Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Lord McAvoy

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord McAvoy]

That is technically true, but it forces them to accept assumptions—I shall not be provocative and say that they are based on hostility—that are certainly not sympathetic towards school gatherings based on Christian beliefs. This should surely be about tolerance. If people want to change the way that things are, surely they should go about convincing people of that. I really do not understand, because no one in this Room has a mandate to talk about removing the basis of collective worship within schools. I should certainly like to see a politician standing for election along the corridor try to advocate some of the beliefs and authoritarian elements in these proposals.

I appeal to colleagues: if you want to change things, try to persuade; do not dictate or try to lay down such conditions from on high. Whether colleagues like it or not those are the unforeseen consequences. I agree with my noble friend Lord Touhig that it is not the intention of noble Lords to be hostile to faith schools on the basis of collective worship.

I shall say another couple of quick sentences in a mood of co-operation. My noble friend Lady Massey said that schools are places of learning only. Among a whole host of things, I accept that. However, the religion that I belong to—the Roman Catholic faith—believes in the trinity: home, school and church. We do not believe that schools are there for learning only.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

In fact, I did not say that schools are places of learning only. I would support schools that have a wide learning experience, such as culture, the arts, sport and so on. Learning is not just about academic learning. Learning is moral, spiritual and so on. I was trying to say that schools are not churches, temples, mosques or synagogues.

[Lord McAvoy]

The Catholic schools that I know, and which I have the most experience of, incorporate all the various subjects that my noble friend mentions. There is nothing wrong with that. I go and speak to modern studies classes and I assure my noble friend that their opinions are extremely varied. These schools encompass everything. They get involved in fair trade, mission work for Africa and raising funds. They do terrific work based on their faith and it should not be mocked. I believe that if people choose to say that school, home and church are a trinity, they are entitled to do so. I very much oppose the amendments.

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[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords—

[Lord McAvoy]

If you will let me finish, it is completely unfair to portray them in the way that they are being portrayed here at times.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend. I think he will find when he reads Hansard tomorrow that at no point have I said the things that he is accusing me of.

[Lord McAvoy]

It may be that the noble Baroness has not heard me clearly. I am saying that inherent in these amendments is the idea that faith schools are a bad thing. Folk may not like that, but that is what is coming across loud and clear. For instance, there has been no answer to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, who quickly picked up the point that the trait of moving house is not confined to faith schools or Catholic schools; it seems to be a trait throughout a whole host of schools. Yet, there has been no mention of that or any drawing back of the implication that this happens only in Catholic schools.

Society is evolving. Last week, I revised my opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. I certainly remember him from the 1980s and I did not like his politics, but last week I thought that he was great. However, this week I have revised my revision and he is back to being a bad man again. Certainly for 800 years we kept the faith in Ireland, I can tell you. In saying that there should not be any more faith schools, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, makes a point and he is asking us to trumpet it. I think I mentioned last week that there is a fairly large Roman Catholic school in Scotland where, if my memory serves me correctly, about 10 per cent of the pupils are Muslim. It is working and it is great—it is doing well for everyone.

I have mentioned the phrase “detachment of reality”. I say to noble Lords who have tabled these amendments and who have spoken in the manner that they have: let society evolve and let things happen. No one should take active steps against what they see as the badness in faith schools. I say to noble Lords in all sincerity, honesty and frankness that the more you try to enforce this, the higher the wall will go up, because there has been a lack of trust that is based on British history over the past 500 years. I am sure that noble Lords will be glad to hear that I shall not go into all that, but that lack of trust is based on 500 years of British society. One thinks particularly of the Catholic community. If noble Lords try to enforce it, it just will not happen. They should go the way suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, of letting things evolve, although I disassociate myself from his wish not to build faith schools. On the other hand, if you make a big issue of it, that may happen anyway, and if so, and if that is what people want, that will be a good thing. However, I do not accept that faith schools are a bad thing.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is completely unworkable. It would cause strife and animosity and would make the original ethos of the school seem dictatorial towards the new component of the school. That would take us back. I say again that if we want to move forward, the way ahead is consensus. We should convince people that going in a particular direction is right. Go that way and all the community will come together. Go in the opposite direction, and the community will be divided.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Lord McAvoy

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

It was not as good as mine. I remember a story told by a very humorous Roman Catholic nun. She was on a health education course with me some years ago. She said that she had been told to say that a girl should, when she danced with a boy, have the width of a telephone directory between them and that, if she got into difficulty, she should yell, “Stop it! I am a young Ursuline”. Incidentally, some excellent PSHE education takes place in Catholic schools, to which I shall come in a minute.

