worth doing, parents will not encourage them to do it and it will die a slow death.
Mindful that many others are speaking today, I would like to say that I supported the early-day motion and I also wrote to the Minister. I urge the Minister to listen to our voices. It is not just because people want to see us doing religion in schools. Religion, as many have said, is something that one catches or may never catch, and having it is not easy. This is about a rigorous approach, about testing values. Should we bar people from wearing religious symbols? Should we legislate for that as they do in France? Do we condemn the sectarian attacks on goalkeepers because some teams are seen as having a particular religious persuasion? Do we look at some great pieces of literature and say that the roots are echoed in modern literature? As other hon. Members have said, people might not even understand the literature without understanding the references. There are many aspects of the subject that could be studied intensely, which would contribute enormously to a young person’s education and life skills.
The claim that there is a logistical problem should not prevent RE from being an option in the baccalaureate. I urge the Minister to consider a way round that, so that schools that wish to approach the subject in the rigorous way that I would like have the option of doing so. To say that the subject is done all through the school year diminishes it and is used as a reason not to include it. I would rather it were not made a legal requirement in schools, if that means it is then excluded. Most schools, particularly faith schools, would teach it anyway.
If one can opt out of religious studies, we have more of an argument for removing that legal protection, rather than using it as an excuse to exclude it from the baccalaureate. There is strong support in the country to see this subject as an option. I urge the Minister to listen to that support.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing such an important debate. As has already been noted, it is not actually a religious debate. It is also not just about a religious lobby wanting to fight its own corner; I always think that God is big enough to fight his own corner, on this issue as well as others. Nor is the debate about imparting faith. As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, the best place for that is often the home.
This is a debate about humanities. The Government are keen, quite properly, to ensure that we return the rigour and the study in humanities, especially given the declining numbers studying geography. This is an issue of humanities, geography, history and culture. Religion, particularly Christianity, has shaped our buildings—not just the building we walk in, but those all around. Religion has shaped literature in our libraries, paintings in our galleries and relationships with our neighbours. The debate has looked beyond the classroom, and that is right.
However, we need to recognise what has been going on in our classrooms. There is a freeze on consultants, so I would like to help the Minister with a SWOT analysis—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. First, there are the strengths that one sees around in relation to religious education. Yes, there has been an increase in provision and quality since the mid-1990s. RE is also much more popular. Gone is the caricature of RE lessons as simply being the soft option, where pupils can have an easy ride, go to sleep or cause trouble for the teacher. There is now properly recognised specialist training for RE, and that is reflected in the fact that four times as many students take it up at A-level than was the case 15 years ago.
The statutory curriculum is a strength, and we need to look at it in more detail. In that respect, there is leadership from the Minister and the Secretary of State—including in communications that I have received, which have been more positive than hon. Members have suggested. In them, there has been a commitment to the importance of religious education and to continuing to safeguard its position in the curriculum. They have also made it clear that there are no plans to change the current legal requirement for a daily act of collective worship.
Another strength, which has not been mentioned, is standing advisory councils for religious education at the local level. Local agreed syllabus conferences provide good-quality religious education, and one fine example is Birmingham, where people are being brought together to determine what is best for their community.
However, there are weaknesses, which we need to recognise. Despite a legacy of improvements, we face a difficult time, even leaving aside the concerns about the E-bac. Last year’s Ofsted report “Transforming religious education”—it did not receive a response from the previous Government, and I question whether there will be a formal response from this Government—recognised that there was a lack of systemic monitoring by Ofsted of statutory compliance. It also recognised the inadequacy of professional development and the fact that the quality of religious education is still patchy. That was particularly true—this is the key point—where teachers were non-specialists and there were short GCSE courses. The concern is whether that weakness will predominate around the country with the result that the strengths that have been built up over the years are lost.
However, there are opportunities, as I have mentioned. The Government are quite properly committed to local determination as regards religious education. I could also mention this debate, the 115,000 people who have signed petitions and the people who have lobbied us. It is important to harness that debate and interest to ensure that communities fight the corner of religious education locally so that it is in our schools. We must also ensure that funding streams continue for the religious education advisers who are under threat. There is also greater freedom in the curriculum, and that, too, provides opportunities.
The threats involved in RE’s not being part of the E-bac have been mentioned, and I will not repeat them.
Mr Lammy
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman mentioned the British Humanist Association, but does he recognise that although we would not generally agree with some of the things that it says, it is also concerned about the loss of religious education in our schools? The association believes that it is important for people who are not of faith—atheists or agnostics—to understand religious views and to hear them put across in schools.
