Schools: Extremism and Intolerance

Lord Bishop of Birmingham Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness that the vast majority of Muslim families in this country want exactly what she described. I have had the pleasure of visiting a number of excellent faith schools of all faiths, including Muslim schools, which comply with promoting fundamental British values, as all in your Lordships’ House would agree.

[The Lord Bishop of Birmingham]

My Lords, will the Minister commend the people of Birmingham for their extraordinary efforts since 2014 on cohesion and attempting to learn lessons from this very complicated event, as we have heard in your Lordships’ House today? Will she particularly commend them for the United Nations rights reporting school award, which has been applied for every year and is now awarded to 51% of primary and secondary schools in Birmingham, compared with only 18% across the country? Will she commend these actions and others, and ask for them to be replicated around the country so that we might live as one people?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the right revered Prelate for his question and for pointing out the success of integration in primary schools; I am happy to share in his welcome of that.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bishop of Birmingham Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have a couple of amendments in this group. Perhaps I may start by speaking to Amendment 34. I have great hopes for it. My noble friend earlier enjoined us to be broad in what we put into this part of the Bill and not to be too bogged down in detail. I do not think that we can get much broader than the public interest, but it would be an important addition to this part of the Bill.

There are some very important things which will not get done under the current wording. One of them is consideration of what sort of system is wanted and what demand is out there. What do students want to see happening? What do those who recruit students when they graduate want to see happening? What pattern of provision is emerging? What strategy should be pursued to develop the higher education system which the country as a whole wants and needs? This is really important, and one can see that the current system does not function or at least functions extremely slowly. I shall give noble Lords a couple of examples.

The American university system is based largely on the liberal arts model. That has been very slow to come into this country, although our best students are flooding across to study it in America because it is the only place they can find it. A lot of good students want to stay abroad and to use universities to explore new subjects. We tend to take the view that you go to a university to study history or physics, and that is what you should stick to, but that is not what we all need afterwards. I studied physics; I could jolly well have done with a bit of essay-writing to go with it, not to say public speaking and maybe a bit of business. It would have done a great deal of good, because how many physics students go on to be physicists? It is not that many. But we have admission arrangements that pay no attention to breadth in the way that American universities do. There is clearly a great demand among students for good courses in the liberal arts style. That demand is not being responded to with any sense of rapidity by the established university system. Being universities, they all have the breadth of teaching ability and subject spread which would enable them to offer such courses if they chose to do so, but there is no pressure in that way.

The other example is acceptance of BTECs. It is noticeable how difficult it is to predict whether a university will accept a BTEC for its courses. For example, Durham has a very prestigious business course which accepts BTECs, but the course in Exeter does not. Why? Is this the pattern of response that we want in our education system as a whole? We agree that we do not want to tell individual universities what to do, but perhaps the conclusion is that we want more good courses open to BTECs. There seems to be nothing in the Bill which allows the OfS to consider such matters, and there should be.

My second amendment in this group is Amendment 47. The simplest thing would be for me to wait for an answer on that from Minister, rather than my taking up time telling him things about it when I want to listen to what he has to say.

[The Lord Bishop of Birmingham]

My Lords, I regret that my friend the Bishop of Portsmouth is not in his place tonight, having been exhausted, I suppose, by leading the debate on the Armed Forces covenant on Monday. He has asked me to bring before your Lordships Amendment 58 which relates to the general duties of the Office for Students. This is in the context of warmly welcoming the Bill’s commitment to greater diversity and improved choices for students, both in the wider choice of the number of institutions and in course and subject. However, we believe it is vital also to have a variety of institution types with distinctive characteristics. There are many universities with a particularly distinctive character: for example, the cathedrals group of universities, and others such as Goldsmiths, which has a focus on creative studies. It is this fact that the amendment seeks to recognise and pay heed to.

