Education Bill

Baroness Trumpington Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Avebury in the amendment he has just moved. As he has pointed out, the law as it stands is the legacy of a society unrecognisable from the pluralistic Britain today where citizens hold a wide variety of religious beliefs—including no religious belief. This Bill presents an opportunity to reform an outdated and overly prescriptive law. The amendments, which I think are reasonable and moderate, are intended to offer greater freedom and choice in regard to worship in schools.

While parents have the right to withdraw their child from collective worship, for many parents this is not a satisfactory option as they feel it is unfair to exclude and separate their children from classmates; children often do not realise while they are being excluded, so it is not always a very good solution. Children themselves have a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion under both Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 14.1 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is not for the state to impose worship on children, regardless of whether the school they are attending has a religious ethos or not—particularly if it does not have a religious ethos. The amendments would at least ensure that conducting an act of worship was made optional for schools without a religious designation. Amendment 61B would make the attendance at worship optional for children.

Amendment 61C would lower the age at which pupils may withdraw themselves from collective worship—from the sixth form as it is now to a default age of 15. That would at least bring the law closer to the advice of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Our arguments for older pupils’ self-withdrawal were accepted in principle by the previous Government, but they set the age limit at sixth-form pupils. The amendment uses age 15 as a default age, but does allow this to be overridden in exceptional cases. That seems to me to be a more reasonable age than sticking to the sixth form as provided for in current legislation.

Particularly in multicultural areas, the holding of any kind of religious activity is bound to upset someone. We have been informed of at least one head teacher who resigned because of being unable to reconcile the demands of the parents of many religions on the one hand and the law on the other. The amendments would not impinge on schools of a religious character. We are simply seeking in the amendments of the noble Lord to try to ensure that there is in future a proper and reasonable choice in regard to worship in schools. I commend these amendments to the House.

[Baroness Trumpington]

My Lords, I was married to the headmaster of a Methodist boarding school for many years, including during the 1960s, which was not exactly an easy time for any teacher to be associated with boys—or girls for that matter. There was daily chapel for all the pupils and I remember that, following a governors meeting, to which of course I was not invited, some of the governors came up to me and asked whether I favoured having non-compulsory chapel every day. I replied—and I have not changed my view since—that it did not matter if pupils were bored, did not like going to chapel or were not interested in religious matters at the age of 15, 16 or perhaps even 17. That daily event gave each pupil a background to which they could return in later life. It was very important to have that little base of knowledge of which they could make use when they had really grown up, and I hold that view today.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, for their characteristic clarity in putting their arguments. However, as someone who frequently attends collective worship in both religious foundations and community schools, I have to say that the picture they have presented of our education system today is simply not one that I recognise.

These amendments, were we to pass them, would create a rift between schools with a religious foundation and those which do not have such a foundation, and that is inimical to the whole way in which the maintained education system in this country has been established. Indeed, proposed new subsection (2) in Amendment 61A seems to withdraw the right of parents to remove their children from worship within a school with a religious background, and I would deeply regret the withdrawal of that right. I believe that there should be a right to withdraw pupils from collective worship and, if that right were removed, Church of England schools might be less able to encourage local community integration—something on which I believe they have a very good record.

The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, spoke about how our society has become much more multicultural over the last generation. One way in which that has been encouraged and supported has been through the work of faith schools. Many Church of England schools have significant numbers of Muslim pupils. Indeed, in hundreds of them more than 80 per cent of the pupils are Muslim. Through the constructive and positive use of the law as it stands, they have been able to integrate those pupils with pupils from Christian backgrounds and pupils from families with no faith background. The danger is that, if we split community schools from those with a religious foundation, we shall create a more segregated system within our country. Most Church of England schools are not in any way segregated; they are primary schools which work with their local village. The fact that a very small number of children are withdrawn from worship seems to indicate that parents, including those who do not themselves take part in Christian worship or worship in the tradition of other faiths, are willing for their children to be present at worship. They see it as being important to the life, development and growth of their children.

So far as worship in community schools is concerned, Ofsted reports high levels of compliance with the law and high levels of quality of worship, particularly in the primary sector. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, that is less the case in the secondary sector, and the Church of England stands ready to provide whatever help it can to improve the quality of acts of worship within that sector. There is a good deal of excellent practice that can be pointed to, although it is certainly true that secondary schools find the situation more difficult than do primary schools.

We do not want to marginalise worship or spirituality within the life of our schools. We recognise the need for, and place of, worship within our own proceedings at the beginning of each day here in this House. When the nation faces a time of crisis or indeed of joy and delight, it tends to do so in terms of prayer. Children need to know what prayer is about, and one of the best ways for that to happen is through the worship that takes place in both church schools and community schools.

I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said that Amendment 61C was undesirable. It seems to speak of an extraordinary decision which someone has to take regarding whether a 15 year-old has the maturity to decide whether he or she should attend worship. That seems to be completely unworkable and we should certainly not go in that direction.

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[Baroness Trumpington]

My Lords, may I say—

[Noble Lords]

No.