Mr Burrowes
I do indeed recognise that. Many associations take part in the local agreed syllabus conferences.
The rebuttal to the concerns about RE’s not being part of the E-bac is that schools still have the time in their curriculums to allow pupils to take RE as a GCSE option. I see that as an option for pupils at successful schools, which have the necessary capacity and time, but it may not be an option for less successful schools and for pupils who are more challenging, who will inevitably go for just the core requirements in the curriculum. The unintended consequence of such an approach could be that RE is not taken up as an option. The concern then is that we would go back to having a lack of specialist RE teachers.
There is a concern that the freedoms set out in the funding agreements for academies and free schools may entail a lower take-up of RE in some areas. There is also a concern that the current statutory requirement is not being followed through to implementation. As has been said, where is the true rigour in inspections? The limited focus on maintaining the statutory requirement in future inspections may have a negative effect on the curriculum. I recognise that the national curriculum review does not include religious education, but one should not ignore the crossover and the links between the basic curriculum and the national curriculum in terms of the whole life of a school and exam options.
In conclusion, I ask the Minister to walk carefully and cautiously in considering the possible impact of not having RE as part of the E-bac. I ask him to recognise the strength of the crucial argument that if RE is important enough to be required by law, it is important enough for us to include it as an exam subject in the English baccalaureate. That would be just one simple and practical way of acknowledging the importance of religious literacy and a proper understanding of our humanity.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to speak, Mr Brady. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on arranging this important debate.
I welcome the Department’s dialogue with universities to ascertain which GCSEs will give young people the best chance to get into the best universities. I have supported the E-bac for many years, so I am greatly encouraged that the coalition Government are moving forward with it. However, I have obvious concerns about the fact that the humanities exclude RE, so let me say a little about the importance of RE, which all my colleagues have dealt with very well.
In simple terms, there are so many different messages for our young people in the modern world that the very idea of their not receiving education from experienced RE teachers fills me with horror. There are so many dysfunctional messages out there that if young people do not have the opportunity to hear about religion in the round from experienced teachers, they will, as sure as night follows day, be more prone to taking up some of the more dangerous, outrageous and cruel messages about aspects of religion, which would do them a disservice. I therefore urge the Minister to think carefully about this.
On some more specific points, I was privileged to sponsor early-day motion 1375, and I am absolutely delighted that more than 100 Members from all parties in the House have supported it and signed it, just as many tens of thousands of members of the public have signed petitions. Indeed, if I could wave a magic wand and explain the importance of RE in schools to all 60 million-plus people in this country, No. 10 Downing street would have a petition with about 30 million signatures.
The Minister and the Department recognise that this is an issue of serious and profound concern for many people. Given that the Minister is with us today, however, I want to ask for a number of commitments. First, there is no getting away from the fact that not making RE an option in the humanities section of the E-bac will lead to reductions in RE-trained and experienced staff; in fact, I am already receiving anecdotal evidence that that is happening. What is the Minister doing to ensure that that possible trend is halted? I fear that the redundancies that will inevitably come from the Department’s proposed changes will lead to a fall in standards, less focus on RE as part of a compulsory key stage 4 curriculum and, importantly, a lack of trained resource for the future, which our children and schools will ultimately regret deeply—I certainly would, and all my colleagues in the Chamber would, too.
Secondly, when the Minister speaks at the end—I am not trying to read his mind, but I have been in constant discussion with his Department, so I am pretty sure that this is accurate—he will state that RE does not need to be included as an option in the E-bac because it is a compulsory part of the key stage 4 curriculum, but that is not the case for academies. Will he therefore clarify the situation on academies and tell us what he will do about the fact that take-up in academies is—I have heard this anecdotally—beginning to decline? That is even more relevant when we consider that academies are far more prevalent in areas where there is more deprivation and where children grow up in a range of different religions. In a way, that makes it even more important that academies have the trained, experienced RE teachers to teach children in a balanced way.
Thirdly, I suspect that the Minister will state that the number of students studying RE has risen from 16% in 1995 to 28% in 2010 and that the take-up of history and geography has declined over that period. I agree with him and accept that that is an issue. I welcome the E-Bac, but does the Minister accept not only that the increased take-up of RE is a good thing, but that excluding it from the E-bac will perhaps lead to an even more dramatic decline in take-up than geography has experienced over the past 16 years—from 45% to 26%? What will he do to address that? I would like him to commit to revisiting and reviewing the role of RE, should take-up decline.
