Caroline Lucas
Main Page: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)Department Debates - View all Caroline Lucas's debates with the Department for Education
(14 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I tabled amendments 42, 43 and 44, which deal with one aspect of admissions to academies of a religious nature. I understand the benefits that can flow from such schools. Indeed, I used to be a governor of a Church of England school in the ward I represented and it was a very interesting experience. However, I am concerned that the Bill may inadvertently lead to an increase in the proportion of religious places. It risks permanently entrenching religious segregation in our education system through irreversible changes that could permit wide discrimination in admissions and employment.
By “freeing” religious academies from the national curriculum without sufficient safeguards, the Bill also risks exposing children to extreme religious views, including creationism. Members will know that I have spent some time arguing for the scientific line on such issues. My concern is widely shared. A new ICM poll commissioned by the British Humanist Association found that 72% of the public are concerned that the Academies Bill could lead to taxpayers’ money being used to promote religion. A third of the public said that they were “very concerned” about that. The poll also found that two thirds of people think that religious academies should be required to teach pupils about other beliefs, including non-religious ones.
I seek assurances from the Minister on these issues and I have tabled three amendments to flush out their thinking in this area. Amendment 42 would prevent any form of religious discrimination in admissions policies. Many state-funded “faith schools” use privileges to have highly selective admissions criteria, giving preference to the children of parents with particular beliefs. The Government have so far made it clear that they intend to allow these schools to retain their admissions policies, and I have great concerns in that area. It can cause segregation along religious and socio-economic lines. Professor Ted Cantle, author of a report into community cohesion in Blackburn, describes religious schools as
“automatically a source of division”
in the town, which is not something we would wish to see. In other areas, faith schools, which are their own admissions authorities—as these academies will be—are 10 times more likely to be highly unrepresentative of their surrounding area than faith schools where the local authority is the admission authority. Separating children by religion, class and ethnicity is totally antithetical to the aims of social cohesion, and amendment 42 would ensure that no academy pupil is discriminated against on religious grounds.
That is an ideal to which I hope we all aspire. However, if amendment 42 cannot be accepted by the Government, I hope that amendment 43 can at least provide greater assurance. It would ensure that, at the very least, existing faith schools cannot discriminate more when they achieve academy status. During discussions in the other place, the Government confirmed that maintained faith schools will be able to discriminate in admissions. I hope they will change their mind on that. They said that a 50% quota would be imposed to ensure that 50% of admissions would not be religiously selective, and that was repeated on Second Reading. However, that provision is not in the Bill, the model funding agreement or any other official guidance or information. We need to know what would happen there. If amendment 42 cannot be accepted, I hope that amendment 43 will be, to ensure that things can get no worse than they currently are.
Finally, I turn to amendment 44, which deals with two issues, one of which I take to be a drafting error on which I seek reassurance, and the other is the desire to provide choice for current religious schools. I shall take the second part of the amendment first. The amendment would ensure symmetry. Currently a state-funded religious school becomes a religious academy, but there is nothing to confirm that a non-faith school becomes a non-faith academy. I therefore seek the guarantee, which I think the Secretary of State intended, that that is what would happen—that their nature simply would not change.
The first part of the amendment deals with schools that are religious schools now. Currently, a state-maintained school with a religious character is forced to become an academy with that religious character, but surely religious schools should at least have the option not to do that if they do not wish to. That would be popular with the local community: a recent poll found that 64% of people agreed that the Government should not be funding faith schools of any kind—but that is a debate for another time. However, some faith schools are only nominally of a religious character—that character being a residue of former connections. When taking on academy status with the possibility of growth, these schools may wish to free themselves of the restrictive status of being of a religious character which has ceased to be relevant to them. The amendment would allow them the choice, rather than compel them.
I hope my amendments will be considered carefully by the Government, and I hope that Ministers will comment on them. I intend them as probing amendments and will not press them to a vote, but I hope that the Government will take them seriously and accept a number of them.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I am the author of four amendments in this group, and their purpose is to try to make it mandatory for the new academies to comply with the schools admission code. Concerns have been expressed in this debate that increasing the number of academies will have major implications for admissions planning, and, as I said, the amendments seek to ensure that there is co-ordination and that it is mandatory for academies to comply with the code.
