Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Mann Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support the right reverend Prelate in everything he has said. He will recall that in Committee, I supported him in the change to the governance of academies in the context of faith schools. I am grateful to the Minister—although she is engaged in other matters at the moment—and the Government for agreeing to make this amendment. I think it is sensible and I am glad that the Government have agreed to it, but I have to say that I cannot support Amendment 30 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. Incidentally, I understand much of what she said, and I have a great deal of respect for her. She quite rightly referred to the fact that you do not have to be Christian in order to have Christian values and ensure that they form the basis of a moral education for young people. Of course, that is why there are very many faith schools in our country which are attended by people of other faiths and sometimes no faith at all: because they want that sort of moral education. That is one of the great values of our faith schools in this country.

This is not about faith schools; it is about academies —we do not have them in Wales, by the way, but we supported them as a Labour Government. We have talked much about Wales. As a former Secretary of State for Wales myself, I am very grateful to the Minister for saying how we lead the way in many respects, but I do not agree on this one, for two reasons.

First, the right reverent Prelate the Bishop of Durham referred to the fact that there is still more work to be done with regard to religious education, so let us await the result of that work. Secondly, I have studied the amendment very carefully, and it is about religious education—or is it? I assume that, in England, it is still a requirement for state schools to teach religious education, so that is what they must teach.

The nature of that teaching has changed dramatically since I was at school. When I was a young Catholic in a state school, I had to file out of assembly because I was not allowed to take part in what was regarded as a Protestant assembly in the school. I was not allowed to go to RE lessons because I was a Catholic and the lessons were Protestant. Happily, and thank the Lord, that has all changed. Under my own Church, after Vatican II, not only did I attend all those things but I read the lesson in the assembly.

The world has changed and there is no question but that, over the past 30, 40 or 50 years, the teaching of other faiths in religious education has increased—and rightly so. If you live in an area of England that is dominated by people of other faiths, of course you teach those faiths—it is about religion. If you have to teach non-religious things, call it something else—it is not religion.

If it comes to a vote, I will not support the amendment, but I understand the ideas behind it. I think the most significant thing is what the right reverend Prelate said: let us wait for the experts who teach RE to tell us what they think is best. But let us not do away with religious education, as we believe it is, at this important point in our history.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I feel obliged to make a few comments on the question of what is and what is not religious education.

On Amendment 30 and the discussion of other religions, is the teaching of Judaism regarded as religious education or civics? I declare an interest as on the register as a trustee of a multi-academy trust. A major piece of work is already under way looking at how contemporary Jewish life could, in a very minimal but important way, be put into the curriculum of every school, and how contemporary anti-Semitism could be more than touched on and built into teaching in a timewise, modest way. That could be defined as a discussion of Judaism and classified as religious education.

From my perspective, in a sense, that does not matter. What matters is that somewhere within all secondary schools in the country, pupils get a glimpse of another community and its life, our history with the Jewish community—which has not been the proudest over the past 1,000 years—and some feeling and understanding of what it is like to be Jewish in this country.

I do not have a specific view on whether the amendment would work or not. The spirit of it is very interesting and useful. There is a challenge there and the more debate and discussion we have on the challenge of how other faiths, communities or both are fed into the school curriculum in this small but important way is vital to faith communities, education and the country.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I ought to declare an interest as a former head teacher of a Church of England school. We live in a multicultural, multifaith community, and we make that successful by respecting each and every one of us. I shall come back to that in a moment.

We on these Benches support Amendment 30. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that you do not have to be a Christian to believe in Christian values, but the values of other faiths are also important. For example, my daughter went to a Jewish school, where she learned many values which were not, initially, her understanding. Because that Jewish school admitted children from different faiths, at 28 she still has lifelong friends from a whole range of different faiths: Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Hindu. She seems to constantly go to Hindu weddings for some reason.

I have a question for the Minister to which she might not know the answer, so perhaps she could respond in writing. I understood that we had SACREs, Standing Advisory Committees on Religious Education; each local authority had to establish a SACRE, which determined the religious syllabus for the schools in its district or city. I do not know how that works now. I was the chair of a SACRE for a couple of years, a long time ago. I do not know how that relates to the previous debate on academies, current religious education in schools or the amendment. If we agree to this amendment, which I hope we do, how does a SACRE get involved? Can it say that it is not in favour of doing this or that? If the Minister does not know or cannot get those in the Box to tell her, perhaps she could write to me. That would be very helpful.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said that RE must be safeguarded in all our schools, and here is the problem. The problem is not religious education; it is the quality of its teaching. I have been in non-faith schools and been appalled at how religious education is taught. Nobody is qualified—it can be the person who is least qualified who does it and, frankly, it would be better not to do it.

I was always a great believer in school assemblies. The law of the land said—I think it was under the Blair Government—that every school had to have a daily act of collective worship. I do not think that happens in most non-aided schools. At one stage, Ofsted used to report if it was not happening. A school assembly can be a wonderful way to celebrate people of faith or no faith—it can bring the school community together. But some schools just go through the motions and try to squeeze 500 pupils into a hall to tick the box that they have had an assembly. Frankly, I would rather that they did not do it than try to fulfil the letter of the law.

I hope the Minister will look kindly on this amendment, because it is very important. On the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, if we agree the amendment, it does not prevent those discussions taking place.