Your Lordships may know that there are more than 100,000 students enrolled across the 16 cathedrals group institutions. Collectively, undergraduates, post- graduates and research students are making the cathedrals group about the same size as the university sector in Wales. We do not for a moment wish to press this amendment to a Division, but we hope that the Minister and his officials will be willing to look afresh at the inclusion of and provision for universities with a distinctive character.

Birmingham Schools

Lord Bishop of Birmingham Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Birmingham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for bringing the Secretary of State’s Statement to the House and for the publication of Peter Clarke’s report. As he mentioned, this goes alongside Ian Kershaw’s report, which was published on Friday, about Birmingham City Council and it has the support of the Birmingham Trojan horse review group, of which I am a member. That group has published its own, wider recommendations in this complex and troubling period. Does the Minister agree that both reports are thorough and hard-hitting, and that there is much in common in their findings?

Will he also affirm that it is vital now that we have a co-ordinated effort across all interested parties and responsible bodies, not only to rectify wrongdoing and implement the welcome recommendations of both reports but to ensure that every child in Birmingham has an excellent education, preparing her or him to flourish in our liberal 21st-century democracy, so that they can start the new academic year in September confident that the proper structures, monitoring and support are in place? Can he also reassure the House that, given the arrangements he is proposing, with these rapid and responsible responses to new structures and influences in Birmingham, we will be absolutely clear by September who is responsible for what in this revolutionary period in our education system? Will sufficient resource be directed to enable local authorities and their partners, new and old, to achieve this safeguarding, which is the responsibility for all children, in whatever form of education or schools they are, and can he reassure the House that they will receive that?

May I also make a wider point about this complex matter? Faith, in a city such as Birmingham, is of great importance to a huge number of the population, which is perhaps unusual across the population of the country. The issues that we face in these reports are wider than just education and, of course, the Prevent strategy, such as making sure that proper arrangements are in place for the safety of all. Will the Secretary of State’s department consider taking responsibility for developing a new awareness and experience among all professionals, of whatever responsibility, of what lived faith looks like in a 21st century city and enable a wider conversation about faith, not only in education but throughout civil society?

[Lord Nash]

I welcome the right reverend Prelate’s “look forward” approach to this matter and am grateful to the diocese of Birmingham for its support for the schools and academies programme and its collaborative approach to working both with the department and with other dioceses. As the right reverend Prelate says, both reports are hard-hitting. We should all take stock and analyse all the recommendations.

As for being clear by September who is responsible for what in these schools, it is clear now today that we have changed the members of the Park View Educational Trust, which was responsible for three academies, Park View, Golden Hillock and Nansen Primary. They will become trustees of the trust. We will bring in further outstanding heads as trustees, who will be responsible between now and the beginning of September for securing the schools and analysing which teachers may have behaved inappropriately. They will not hesitate to take the right action against any teachers who have behaved unprofessionally and will make sure the schools are safe and ready for opening in September. Probably during August, we will work with potential sponsors for these schools to ensure their long-term future. This has invited a wider discussion about faith, which is very welcome.

Education Institutions: Autonomy and Accountability

Lord Bishop of Birmingham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Birmingham]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to address the topic of autonomy and accountability in our educational institutions, particularly in our schools. As noble Lords can imagine, coming from Birmingham, this is a very pertinent topic. We are experiencing a perfect storm of anonymous allegations. Birmingham City Council is conducting various investigations, of which I am a part, into those allegations.

There is confusion among ordinary people between politics and process, about which the noble Baroness has been telling us and which the Government are promoting to achieve high standards. There is also confusion between faith and fear. These are softer, organic areas that need to be introduced and understood when we are trying to raise standards, achieve excellent exam results, and put in place a proper inspection regime. Of course, we all want our children to have an excellent education. We want high academic standards and high vocational standards for pupils for whom those are appropriate. We especially want good governance, and that is something we are all attending to at the moment.

In terms of our accountability and sense of autonomy, we also want a real and in-depth understanding of what it means to have an ethos in our schools—whether they be church or community schools, academies or free schools—of both diversity and unity. These are areas that local people care about deeply in trying to achieve the very best for their children.