If the Government are serious that the proposals will not open up the back door to selection, as many of us fear—that promise was made in the other place—why not state very clearly in the Bill that academies should comply with the schools admission code, instead of only stating that academies will have to comply with the codes under their funding arrangements? Although required under those arrangements to meet the code, the levers to ensure that that happens still rest entirely with the Secretary of State. So all concerns about fairness keep being met with the reassurance that it is in the funding agreement, but that is not good enough. Parents must know, through a proper consultation process prior to the setting up of an academy, what the admissions arrangements for the school will be and how their chances of getting into the local schools will be affected. Furthermore, there must be mechanisms to ensure that funding agreements can be changed to ensure that academies follow any changes required in any future code on admissions.
Essentially, voluntary-aided schools, foundation schools, trust schools and academies all operate as admission authorities, able to set their own admission criteria. Research over a number of years has shown that where schools set their own criteria, there is more social segregation. In particular, the fact that grammar schools will be allowed to become academies is a serious concern. Selective academies will be able to expand in a way that grammar schools currently are not allowed to. That expansion will also take place after limited consultation with the local community. I would therefore like the Minister to reassure the Committee that all new academies, including former grammar schools, will be required to participate in local admissions co-ordination schemes.
Under the 2009 code, the schools adjudicators, as the independent enforcers of fair access to schools, also have a wider remit to consider any admissions arrangements that come to their attention, in addition to any complaints received through an objection. Can the Minister tell the Committee whether the schools adjudicators will be reporting annually to the Secretary of State on the admissions of academies as well? We could debate at length the ability of an admission forum to ensure fairness, but will the Minister assure the Committee that academies will be represented on admissions forums? Currently, regulations allow for the administration of all admissions—in other words, dealing with the key administrative decisions on whether an applicant meets the admissions criteria, even if they are set by the school—to be carried out by the local authority. Is the option to allow the local authority to administer admissions still open to all schools, including academies? Finally, will the Government encourage a role for local authorities in administering admissions in that way?
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
I hope that the Committee will excuse me if I intervene briefly in my capacity as Second Church Estates Commissioner to deal with the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). What he was talking about was something of a straw man. There is nothing in the Bill that changes the existing relationship between the state and faith groups, although it is important to remind the Committee of a couple of things.
First, the reason why there are so many faith schools among primary and secondary schools in England and Wales is that, as part of the Education Act 1944, the then Government persuaded the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church to place at the disposal of the state all the Church schools that they had previously run. The then Government simply could not have delivered universal state education through the 1944 Act if the Churches had not brought all their schools into the state system.
Secondly, one fundamental principle of the 1944 Act was that, so far as possible, children should be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. No one is obliged to send their child to a faith school; they do so because they wish to. I suspect that it is the experience of us all in the House that faith schools in our constituencies are consistently and substantially over-subscribed. I have one faith school in my constituency—Blessed George Napier school, a Roman Catholic comprehensive secondary school in the diocese of Birmingham—that is consistently over-subscribed, because parents wish to send their children there.
Caroline Lucas
I want to speak to amendment 5, and to reinforce some of the points that have already been made about the importance of making real consultation mandatory. The Government are selling these proposals on the basis that they are about empowering communities, but they are specifically refusing to allow proper consultation with our communities. This is not about empowerment; it is about centralisation.
The Department for Education website gives four handy steps towards conversion. First, the head teacher decides that he or she wants to opt out. Then the governors meet and pass a resolution. The Secretary of State then approves the proposal and the funding agreement. Finally, the Government order the local authority to cease maintaining the school. Then, as if by magic, the school is suddenly free. I am sure that most parents would find that rather alarming, and that they would want to have a direct say in the removal of their right to democratic influence through the severing of that link to the local authority.
Proper consultation would enable reflection on accountability and governance, and on whether the freedoms that academy status brings would be used without disadvantage to other parts of the community. Despite all the nice rhetoric about the schools being free schools set up by those parents who want them, there is a real risk that they will drain resources away from other schools in the region. We need the kind of consultation that the amendment proposes if we are to ensure that that does not happen.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady agree that this lack of consultation with communities and local authorities runs contrary to what others in the new coalition Government are proposing in their localist agenda? They talk about giving more power to communities and local authorities, but the proposals in the Bill seem entirely inconsistent with that agenda.
Caroline Lucas
I completely agree with the hon. Lady. In spite of all their rhetoric about the big society, when the Government are put to the test and asked to demonstrate their commitment to the idea, they do not seem to trust our communities enough to consult them.
The ramifications of so many schools becoming independent are enormous, and children, parents, teachers, trade unions and members of the wider community are surely entitled to have their voices heard. Under the Government’s proposals, thousands more schools could become their own admissions authorities, and parents will want to know who will ensure that a school’s admissions policy is being observed. They will also want to know that the education of vulnerable children and children with special needs will be fairly managed and properly resourced. Consultation is the key to giving them that kind of guarantee. Surely local authorities are entitled to debate proposals that will result in local authority boundaries ceasing to have meaning in some cases. Surely they also need to have some kind of input into an admissions process that could lead to chaos for the rest of the region.
