Education: British Values

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Storey on obtaining this debate and thank him for what he has said. Last week I suggested to my noble friend the Minister that it would be a good idea, in the year of Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary, to have a charter of British values to which all schools should be invited to subscribe. What are those values? They are of course based on the rule of law, of which Magna Carta is itself the foundation: freedom of thought; freedom of belief; freedom of speech; mutual respect and tolerance. One could add to that. Above all, they should teach all young people that everyone has responsibilities as well as rights.

I am very glad that my noble friend Lord Storey talked about citizenship education. As my noble friend the Minister knows only too well, I have spoken about this for quite a long time and I have seen him about it on a number of occasions. I would like all our young people to go through a citizenship ceremony when they leave school, having performed some community service in their area, whether it be dealing with the old or the young, or working for the National Trust—the list is endless. I would like all our young people to leave school with a sense of being part of a community and having a sense of community obligation and belonging. I would like that to be signified in a ceremony they all go through. If the Minister says, as he has hinted to me in the past, that it is difficult to do that right across the country, at the very least we should encourage it and consider having pilot projects. I believe the inculcation of a sense of real belonging is something so many of our young people lack.

It has often been said that the real poor of the present century are those without hope. What we must seek to do is give them hope, and one of the best ways of giving hope is by providing a sense of having roots, of knowing where they belong and what they can do.

In the final seconds I have left in which to speak, let me also suggest something I raised last week but which my noble friend slightly dismissed. While one could not make it obligatory, I would encourage all schools to fly the flag. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland they should fly two flags, and in some of our counties—my own county of Lincolnshire has a flag—they should also fly that flag. The flag or flags should be outside the school as a symbol of pride and belonging, of being part of a thing greater than oneself; that is, part of the community of which one is a part.