You might want me to mention a wonderful biblical pattern of accountability and autonomy, where human beings in many faith traditions are expected to grow up to be responsible, engaged and fulfilled. In the Christian scriptures, if you turned to Matthew chapter 18, you would see the appropriate introduction about receiving the kingdom of heaven like a child, and the parable of the lost sheep, where so many people can go wrong and stray from a pattern that is set out for them. Then there is the command to forgive; not just once or twice but an infinite number, of 70 times seven. There is a culture of empathy and sympathy, but also a culture of real responsibility, and in the middle of that, there is a little teaching about accountability and how it might work in an ordinary community.

If your neighbour offends you, go and see them personally. If that does not work, take two or three trusted people with you and allow them to examine the controversy or problem. If that does not work, then bring the whole community together and examine the issue. If it is unresolvable, then there are harsh things to do. There are examination or inspection judgments. However, there is a pattern there which ordinary, local people can instinctively understand and which would allow us not only to have autonomy locally, but also to have responsibility where it truly lies, in those local communities: responsibility for education and unity, but also for rejoicing in diversity.

In our own Church of England in Birmingham, I should mention the expansion we have had in the academies programme which the Government have been promoting. This is something we have embraced and found to be very effective. However, to achieve the ambitions of the Government and the excellence we want for our children in a great variety of communities, we have formed a diocesan board of education trust, which publishes, for example, an academies accountability framework. Such a framework enables both support and challenge in our local schools. In other words, it expects responsibility and people to be accountable, but at the same time, where there is difficulty, they should have the appropriate support at the appropriate level.

This lays out clear requirements and expectations. It is a local framework of support and there is proper challenge within it. There is complete clarity about the improvement of tasks before the school, the resources that are available to tackle the tasks, clear lines of accountability to monitor and evaluate the pace and scale of the improvements required, and an appropriate balance between support, challenge, self-evaluation and external evaluation. In a church school, we would go further, to give a guarantee to parents, communities, pupils and staff about what are the various granular expectations that they would find in various areas to do with religious education, prayer and worship, spirituality, valuing of pupils, opportunities that there are at any good school, and what the school should undertake to achieve those values to do with ethos.

I am arguing today for accountability and autonomy, but in our experience, the way to make this succeed in all our schools is to make sure that there are proper, local and trusted arrangements: trusted by pupils, staff and parents, by the whole community and, of course, by the Secretary of State.

Schools: Admission Policies

Lord Bishop of Birmingham Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

We are very keen that all schools, including free faith schools, are open to all faiths and teach all about the major religions practised in this country. They are obliged to do so, and Ofsted will inspect against that, as we would expect it to do.

[The Lord Bishop of Birmingham]

Does the Minister agree with the Secretary of State that Church of England schools are most often found in very challenging areas in our communities and provide excellent education? Would he encourage the expansion of religious schools of that kind in oversubscribed areas?

[Lord Nash]

Where we have areas of basic need, we are keen to encourage all comers to help us. I entirely agree with the right reverend Prelate about the performance of Church of England schools. Again, in respect of achieving five A* to C grades, including in English and maths, they score 62% versus 58%, and at level 4 of key stage 2 they score 82% as opposed to 78%. We would welcome expansion of these schools as they provide an excellent education.

Education: English Baccalaureate

Lord Bishop of Birmingham Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

[The Lord Bishop of Birmingham]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the deep and widespread concern that, in narrowing the compulsory subjects in the English baccalaureate, there will likely be a reduction in religious studies and religious education learning—rigorous academic subject that it is—and a consequent reduction, which is already happening, in places for PGCE training of RE teachers? Underlying that, there is the likely erosion of religious literacy, particularly among more able and older teenagers, which is essential in our diverse society. Would he be prepared to consider adding religious education to the other excellent humanities subjects of geography, English and history?