Consultation should be absolutely central to the Bill, and it is still not clear to me, despite what the Secretary of State has said, why he and other Ministers are in such a rush. Perhaps we must conclude that they are anxious that students, parents or staff might rise up and object to this attempt to take power away from local communities. Perhaps that is why the Secretary of State does not want to consult on these proposals.
Dan Rogerson
I have some issues with the whole concept and experience of free schools, having spoken to colleagues, hon. Members and others who have seen them in operation in other countries. I have always struggled to understand how the concept might be relevant across the United Kingdom. However, recently I have been considering the situation in a rural area such as my own, in which the village schools do not become part of a federation and the local authority or the diocese—if it is involved—decides to close a small village school. In such a situation, I can foresee that a community might come together and want to provide some form of school.
This presents me with another problem: should there be a facility to enable that to happen? What safeguards will be in place to ensure that the facilities are of a required standard? Will all the protections be in place, the suitability of which a local authority would otherwise have input into, to ensure that not just the bare minimum is provided?
As I struggle to reconcile my initial dislike of the concept of free schools with the circumstance in a rural area such as my own that I have outlined, I ask what safeguards will be in place to ensure that, particularly in the early days of such a provision, all the standards that we would expect within the existing sector will be safeguarded, and that there will be equal protection.
Mr Gibb
I do not think that it needs to be set out in the Bill, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: of course staff should be consulted, and they would be. TUPE––the transfer of undertakings (protection of employment) regulations—will govern the contracts of all the employees of the school and the transfer of employment on the same terms. He should feel assured that the necessary statutory consultation, by the employer and with the employee, will take place as part of the process.
Caroline Lucas
Why do we just have to take the hon. Gentleman’s word for it? No disrespect, but if it is so self-evidently clear that the consultation will take place with all the relevant parties, why could that not be set down in the Bill? For a lot of us, that would be a way of putting our minds at rest.
Mr Gibb
Well, no disrespect right back at you. The point is that the TUPE regulations are already in statute and they have to be followed. Whenever there is a transfer of undertakings, those procedures are followed, and there is no need to set that out in the Bill. However, we are simply adopting the same approach that the previous Government took to academies, which is that we regulate through the funding agreement. The hon. Lady can also be assured that the things said in this House are on the record for her to hold us to account against, so the more she can get me to say now, the more reassured she can be.
This Government’s approach is to let the people who have the experience and knowledge in their areas of work make the decisions that will affect them. The promoter of a free school will know who the interested parties are in their local area. Any proposal for a free school must be able to demonstrate genuine, robust demand for places at the proposed school—for example, through a petition or a declaration from interested parties. As I said, clause 9 requires the Secretary of State, when deciding whether to enter into academy arrangements with a free school, to take into account the impact of such a school on existing schools and colleges in the area. That will ensure that when decisions on any free school proposal are made, due consideration will always be given to its wider implications.
I want to run through some of the other points that the hon. Member for Hartlepool made. I made the point about consultation, but he also talked about academies being disconnected from their surrounding areas. However, the model funding agreement for academies, which hon. Members will have seen, explicitly says that
“the school will be at the heart of its community, sharing facilities with other schools and the wider community”.
That is a key provision of the model funding agreement.
The hon. Gentleman also talked about TUPE. Consultation can take place after the academy order has been made. The key issue for staff transferring—he also mentioned the discussions taking place in August—is the signing of the funding agreement. These consultations can take place well into September and October before the funding agreement is signed.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the disapplication of sections 15 and 17 of the Education Inspections Act 2006 for schools converting under clause 4. This is relevant because under those arrangements the school is not closing, but converting, so there is no need for provisions to govern all the steps that have to be gone through when a school is closed. Consultations are provided for, as I said, under clause 5. He also asked about the impact on the further education sector. Clause 9(2) requires the Secretary of State to take into account the impact on colleges as well as on other schools.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) asked about the facilities at free schools. Health and safety law will, of course, apply. Ofsted will continue to inspect, and there are detailed provisions about fire, safety, security and structure, food hygiene and so forth in the Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2003, which will now apply to academies. Those regulations are very detailed; if they were not detailed, many independent schools around the country would have the same worries as my hon. Friend.
With those few remarks, I hope that I have assured hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, and I urge them not to press their amendments.