[Dr William McCrae in the Chair]
Essentially, I and many of my colleagues—on both sides of the House, and of all beliefs and none—along with hundreds of thousands of members of the public, profoundly believe that the changes could lead to a diminution for our children of RE teaching by trained and experienced teachers. I urge the Minister to reconsider the Department’s direction of travel, to listen to us and to the public, and to not do a U-turn but change his mind as the facts change.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I join colleagues in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing the debate. I suspect that this is one of those subjects on which, as Kipling said,
“never the twain shall meet”.
Those who regard religious teaching in our schools, or any religious instruction, as brainwashing will not be convinced otherwise, and, yes, those who passionately favour the continuation of RE lessons as an essential part of our young people’s education tend to feel equally passionate.
I am a Christian and, although I favour the continuation of RE teaching in our schools, I hope that I have been able to step back and look objectively at the arguments on both sides. I agree with my hon. Friend when she stresses how important it is that RE not be downgraded, to use her phrase. The argument is not about the continuation of “brainwashing”, but about providing an essential background to our culture and identity as a nation. Our history centres around monarchy, Parliament and Church, and although all those institutions have passed through turbulent times, they have, in the end, brought stability and the freedom to enjoy the benefits of religion—or, indeed, the freedom not to practise any faith.
Like many children of the 1950s, I attended Sunday school until I was of an age when my father, who regularly attended that most beautiful of Anglican services, evensong, decided that I, too, was old enough to go with him and appreciate it. Of course, at that time there was a daily assembly in school. I realise that there are many difficulties in delivering such an assembly nowadays, but many of our schools quite simply do not try hard enough—where there is a will, there is indeed a way.
Children who miss out on adequate RE lessons as part of their schooling miss out not only on the opportunity to learn the benefits that faith can bring to an individual and how faith can inspire, but on the opportunity of the shared experience that our churches bring when our communities celebrate the rites of passage or an occasion of thanksgiving. Until two or three years ago, I served for five years as a churchwarden, and it was a privilege to be on duty at, for example, a baptism; but I was always saddened by the fact that many people were not fully able to share the whole experience because they could not recite the Lord’s prayer or understand many of the symbols and traditions that are instinctive to my generation.
It is good that some of our other organisations cater for young people to some extent and fill the gap, on some occasions, that schools have left. On Sunday, I attended Grimsby minster for the somewhat delayed annual St George’s day service of the Grimsby and Cleethorpes scout association. There were a few hundred young people parading and saluting their flag, promising to serve God, Queen and country and to help their fellow men and women, and all in the setting of an act of collective worship and thanksgiving.
Our country is the poorer in that, nowadays, we provide our young people with little opportunity to take part in collective worship and to learn the basic teachings of our major religions; love, respect and tolerance are at their heart and we should treasure those teachings. I readily admit that it is possible to value those precepts and to pass them on to future generations without a faith, but those generations will miss the opportunity to learn about religions and to weigh up for themselves whether to accept their teachings.
The then head teacher at my daughter’s junior school, David Thomas, when questioned at a parents’ evening on the role of RE, said that its role in his school was to bring the pupils to the “threshold of belief”. That phrase has stuck with me; it is valuable and the ideal at which schools should aim. It saddens me that at times there seems to be an acceptance—certainly among some mainstream Christian Churches—that it is all a little too difficult and we must be even-handed, but if the will exists, we can ensure that the valuable tradition of RE in our schools continues.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh) spoke earlier about a general indifference to RE among people. To some extent that is correct. People are not constantly thinking about it as they go about their daily business, but we should not assume that the great majority of British people are quite that indifferent to it. Only a few weeks ago, someone approached me—ironically enough, as I left a Grimsby Town football match. He had obviously been idling away his time looking at the Parliament website and had spotted that I supported an early-day motion on RE in schools. He congratulated me and said, “I am sure the people are behind you”, which was encouraging and important.
RE in our schools is vital if we are to make people aware of faith and to contribute to the rounded development of our young people, so that they can appreciate our rich cultural history. I hope the Minister will give a robust defence of RE in our schools and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) said, ensure that the resources for it will be available. I hope the Minister will reassure me that the Government will play their full part; that is particularly important, given what has been said on academies. North East Lincolnshire local education authority has been a trailblazer for academies, so it is particularly important that the role of RE in those schools be maintained. I apologise to the Minister: I will have to slip out a few minutes before the end of his summing-up speech, but tomorrow I will eagerly read what he has said in Hansard.
Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)
Order. There are still a number of people who want to speak, and I am sorry but we will not be able to fit everyone in. I intend to call the Front-Bench spokesmen at about 10 past 12.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
It has been an interesting debate and I hope that I will not, as so often happens, be the grit in the oyster. I value religion as much as anybody in the House—I have written a book on the decline of religion and how it affects society—but I believe that we owe the Minister a careful hearing, because the whole point of the E-bac is to bring rigor back into academic education. I support RE more than anybody, but too many schools have climbed up the league tables by, frankly, cheating by providing Mickey Mouse courses. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on performing a great service with this debate. I have a son at the London Oratory, which is a Catholic school, and I value that fact. It will do very well out of the E-bac, because a rigorous academic school, which will continue to promote faith studies, will benefit in the league tables by concentrating on rigorous academic subjects such as maths and English.
I intervened on my hon. Friend earlier because those of us who support RE must argue based on what it is. Has it been so degraded in how it is taught that it is no longer an academic subject? Of course we should support other religions and value people of other religions—that goes without saying—but my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) says that we need to understand and to debate whether it is right for people to wear the burqa or the cross. That is fine as a subject of public debate, but should it be part of a rigorous academic subject?
Mr Leigh
No, I am not. I am saying that a close study of the Talmud is as valuable and rigorous, and in my view as academic, as a close study of the Koran or the Christian Bible.
If we are to restore religious education as an academic subject, we may have to restore it as an academic study. Otherwise, it will continue to be an easy cop-out. One cannot defend an academic subject on the ground of good citizenship—we should all be good citizens, we should all value other people and we should all be kind and nice to others, but that is not an academic subject.
I hope the Minister will assure us that the exclusion of religious education is not a prejudice against religion. I am sure he will want to assure us about academies, which is an important point. However, I hope that he will also give a hint to those of us who organise religious education—there is no point in denying that it was a bad Ofsted report—that it has to return to its history as a rigorous academic subject.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this debate, which has been most interesting. The hon. Lady acknowledged the considerable progress on religious education that was made under the previous Government; as she has said, the numbers have quadrupled. She made an extremely thoughtful speech on the teaching of religious education, with particular emphasis on the E-bac.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on her speech. I also congratulate her on getting a timely reply to her letter from the Secretary of State for Education, which is a rare thing. The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) called for a two-out-of-three option on the E-bac. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s response.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) made a passionate speech about her Catholic religious background. As ever, the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) was donnish and scholarly in his observations. He seemed to be putting forward a case for the compulsory teaching of philosophy rather than of religion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) reminded us that the Church is disestablished in Wales, but he admirably resisted the temptation to use the word “antidisestablishmentarianism”, which showed a great deal of restraint, which I do not possess. My hon. Friend preached respect rather than tolerance, which is an interesting distinction.
The hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), a former teacher, spoke with passion. Incidentally, my school—St Alban’s RC comprehensive school at Pontypool —is obviously named after the same martyr as her city. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) acknowledged the progress made under the previous Labour Government, saying that four times as many are now studying RE at A-level. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) urged the Minister to repent on the matter of E-bac. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) is obviously a man of great faith; he must be to support Grimsby Town football club.
Finally, the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) accused schools of cheating. It was slightly over the top, even for him, to say of schools that enter pupils for exams that are available and properly set out by the examination boards that they are cheating. I would be interested to know which schools in his constituency he thinks are cheats, and which teachers and head teachers. I am sure that he will list them all later.
It is right for me to say something about what the previous Government did to improve RE teaching in our schools. We invested £1 million in an RE action plan during our last three years. We wanted to improve the quality of teaching and learning of religious education, with revised guidance and a review of resources, support and materials for teachers. We wanted to strengthen the role of RE in the curriculum, and we worked closely with the key stakeholders to deliver that plan. The previous Government, like this Government, were supportive of religious education being taught in our schools, and we were supportive of it being broadly Christian in character. However, it is extremely important that pupils should be taught about different religions, not least in the multi-faith world which we live in and which is reflected in so many of our constituencies.
