Education (Values of British Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts

Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, on securing this Second Reading for his Education (Values of British Citizenship) Bill. As many contributors to today’s debate have asserted, the aims of the Bill are admirable. It is vital that pupils have a sound understanding of the fundamental values on which our society is founded and their relevance to the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living in modern Britain.

This debate also exemplifies one of the most important aspects of our approach to values in this country, which is the ability to be able to debate, engage widely and develop our understanding. In that respect, the noble Baronesses, Lady Butler-Sloss and Lady Neuberger, identified in talking about the Living With Difference report the importance of us continuing to have a national debate, beyond our schools, about our values and the best way to inculcate and develop them.

My noble friend Lady Morgan made the important point that our values develop and need to be lived. Although I turn to many sources of wisdom on this, I am most certainly willing to turn to Gareth Southgate when it comes to living our values.

Labour Governments have a proud history of promoting British values across our education system. We were the first Government to introduce mandatory citizenship education into the national curriculum under the leadership of my noble friend Lord Blunkett—with me as a lowly junior Minister at the time doing some of the legwork. This Government will continue that tradition to ensure that our children and young people are supported to become active and engaged citizens. I will say more about citizenship in a moment.

Although some have sought to use these issues as a political football—not in this morning’s debate but more widely—to sow division and hatred across our communities, it is only through promoting genuine respect and tolerance through our education system that we will tackle the shameful actions we saw across our towns and cities this summer. The riots showed that we cannot take these values for granted but must continue to embed them within every child’s education.

There were compelling contributions to the debate from my noble friend Lady Uddin and the noble Baronesses, Lady Verma and Lady Warsi. My noble friend Lady Uddin, while talking about her own experience, made a strong case, as have others, that the development of these values needs to be broader than simply in our education system. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, is right to identify the significance of speaking English to enable people to be able to feel fully part of our communities. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, is right that our discussion about British values should not be about setting one person against another or defining the difference in terms of those who have come to this country and accepted and lived our values, and that everybody, whether born or coming to take up citizenship, is equally able to exemplify our values.

The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, challenged me to clarify how this Government will develop the significance of British values in our schools, and I will do that, because I would like to clarify how this understanding, and many of the issues identified in this morning’s debate, are already being satisfied by some of the existing duties on schools and current curriculum requirements, and also the action that this Government want to take to go further on that.

Our schools have a statutory duty, as the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, identified, as part of a broad and balanced curriculum, to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development. This is a duty that stems from the Education Act 1944 and was reinforced in 2002. The previous Government published guidance in 2014 to support schools in delivering that requirement with respect to fundamental British values. That guidance rightly acknowledges that

“while different people may hold different views about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ … a school’s ethos and teaching … should … support the rule of English civil and criminal law”.

That in practice means embedding

“British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs”.

Noble Lords have made important contributions today on how those ideas need to be developed.

It is important that teachers and schools have the capacity and range of ways to ensure that they are embedded in our schools. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, meant to be insulting to teachers in suggesting that in our schools people are only putting up a poster in order to do that because, actually, there is a whole range of different activities that schools are already using to successfully embed the values across a whole breadth of provision. This means that the values are taught in the curriculum, reflected in behaviour policies, reinforced in assemblies and deepened through carefully planned opportunities to, for example, experience democratic processes. Having been on the receiving end of the Somers Park Primary School Pupils’ Parliament only a few weeks ago, I know how rigorous and important some of those processes can be.

There are difficult questions for teachers and our schools to consider and to reflect in the teaching and experiences that they provide for our students. That rightly brings a responsibility on to the Government to provide appropriate resources and we should continue to develop those. The department currently provides a range of support to the sector, in particular, for some of those issues that are very difficult for teachers to teach, through the Educate Against Hate website. I took a look at that yesterday and was impressed with the range of specific resources to support schools and colleges, not only to promote values but to deal with some of the difficult and contested issues that it is important for our schoolchildren to be open to and engaged with.

I want particularly to talk about citizenship, given the focus that many noble Lords have put on it this morning. Since its introduction under the previous Labour Government, as I outlined, citizenship remains compulsory in the national curriculum at key stages 3 and 4 in maintained schools. Although it is optional for primary schools, it is supported by non-statutory programmes of study at key stages 1 and 2. In the curriculum, pupils learn about democracy, politics, Parliament and voting, as well as human rights, justice, media literacy, the law, the economy, and the need for mutual respect and understanding. Pupils also learn the skills of active citizenship, as called for by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, through practical opportunities to address issues of concern to them in school and the wider community.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, identified how important it is that we equip our children with the ability to distinguish fact from opinion and to have critical media literacy. That is an important part of citizenship teaching. My noble friend Lady Whitaker and others identified the significance of human rights teaching, which is an important part of the citizenship curriculum. I say in response to my noble friend Lord Browne that pupils should also be taught about the diverse national, regional, religious and ethnic identities across the United Kingdom, and the need for mutual respect and understanding.

