Religious Education

Anne Main Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing the debate. I am mindful that many Members wish to speak. I would like to say that, although many of us have a religious persuasion, the issue is not about “God squad” people wishing to keep God in schools. I had a very interesting discussion with Juliette Lyle, deputy director of the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education. She came to speak to me, as a teacher in St Albans schools. We agreed that this taxing and pressing subject ought to be considered by people of faith and no faith.

“Religious education” is a misnomer, and that worries me. It is like calling maths, “sums”; it diminishes the subject. Some of the great studies throughout recorded history have been theological. Some of our greatest and most beautiful pieces of writing have come through the theological route. To diminish it by calling it “RE, and everybody does it” takes away the rigour of its study.

People have also queried its use and the good of studying it. As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, it could be vocational. I could also question the good of some complex mathematical theorems that one might have studied at 14 or 15. I used to be a teacher and, as a Member of Parliament, I have found my religious education O-level to be of far more use than the maths that I was pretty rubbish at. If nothing else, it has helped me to understand some of the faiths and backgrounds of people I serve in my community. My constituency is a proud cathedral city, but also has a 10% ethnic minority community, the largest of which is Bangladeshi. For all of us, even if we take it no further as a rigorous study, RE helps us in our lives to understand other people. That point has been well made today.

I hotly disagree with the opinion that the subject is wishy-washy. If it is wishy-washy in some schools, some rigour ought to be put back into it. By leaving it out of the baccalaureate as an option, we are continuing to give it a “sums” title of study. We should be saying that the subject is one of the pinnacles of university study, but it is increasingly not a university course of choice. With that comes the shuttered approach that we get in many of our town centres. Once a town centre is diminished, once there are no longer shops that people go to, people stop going there. If we do not give the subject the place that it truly deserves within the curriculum, as a rigorous option among the humanities courses, people will stop choosing it. Young people will stop seeing it as something worth doing, parents will not encourage them to do it and it will die a slow death.

Mindful that many others are speaking today, I would like to say that I supported the early-day motion and I also wrote to the Minister. I urge the Minister to listen to our voices. It is not just because people want to see us doing religion in schools. Religion, as many have said, is something that one catches or may never catch, and having it is not easy. This is about a rigorous approach, about testing values. Should we bar people from wearing religious symbols? Should we legislate for that as they do in France? Do we condemn the sectarian attacks on goalkeepers because some teams are seen as having a particular religious persuasion? Do we look at some great pieces of literature and say that the roots are echoed in modern literature? As other hon. Members have said, people might not even understand the literature without understanding the references. There are many aspects of the subject that could be studied intensely, which would contribute enormously to a young person’s education and life skills.

The claim that there is a logistical problem should not prevent RE from being an option in the baccalaureate. I urge the Minister to consider a way round that, so that schools that wish to approach the subject in the rigorous way that I would like have the option of doing so. To say that the subject is done all through the school year diminishes it and is used as a reason not to include it. I would rather it were not made a legal requirement in schools, if that means it is then excluded. Most schools, particularly faith schools, would teach it anyway.

If one can opt out of religious studies, we have more of an argument for removing that legal protection, rather than using it as an excuse to exclude it from the baccalaureate. There is strong support in the country to see this subject as an option. I urge the Minister to listen to that support.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this debate and on her opening speech, which set out the argument extremely well. This issue has engendered a large volume of correspondence from hon. Members and the Churches. We believe that religious education is an important subject. In fact, it is the only subject that has been a compulsory part of the school curriculum since 1944. The Education Reform Act 1988 made religious education a fundamental part of the basic curriculum, as opposed to the national curriculum, in all maintained schools. Its unique status signifies the special position that religious education holds in reflecting the traditions and beliefs that underpin contemporary society.

RE is central to the aim of the school curriculum, which is to promote the spiritual, moral and cultural development of children and young people and to help prepare them for the responsibilities and experiences of adult life.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh) appeared to be proposing the ending of compulsory RE in the curriculum, which is an argument that we will resist. As a Government, we are committed to retaining RE as a compulsory subject to the age of 16, notwithstanding the increasing volume of the secular lobby. Unlike the previous Government, this Administration are committed to faith schools. We value the enormous contribution that they make to our education system, which my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) has acknowledged.

I agree with the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who said that RE helps to promote community cohesion. RE, as part of a broad and balanced curriculum, should be relevant to all pupils’ background and beliefs. Crucially, the content of the RE syllabus is determined by the locally agreed syllabus conferences, which are appointed by the local standing advisory councils for religious education. Those councils know their communities and understand their needs. It is important that they have the freedom to design an RE curriculum that is relevant and valued by their community.

Less prescription in the curriculum will achieve better teaching. It will enable teachers to do what only they can, which is to engage and inspire their pupils. The national curriculum review aims to prescribe only the essential knowledge and concepts that children should know and be taught, and to leave the professionals to determine how to teach them. We must get away from the mentality that says that, just because a topic or subject is important, it has to be specified in the national curriculum. Moreover, just because something is not in the national curriculum does not mean that it is not important. That same principle applies to what is or is not incorporated into the English baccalaureate.

RE has a locally developed syllabus, which is based on the minimum prescription established in law, and we do not intend to change that. We want schools to have greater freedom because central prescription and the uniformity that it implies do not necessarily produce the best outcomes.

I can assure my hon. Friends the Members for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) that academies and free schools are required to teach RE as a condition of their funding agreement, which reflects the importance that the Government attach to the subject.

[Mrs Main]

How would it be read if the humanities and geography were dropped out of the baccalaureate? I am sure that people would think that they were being devalued or downgraded.