Education Bill

Debate between Lord Baker of Dorking and Lord Bishop of Oxford

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, last Friday, rather curiously, I found myself at Blenheim Palace twice in the day. In the evening I was at a ball celebrating 100 years of a diocesan social work agency called PACT, which specialises in working with adoption, fostering and children’s support, but in the morning I was with 200 head teachers of church schools in the diocese of Oxford, celebrating, among other things, 200 years of church schools throughout the country. They were a very impressive group of head teachers, skilled, dedicated and looking forward to the challenges of this new era and the new things that are to be done.

As we all know, the Church of England has a huge commitment to education, going back not just 200 years to the foundation of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor, but way beyond that to the first schools in the country in the monasteries and religious foundations of our land. We are proud to have been deeply committed to this most essential of tasks for a very long time. Our nearly 5,000 schools, with nearly a million children in them, have high standards, are popular, and have values, disciplines and habits of the heart that parents recognise as deeply worth while. The future, seen through the eyes of those head teachers at Blenheim, is indeed full of opportunity as we continue to provide schools of both distinctive and inclusive quality, serving the communities in which they are set.

The Bill before us seems by and large to be a tidying -up exercise, but I find myself wondering whether we have had a sufficiently broad, conceptual debate into which it fits. I wonder whether we have seen the coherence of the overall educational strategy, or if we are simply letting a thousand flowers bloom and trusting that, with a bit of luck, the eventual outcome will be a garden that is both beautiful and productive. Those of us involved in education are scrambling to keep up with the pace of change and are hoping that there are not too many unintended consequences. Is the overall educational vision clear, beyond, of course, promoting localism?

The question that exercises me is whether we are promoting, and whether this Bill supports, a vision of education for the whole person or for just part of a person. Are we concerned with the full human flourishing of every child, or just developing the skills that will serve the economy? William Temple told the story of a father who sent a note to his son’s school that said: “Don't teach my son poetry; he’s going to be a grocer”. That is a very impoverished view of education. This is the debate that I wish we could be having today, and which, in a sense, lies unexamined behind our Bill. There is a risk, for example, that the review of the national curriculum could skew the learning outcomes in a more instrumentalist direction, when what we want is the full, rich development of children’s incredibly diverse potential.

In this context, I do have some concerns, as noble Lords can imagine, about the English baccalaureate. We need our children to be more factually informed—absolutely—but not at the expense of the grocer’s son learning poetry. The humanities matter, and I could make a particular case for the high value of RE as a rigorous tool for learning about human society, local harmony and global peace making, as well as exploring personal values, ethics and belief systems. If we are to have the English baccalaureate and RE is not included in it, society will be very much the poorer in the next generation.

These are general comments on the context of the Bill, and I regret that we are not first discussing and exploring an overall educational vision. However, there are three markers that I should like to put down at this Second Reading. These are to do with the way in which the Bill and the White Paper on which it is based impact on the work of churches in their schools and colleges.

First, we will want to follow up in Committee—and, I trust, in further discussions with officials—a number of technical issues concerned with land and trusts for schools converting to academy status, and staffing arrangements at academies with a religious character.

Secondly, I want to express some concerns about teacher training in the future. It will be essential to ensure a denominational balance in initial teacher training. This is currently a duty, but I am not convinced, from what I know so far, that it will remain so. It is vital that the denominational balance be retained in order to ensure an adequate supply of appropriately trained teachers for our church schools. This is not just about RE teachers but all teachers. I am concerned about that.

I was at Whitelands College at Roehampton University last month, where the principal said it was the most rewarding job that he had ever done in his life. There are 11 other Anglican and four Catholic universities and university colleges, but because they have teacher training as a major part of their foundation, the proposal to base training in schools is posing a very real and destabilising challenge to them, I have yet to be convinced that it will improve the quality of training. Between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of training time is already spent in schools.

Thirdly, and in conclusion, the Church of England is committed to working with this Government and Governments of every hue to further the goal of offering the best educational experience possible to every child in the country, including the grocer’s son. Education unlocks virtually everything else in a young person’s life. In the church, we want children to think for themselves and to act for others. To that end, through the national society and the diocesan boards of education, we are, in a thoroughly open-minded and energetic way, pursuing how to make all these new systems work, and are looking forward to making those changes to the system that are ahead of us. We are committed to all of this.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Could I ask the right reverend Prelate a question, as he speaks in this House for the Church of England? This Bill promotes the establishment of more faith schools and more Church of England schools; I went to one myself. What is the current admissions procedure of Church of England schools? I believe he made a speech during Holy Week that seemed to be slightly at variance with the Statement made in this House three years ago, when there were long debates on this subject, on amendments that I moved, to ensure that any new faith schools would recruit at least 25 per cent from outside the faith. That was something the previous Government supported for a time but then abandoned. Following that, the archbishop said that the admissions procedure of all new Church of England schools would be 25 per cent from outside the faith, or from no faith. I thought that was very sensible and appropriate, and I hope that it would be an example for other faiths. Is that still the admissions procedure of the Church of England?

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

The admissions procedure for the Church of England always rests in the hands of the local governors. They are advised by the diocesan boards of education, which in turn are advised by the National Society, which I chair, so in our admissions advice we give no particular figures. That 25 per cent is on the books but it is not in the current advice. That is for individual decisions to be made. I could expand on what I was trying to say, but I think this is probably not the time.

We are committed to co-operation with Government, but if we are going to back these head teachers, like the ones I was with at Blenheim last week, I hope that there are some changes yet to be made to the Bill.