The previous Labour Government were right to do that, and I do not think that there has been any particular deliberate change in emphasis by the present Government. However, a number of Members spoke about the impact of the English baccalaureate on the teaching of RE. That policy comes under the famous “nudge” theory. I have said it before, and I shall say it again, but if we nudge people with a loaded gun the consequences are obvious. The consequence of the loaded gun of the English baccalaureate for the teaching of RE in schools is becoming clear.
I wonder what the Secretary of State thought would happen to the teaching of RE when he announced the English baccalaureate. It was done in a rush, without consultation and without deep thought being given to it. Was he emphasising the importance of teaching the core academic subjects? Was he setting his own exam test that he could not fail? He knows that in a few years’ time the impact of nudging people in that way—of saying that schools will be judged on how they do in the E-bac—would be a rush, a diversion, of schools’ resources into the teaching of those subjects. The inevitable consequence, which he desires, is that he would be able to say at the end of his parliamentary term, “I have succeeded, because more people are studying the subjects that I have decided are important.”
What will be the consequences for RE? As the hon. Member for St Albans has said, The Times Educational Supplement of 4 February 2011 published a survey by the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education, which had gathered 800 responses from state and independent schools. It was reported that the survey had
“found planned cuts to both short and full-course GCSEs in religious studies from this September. In some cases schools are reported to be ignoring their statutory duty to offer RE at all.”
That was the result of the rushed and ill-considered introduction of the English baccalaureate by the Secretary of State.
Kevin Brennan
Because the hon. Gentleman did not speak earlier, I shall give way.
Andrew Percy
The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct. For the last two decades we have seen that schools will always teach to whatever they are measured on. The real risk of the English baccalaureate being drawn so narrowly is as the hon. Gentleman says. It is happening in my constituency; head teachers tell me that they are doing exactly that—rushing resources to the subjects that contribute to the E-bac to the detriment of all other subjects.
Kevin Brennan
The hon. Gentleman, like me, is an ex-teacher and speaks from experience. He knows the impact of directives, missives or advice from the Department for Education.
The Times Educational Supplement of 13 May—last Friday—stated in its magazine:
“Even though RE is a statutory subject, the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education…has warned that some headteachers are allocating less, or no, time to RE. A poll of nearly 800 schools in January found that 30 per cent have cut time for RE. With less time devoted to their subject, and potentially fewer pupils and funding, there are fears about job losses in non-EBac subjects.”
That, of course, includes RE. The article then states:
“With RE, the DfE argues that because it is a statutory subject, it will be protected. In the past, Mr Gove has said that ‘high-quality religious education is a characteristic of the very best schools; faith schools and non-faith schools’. But the RE community is not convinced. Mike Castelli, who sits on the RE Council of England and Wales and is principal lecturer in education at Roehampton University, is under no illusions that the statutory nature of the subject will protect its importance in school. ‘What secured it was Ofsted inspections, but Ofsted now doesn't report on the curriculum in detail,’ he says. ‘Therefore there’s no comeback to headteachers who decide they don’t want to put RE on at GCSE level. The fact that RE is statutory is not doing what the Government thinks it is doing.”
I could go on, but there is not enough time. I say to the Schools Minister that the situation is the result of ill-considered, non-evidence-based policy being introduced without consultation. The Government should drop this approach to making education policy. The Minister is not malevolent, but misguided. He will have to do a U-turn, and he is lucky that he will have to do it with regard to RE, because he knows that, in this case, for sinners redemption is available.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this debate and on her opening speech, which set out the argument extremely well. This issue has engendered a large volume of correspondence from hon. Members and the Churches. We believe that religious education is an important subject. In fact, it is the only subject that has been a compulsory part of the school curriculum since 1944. The Education Reform Act 1988 made religious education a fundamental part of the basic curriculum, as opposed to the national curriculum, in all maintained schools. Its unique status signifies the special position that religious education holds in reflecting the traditions and beliefs that underpin contemporary society.
RE is central to the aim of the school curriculum, which is to promote the spiritual, moral and cultural development of children and young people and to help prepare them for the responsibilities and experiences of adult life.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh) appeared to be proposing the ending of compulsory RE in the curriculum, which is an argument that we will resist. As a Government, we are committed to retaining RE as a compulsory subject to the age of 16, notwithstanding the increasing volume of the secular lobby. Unlike the previous Government, this Administration are committed to faith schools. We value the enormous contribution that they make to our education system, which my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) has acknowledged.
