Religious Education in Modern Britain

Debate between Carla Lockhart and Nick Gibb

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to debate this important subject under your beady eye, Dame Maria. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) on securing the debate.

Quality religious education is an important part of a knowledge-rich curriculum. It ensures that all pupils understand the value and traditions of Britain and other countries, and helps to foster an understanding among different faiths and cultures in our modern, diverse nation. In his powerful speech, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) rightly said that a proper understanding of politics and culture requires a deep knowledge of the world’s great religions. That point was echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes, who cited common phrases such as “the writing is on the wall”, “the salt of the earth” and—perhaps pertinently to this place—“how the mighty have fallen”, all of which come from the Bible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) demonstrated how important academic knowledge of religion is to an understanding of many of the great events and conflicts around the world. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), citing two teachers from his school days—which were probably a few decades ago—reminded us of the important role that teachers play in our lives. They ensure that we have the knowledge—in his example, of Irish history and of other world religions—that we need to understand the world.

RE is an important part of a modern school curriculum that aims to promote the spiritual, moral and cultural development of children and young people and to help them to prepare for the responsibilities and experiences of adult life. It is important that pupils know about the world’s key religions. We need to develop students’ knowledge and understanding of religious beliefs, of the teachings and sources of those beliefs, and of the key religious texts and scriptures of all the world’s major religions.

Knowledge of world religions is also valuable in supporting Britain’s relationships with other countries. It is clearly important to understand the values and perspectives of those with whom we wish to conduct business or build diplomatic relationships. It is because of the importance of the subject that it remains compulsory that all pupils at maintained state-funded schools in England—including, through their funding agreements, academies—study religious education up to the age of 18.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes will be aware of statistics that indicate that 64% of the UK adult population think that an education in religion and world views is an important part of the school curriculum, and that 71% agree that the subject should reflect the diversity of backgrounds and beliefs in the UK today. We require schools to publish on their websites details of their curricula, including RE. We want parents to have a clear understanding of what their child will be taught and to be able to talk to the school if they have any questions or concerns.

The support for RE shown by Members in this debate is reflected in the continuing popularity of the religious studies GCSE, to which the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), referred. Provisional 2022 figures show that 34.3% of pupils at the end of key stage 4—some 221,000 of them—took the GCSE in religious studies. It has more entries than each of art and design, computing, business studies and PE. In 2010-11, the figure was 195,109, but that was of course for the full-course GCSE. At that time, there was also the short-course GCSE. The 2010-11 figure amounted to 31% of the cohort. In 2016-17, the figure was higher than it is today, with 264,000 pupils—some 45% of the cohort—taking the GCSE.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) raised the issue of the EBacc, as he is wont to do. As he will know, we deliberately kept the EBacc small enough to enable pupils to study other subjects, such as music, art, RE or vocational subjects. Our overriding concern when we introduced the EBacc was that the core academic subjects it represents—English, maths, science, languages, and history or geography—were being denied to too many pupils, especially the more disadvantaged. Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his period in office as Minister for School Standards. I know he is committed to raising academic standards in schools. He did so during his period in office and will continue to do so in the other roles he plays, in which I wish him well.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes referred to a decline in the time spent teaching RE. While figures will vary from school to school, at a national level the proportion of time secondary schools spend teaching RE has remained broadly stable: it made up 3.2% of all teaching hours in 2010 and 3.3% in 2021.

The hon. Member for Strangford raised the issue of the right to withdraw from RE. Although our view is that RE is an important subject, we think it is equally important that parents and older students have a right to withdrawal. We currently have no plans to change the situation.

In respect of a school’s RE curriculum, except for subject content specifications for the religious studies GCSE and A-level, the Government do not prescribe curriculum content, how RE should be delivered or how many hours should be taught.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

In Northern Ireland we recently had an outrageous court judgment that declared that exclusively Christian RE lessons in primary schools are unlawful. In my mind, this ruling reveals the real agenda of so many: the removal of Christianity from school settings. In this broken land and society, we are seeing the breakdown of the family unit and soaring rates of suicide, born out of hopelessness. Surely the teaching of love, hope and charity within Christianity is what society needs more of, not less of?

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Member makes an important point—those are common features of the world’s major religions—but obviously RE and education is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland.

RE is part of each school’s basic or wider curriculum. While academies, free schools and most maintained schools designated as having a religious character may design and follow their own RE curriculum, all other maintained schools must follow their area’s locally agreed syllabus for RE. The locally agreed syllabus specifies details of the RE curriculum that they should deliver and is monitored by the standing advisory council on religious education that is established by each local authority.

I understand the concern raised by several Members that some schools may not be taking their duty to teach RE seriously. I should be clear that all mainstream, state-funded schools are required to teach RE. Schools that are not teaching RE are acting unlawfully or are in breach of their funding agreement. Any concerns that a school may not be complying with the requirement to teach RE should in the first instance be raised via the school’s complaints procedure. If a complaint is not resolved, the issue can be escalated via the Department for Education’s school complaints unit.

Members have cited the figure that one in five schools are not teaching RE—I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) made that point. Actually, the Department does not collect data on schools’ level of compliance with the requirement to teach RE, but it does collect data on the hours of RE teaching by teachers. The data cited by my right hon. Friend is drawn from individual schools’ timetabling systems, so it does not really represent a completely accurate picture. For example, it may not pick up instances when RE is taught as part of another subject or under a different title.