So I say yes to the amendments, but I want some modification. The notion of what I call the spiral curriculum gets lost in the amendments. By spiral curriculum, I mean teaching an issue very simply when a child is young and going into more detail as the child matures. Young children are able to grasp what foods are good for them and which are not without going into detail of nutritional bases and chemical formulae. Young children can explore the notion of friendships and good, respectful relationships without details of sex—they would not grasp them anyway, and that would be inappropriate teaching.

I remember the story of a little boy asking his mother where he came from. She thought, “Right, this is the teaching moment”, and went into stories about daddy's seeds and mummy’s seeds meeting. After a while, the little boy said, “Yes, but did I come from Birmingham or Luton?”. When I was teaching my two year-old grandson to play cricket, I did not toss a Michael Holding fast ball at him first thing: they were gentle lobs. Then they got faster. My point is that I would not exclude any stage of education from certain teaching; I would make the teaching suitable to the child and then build on what had been learnt. That is why a curriculum of PSHE is necessary—just like in maths or English—which builds on knowledge and skills that children learn gradually.

The other area where I have some difficulty with the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is in paragraphs (7) to (11) concerning faith schools and SRE. Although faith schools will still be required to teach SRE, they are exempted from teaching it in a balanced way which promotes equity and diversity. The amendment would give faith schools the right to allow the tenets of religion to override the principles that must guide the teaching of SRE in other maintained schools. That could lead to narrower teaching. The amendment tabled by me and my noble friends Lord Knight and Lady Gould would not prevent faith schools teaching SRE in ways that reflect their religious character, but it would guarantee pupils a right to teaching about all aspects of PSHE.

To return to Roman Catholic nuns, I have talked to many of them on courses. They say, “We can be very clear about our boundaries in what we teach in personal, social and health education. It does not mean that we cannot talk about contraception, abortion, homosexuality and what they mean. It means that we must give the perspective of our faith on those issues”. How sensible. That is all I am looking for.

We all have a particular perspective on all sorts of issues. We can make that perspective clear to young people. However, they should be given full and comprehensive education. I am a humanist, but I believe that young people should be taught about different faiths and cultures. Otherwise, we are in the dangerous territory of indoctrination—a word disliked by my noble friend Lord McAvoy. Indoctrination is not education. Education seeks to bring out the best in young people.

I say to the Minister: please say yes to the principle of having PSHE as a statutory right for all pupils of whatever age or faith. Let us get the appropriate curriculum and teaching sorted out.

[Lord McAvoy]

Can my noble friend give us a definition of what she considers to be education and what she considers to be indoctrination?

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I certainly can. If the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, were here, she would give the example of a particular school where they learned the Koran for about 80 per cent of the curriculum, and very little else. I think that is indoctrination. Education should consider all aspects of a particular faith, of other faiths, of personal, social and health education, without restriction. Trying to persuade young people to adhere to a particular thing, which they may not be ready to adhere to anyway, may influence them in unfortunate ways.

[Lord McAvoy]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that clarification. I am sure she is fed up with me, but perhaps I could test her patience further. She considers indoctrination to be a set percentage of the curriculum by a Catholic school, for instance. Does she not accept that parents choose to send their children to Catholic schools or a particular faith school? I cannot grasp why people making legislation should restrict people’s choices. People are not dragged into these faith schools. People choose to send their children to these faith schools.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, with all due respect, I think my noble friend is misunderstanding me. I am not saying that parents should not send their children to the school of their choice. All I am saying is that, as a parent, I would not wish my child to have his or her education limited to a particular doctrine or creed or particular way of teaching or particular aspects of teaching. I would want my child to have a very broad education. Earlier I gave the example of a Roman Catholic school where the nuns say they will teach in a broad sense but within the ethos of their own faith. That is fine by me.

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[Lord McAvoy]

I am delighted to hear the noble Baroness say that she supports the rights of parents. If parents send their children to a particular school, she will obviously support them in that, and she will also support them in ensuring that the ethos of that school is maintained, especially one of a religious nature.

When it comes to the new section in Amendment 90, the difficulty is that I maintain—I will no doubt encourage further contributions with this—that the common threads of the amendments are designed to minimise, damage and gradually remove the religious element of faith schools.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I am so sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again but I think that he has misunderstood a great deal of what I was saying. I am not trying to damage the ethos of faith schools. I am saying that the ethos of faith schools may well exist but children have the right to know about other faiths. I was talking today to a friend from Northern Ireland who said, “Look at what damage has been done in Northern Ireland by people not learning about other faiths”. I say no more.

[Lord McAvoy]

That is the second time that my noble friend has accused me of misunderstanding her. I fully confess that I have a very limited formal education but I do not have limited intelligence, and it is my responsibility to make a judgment that I see a thread in maybe one or two contributions from my noble friend, seeing as how she has introduced this subject. It is my opinion that there is a common thread to the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend that are designed to—I withdraw the word “damage”—minimise or devalue the existence and practice of faith schools.