I agree with the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who said that RE helps to promote community cohesion. RE, as part of a broad and balanced curriculum, should be relevant to all pupils’ background and beliefs. Crucially, the content of the RE syllabus is determined by the locally agreed syllabus conferences, which are appointed by the local standing advisory councils for religious education. Those councils know their communities and understand their needs. It is important that they have the freedom to design an RE curriculum that is relevant and valued by their community.
Less prescription in the curriculum will achieve better teaching. It will enable teachers to do what only they can, which is to engage and inspire their pupils. The national curriculum review aims to prescribe only the essential knowledge and concepts that children should know and be taught, and to leave the professionals to determine how to teach them. We must get away from the mentality that says that, just because a topic or subject is important, it has to be specified in the national curriculum. Moreover, just because something is not in the national curriculum does not mean that it is not important. That same principle applies to what is or is not incorporated into the English baccalaureate.
RE has a locally developed syllabus, which is based on the minimum prescription established in law, and we do not intend to change that. We want schools to have greater freedom because central prescription and the uniformity that it implies do not necessarily produce the best outcomes.
I can assure my hon. Friends the Members for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) that academies and free schools are required to teach RE as a condition of their funding agreement, which reflects the importance that the Government attach to the subject.
Mr Gibb
I will come on to why we have included history and geography in a moment, which relates to significant drops in the proportion of the cohort taking both history and geography.
I recognise that there are many concerns about the fact that the non-inclusion of religious studies in the humanities component of the English baccalaureate could have an adverse impact on the study of the subject. The E-bac recognises those pupils and those schools that succeed in securing achievement in the core subjects of English language, mathematics, the sciences, a language and history or geography, which reflects what happens in other high-performing countries. Singapore, for example, has compulsory O-levels in English language, mother tongue, maths, combined humanities and science. In France, the brevet is made up of exams in French, maths, history, geography and civics. In Japan, all students at the end of junior high school at the age of 15 are tested in Japanese, social studies, maths, science and English, depending on the prefecture. In Alberta, there are compulsory tests at 15 in maths, science, social studies, English and French. In Poland, 16-year-olds are tested in humanities, Polish, maths, science and a foreign language.
We deliberately kept the English baccalaureate small enough to enable pupils to study other subjects, such as music, art, RE, economics or vocational subjects. My concern is that the core academic subjects of the English baccalaureate—English, maths, science, a language, history or geography—are being denied to too many pupils, especially the more disadvantaged. In 2010, only 8% of pupils eligible for free school meals were entered for the English baccalaureate subjects, with only 4% achieving them. Of the 24% of non-free school meal pupils who took the E-bac, 17% achieved it.
In 719 maintained mainstream schools, no pupil entered any of the single award science GCSEs. No pupil was entered for French in 169 secondary schools. No pupil was entered for geography in 137 schools and no pupil was entered for history in 70 schools.
John Pugh
May I disabuse the Minister of his view that I was arguing for a change in the legal status of RE? I was trying to explore whether there are good arguments that he could give that are rationales for making the subject compulsory, which would not be good arguments for making it an option within the baccalaureate.
Mr Gibb
The arguments would be the same except that it is unnecessary to make RE a component of the English baccalaureate, because it is already compulsory by law. That is the reasoning behind our decision not to include RE in the humanities component.
RE is clearly a popular and successful subject. Judging by the increasing proportion of students who take a GCSE, it is one that is taught to an academically rigorous standard. There has been an increase in RE GCSEs from 16% of the cohort in 2000 to 28% in 2010. In addition, 36% of the cohort was entered for the short course GCSE in religious studies. By contrast, there has been a decline in the numbers entered for GCSE in history, geography and languages.
Mr Gibb
I will not give way to the right hon. Gentleman, because I am running out of time.
The proportion of young people attempting geography GCSE dropped from 37% in 2000 to 26% last year. Modern languages dropped from 79% in 2000 to 43% in 2010. Of course 79% of pupils in the independent sector attempted at least one foreign language in 2010. We are determined to close the attainment gap between those from wealthier and poorer backgrounds, and this is one tool in our toolbox to achieve that.
Our hope and expectation is that the English baccalaureate will encourage more students to study history, geography and languages. As it is compulsory to study RE until the age of 16, students will continue to take RS GCSEs in addition to the English baccalaureate subjects.
My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) proposed having a humanity component of two out of three options, including RE, in the humanities block. We have considered that, and we will continue to review it. The concern is that that will extend the size of the E-bac to seven or eight GCSEs, making it less small and therefore restricting the space for vocational education, music and the arts and for those who do not want to study RE to GCSE.