Education Bill

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather]

My Lords, I listened to the Secretary of State at the Cross-Bench meeting last Wednesday and was charmed by him. Perhaps my fellow Peers who were there would agree that he charmed us. He is charismatic, charming and intelligent. However, when you think about the Bill more clearly, you can see very divisive aspects hidden in it which will emerge as time goes on and lead to division rather than cohesion. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, put his finger on some of those factors.

How can you say that autonomy is not good? It is wonderful to run your own institution, appoint your own governors and choose your own teachers. However, if the autonomy has a religious basis, you could discriminate against people who are not of your faith in admissions, employment and the appointment of governors. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, asked the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford whether Church of England schools admitted 25 per cent of pupils from other faiths. The bishop replied that he did not know because it was a decision for the governors or the diocese. Autonomy is wonderful but somebody has to keep an eye on it as it cannot be total. That is what worries me. We are going to have religious-based academies which will have a lot of powers. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, has already mentioned some of the issues, particularly as regards discrimination in employment. I am extremely concerned about that, but I am also concerned about admissions.

If the academies start to make decisions on the basis of faith, where are we going? We are living in the 21st century, yet we are going backwards into an increasingly faith-based society. What do we want this country to be like in 20, 25 or 30 years? Do we want little groups of faith-based communities springing up here, there and everywhere? We already have faith schools, not just Church of England and Catholic schools. As the right reverend Prelate rightly said, the Church of England was the only institution that began to educate the poor. We have to accept that historical fact. Every country has to live with its history, but why all the other schools? They do nothing but segregate children. Do we really want segregation in this country? The more faith schools we have, the more segregation we will have. It stands to reason. If a Muslim school is there, non-Muslims will not attend it. Even if the school said, “We will have 10 per cent or 20 per cent non-Muslims”, who will go there? Would you send your child or grandchild to a Muslim school? I doubt it. This is my worry; we are creating all this superstructure of faith schools. Will we one day have creationist schools? Why not? Creationists say they are a faith. Will we have some other slightly strange religion? It is a worry and we ought to think very carefully about where we want to be.

We already have segregation. The Cantle report on the riots in the Midlands said clearly that they occurred because of segregation. If we keep on segregating our children, at what stage will we have community cohesion? If children are not educated together, they will never know each other. They will never get together. Even if you are grown up and at university, you find that the Muslim girls and boys stick together. They do not mix with the others. When I went to university, there were very few Indians there, but we never even thought about it. We were at university. Everyone was the same. It was the first time in my life that I felt that I was just a person. I was not a woman. I was not Indian. I was not this or that. This is what we need to be feeling—not feeling Indian, Muslim or Hindu. This is what we should be working towards.

I see that my speaking time is coming to an end. You cannot really consider some parts of the Midlands as part of this country any more. They look more like the countries of origin from where the people have come. Nursery schools for two year-olds should really concentrate on the children from such areas, because they do not speak English when they go to school, and that automatically sets them back. They lose two or three years while they are learning English. You might ask why the third or fourth generations still do not know English. It is because they marry in the village and one parent is therefore always without English. All the time it is one step forward and one step back. I cannot understand why Ofsted’s power to look for community cohesion in schools has been taken away. It is the most important aspect of this issue. A school is not just for itself but is also about providing for the whole community, not only for the governors or the pupils. Ofsted’s power to look for community cohesion is fundamental and should never be removed. Amendments to the Bill will come.