Education Bill

Debate between Lord Knight of Weymouth and Lord Bishop of Oxford

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

I, too, declare an interest as a bishop of the Church of England. It will not surprise your Lordships to know that I resist the amendments in this group. As a preliminary, I say that we easily encounter in this kind of debate the myth of neutrality, with the idea that the amendments might lead us into a distinction between church schools—or, at least, religious schools—and religiously neutral schools. That is a common myth: that we would have religious schools and non-religious schools. I am not sure that we have a basic philosophical agreement on that point; I do not want to pretend that we do.

It is unnecessary to change the law, which seems to be working well. We have the existing safeguards; we have the possibility of withdrawal. The fact that so few parents use that right of withdrawal suggests to me that most parents think that it is working pretty well. A generous experience of spiritual and religious reflection goes on in assemblies; obviously, I go to a lot of them. In them, I experience not just Christian worship but spiritual reflection. I know that that is one possibility under the amendments, but it is the religious and spiritual element that is really important. If we take religion out, we have lost the key domain.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I had no intention to intervene in this debate, but the right reverend Prelate said that he thought that the current law was working well. I have no doubt that it may be from parents’ perspective, but when Ofsted inspections of schools take place, do they not often find that the daily act of collective worship is not taking place? From the point of view of the practicality of the school, it is not working that well. I am not aware of huge numbers of parents complaining that the daily act of collective worship is not taking place. People like school assemblies, but if, for practical reasons, it is hard for them to come off because there is not a big enough hall, parents are not complaining in large numbers.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

I just point out the statistic that 98 per cent of primary schools have a daily act of worship. The noble Lord is quite right that in secondary schools the figure is not as high as that: it is between two and three acts of collective worship a week; on other occasions, the school is meeting for an assembly purpose. That is what I mean by the generous interpretation of religious and spiritual reflection, which is crucial.

Secondly, the system of opt-in rather than opt-out would drive a wedge into our schools which would be regrettable. We could find social division. As it is, there is a difference between collective worship and corporate worship. Collective worship is a gathering of everyone who is together in a certain place at a certain time, such as a school. Corporate worship is when people opt into the faith and want to go to a church. Therefore, we have a collective gathering which allows youngsters to experience something and not just learn about it. As we are legally charged with promoting the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and society, experience matters, and the candle, the singing, the prayer, the stillness and the silence, which are so often present, are all part of the experience of the spiritual, which is part of what we are required to provide.

Thirdly, there is the problem of a wedge appearing between two different types of school. One of the glories of our system is that it is an integrated church state system or a system of church schools within the state. It works well because it is integrated and, if we drive a wedge by saying that there are church schools over here and non-religious schools over there, we will deny ourselves something rather precious about the British system. There is much more that I could say but I will not go on.

Lastly, let us remember that in 2010 the Office for National Statistics said that 71 per cent of the population of this country still want to identify with—I think that that is the phrase—the Christian religion. If we are swapping statistics, 86 per cent of people in this country go into a church at some point during the year, but if 71 per cent want to identify with the religion, that would seem to indicate that most parents are happy with the way that we go about things at the moment. We have a good British compromise and, if we rock the boat with this, I do not know quite where that will lead. I think that it will probably be to our detriment.