However, I take noble Lords’ point that, as well as some of the resources that I have already outlined, which probably need further development, it is also crucial that we have sufficient appropriately qualified teachers. It is the case that the number of specialist teachers has fallen over recent years. This Government have a commitment, both in their recruitment of 6,500 additional teachers and in the approach to professional development for classroom teachers and leaders, to ensure that teachers are equipped to deliver what we believe to be important in schools. This area of citizenship is certainly, in my view, one of those areas.

My noble friend Lady Blower rightly talked about the significance of schools in tackling racial and religious discrimination. It is absolutely right that, as part of a broad and balanced curriculum, there are opportunities to discuss racism and other forms of discrimination. Those include citizenship education, which teaches about religious diversity, and mutual respect and understanding; relationships education, which teaches about the impact of prejudice and the importance of respect and individual worth, as many noble Lords have mentioned; and religious education, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield also rightly challenged us on, which teaches about religious tolerance. Once again, the Education Against Hate website provides important teaching resources to help schools discuss those sensitive topics. The department is also committed to tackling all forms of prejudice, including Islamophobia, and other forms of racism. Earlier this month, my right honourable friend the Education Secretary announced that the Government are resuming the procurement of £7 million-worth of funding to tackle anti-Semitism in schools, colleges and universities.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield also asked what the DfE is doing about rolling out the GCSE in natural history. The natural history GCSE was a commitment made by the previous Government. We will want to set out our policy priorities for the curriculum in due course—I will come to the curriculum and assessment review in a moment—but that does not mean we do not believe, as was rightly emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, that respect for the environment is a very important part of what we need our schools to be able to develop.

Topics related to climate change and the environment are taught within the current national curriculum for citizenship. For science and geography, teachers have flexibility to take account of new developments, societal changes or topical issues. As a result, we are seeing some excellent work in climate and nature education in many schools. The department launched—to be fair, this was under the previous Government—a number of initiatives to encourage all education settings to take a holistic approach to climate, nature and sustainability. My ministerial colleague, Stephen Morgan, recently launched the first- year report for the National Education Nature Park, which brings together all of the land from across education settings into a vast virtual nature park. We are seeing a real change in the way that very many schools are using their estate and their environment to educate young people, develop those environments and habitats, and boost the biodiversity in their sites.

My noble friend Lord Mann rightly talked about the challenge of tackling misogyny in the work that we do on values in our schools. The Government are enormously serious, both in our department’s work in tackling misogyny and in the mission across government to tackle violence against women and girls, about focusing on prevention through relationships education and ensuring that pupils are safe while at school through schools’ compliance with their safeguarding duties. We are currently reviewing the RSHE statutory guidance and want to ensure that it provides schools with the direction and ability to protect all pupils from the growing scourge of misogyny. His idea about the way in which the NUS might support schools in developing that work was very interesting.

Several noble Lords mentioned the fact that the Government have delivered on their manifesto commitment to establish an independent curriculum and assessment review for England. The review will look at how we deliver a curriculum that ensures young people develop the knowledge and skills required to thrive as citizens in work and throughout life—a curriculum in which they are represented. That has the potential to reinforce the good work already happening in schools, and it will be important for us to consider any wider issues raised by the review within our next steps in government. I will certainly make sure that the very important contributions made in this debate are brought to the attention of the review.

The noble Lord, Lord Bird, gave a passionate explanation of how those outside the mainstream also need to be supported in their consideration of British values, and how, understandably, they may feel alienated from what others of us take for granted. Our curriculum and assessment review must consider those who are disadvantaged and excluded; that is a specific objective for it. The Government are committed to tackling poverty, particularly child poverty. The task force led by my right honourable friends the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will look precisely at how we ensure that fewer children have to grow up in poverty in the way that the noble Lord explained.

As I conclude, I want to talk briefly about my concern about legislating for values in the way in which this Bill would do. At the moment, fundamental British values are not set out as a list of values that exist within law. The guidance is non-statutory, and I fear that primary legislation that changed, and to a certain extent set in stone, British values would potentially limit schools’ freedom to tailor their approach and would open schools up to external challenge to their provision, beyond Ofsted inspections, which are right to ensure that values are being properly dealt with. Dealing with that challenge would in turn place huge burdens on schools.

In saying that, I support the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, who talked about the danger of too rigid an interpretation of values. I also agree with the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, that ensuring that schools have some autonomy in this area is important. Schools need to be free to embed the values in a way that meets the needs of their pupils. They need to be supported in doing that, but they can include a full range of issues, ideas and materials in their curriculum, including where they are challenging or controversial, subject to their obligation to ensure political balance.

While we support the importance of schools reinforcing these values and considering, in the way in which the noble and right reverend Lord’s Bill would ensure that they do, the updating and development of those values in what is taught in our schools, I do not believe that more rigidly legislating for them is the right way to secure effective implementation by schools. That is why I must express reservations on the content of the Bill. The current arrangements provide a sound basis for delivering British values, but there is room for improvement. I assure noble Lords that this Government will continue to support our teachers, provide resources and give clarity about how we expect schools to go about the range of ways in which they teach British values and bring coherence and cohesion to our communities. I thank the noble and right reverend Lord for the contribution of the debate this morning.