Caroline Lucas
I beg to move amendment 1, page 2, line 1, leave out paragraph (a) and insert—
(a) the school follows the National Curriculum;’.
The Temporary Chair (Martin Caton)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 25, page 2, line 2, at end insert
‘and follows the National Curriculum in science, mathematics, information technology and English;’.
Amendment 30, page 2, line 2, at end insert
‘and where appropriate section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006’.
Amendment 26, page 2, line 2, at end insert—
‘(0) the school has a curriculum which includes personal, social and health education as a statutory entitlement for all pupils;’.
Caroline Lucas
As Members will know, the amendment proposes that academies should follow the national curriculum. Under the Government’s proposals, once a state-maintained school becomes an academy, it is no longer required to follow the national curriculum. [Interruption.]
The Temporary Chair
Order. There is an awful lot of background noise in the Chamber at present. I cannot hear the speaker, and I am sure many others cannot either.
Caroline Lucas
As I was saying, under the Government’s proposals once a state-maintained school becomes an academy, it is no longer required to follow the national curriculum and that is of particular concern in respect of state-maintained faith schools that convert to become faith academies. Interestingly, a recent poll found that 75% of people agree or strongly agree that all state-funded schools should teach an objective and balanced syllabus for education about a wide range of religious and non-religious beliefs.
The Government appear to be unconcerned about the public’s view on that as they allow a significant risk that some religious authorities will use this new freedom under the Bill to pursue restrictive teaching in line with their religion. There are no specific protections in the Bill to ensure that the duty to offer this so-called balanced and broadly based curriculum cannot be neglected or evaded. That is a cause for great concern.
The previous Government introduced a change so that academies had to follow the national curriculum in English, maths and science, and the teaching of evolution was, of course, covered in that. I have tabled my amendment because the coalition Government propose that academies should be entirely free from the national curriculum. If the Bill is not amended, there will be no requirement on academies to teach evolution, and the Government do not even appear to have plans to prevent the teaching of creationism in academies.
We know that some academy sponsors want creationism to be taught. Emmanuel college in Gateshead, backed by the philanthropist Sir Peter Vardy, attracted controversy by teaching pupils about creationism, and pupils at the school reported that creationism was taught alongside evolutionary theory as being an equally valid belief. How will Ministers ensure that pupils at religious academies receive objective and evidence-based teaching and that creationism is not taught in science lessons or as fact?
Stephen Pound
I share the hon. Lady’s concerns and I raised this very point with the Secretary of State when he was on the Front Bench earlier this week. He replied that at Emmanuel college there was no teaching of creationism. I am a reasonable human being and I am inclined to believe the Secretary of State. However, does the hon. Lady have any evidence that this teaching is continuing, because if that is the case, the whole House will be very worried?
Caroline Lucas
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. My notes tell me that this information came from a National Union of Teachers briefing. I imagine that the NUT is up to date with what is being taught in schools, but I am happy to check that and come back. This teaching has been going on, as it does in other countries where academies are fully fledged, such as the United States. So it certainly is not outside the realms of possibility that not only is it continuing in that particular academy, but that it is happening in a widespread fashion in a number of academies. The point is that there is nothing in the Bill to stop this happening. Even if it has stopped over the past few weeks or months at one particular academy, there is nothing to prevent it from happening again. That is the real concern.
It beggars belief that the Minister in the other place said that although he shared the concerns raised about creationism,
“one of the core aims of the policy is precisely that the Secretary of State should not dictate to academies what they should teach…I fully accept that if you trust people things do go wrong, but that is the direction that we want to try to go in.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 July 2007; Vol. 720, c. 299.]
I commend him on his honesty at least, but the substance of what he said is very worrying.
Although, at the moment, the national curriculum does not include statutory sex and relationships education, it does ensure that maintained faith schools teach sexual reproduction as part of the science syllabus. Nothing in the new, deregulated system proposed by this Bill would oblige religious academies to do the same. Personal, social and health education—PSHE—was debated at length in the other place, yet we see no Government move on it as yet. Instead, the Government argued that making PSHE a curriculum requirement under the Bill was not the right way to go, as the best place to consider this was in the forthcoming national curriculum review. Yet, of course, the Government want academies to be free of the national curriculum.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
A recent television report said that there are six times as many teenage pregnancies in Britain than in Holland, yet Holland’s schools have much more rigorous education on sexual and reproduction matters. Is that not of fundamental importance?
Caroline Lucas
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, because it absolutely proves the case that education is a key way of ensuring that we do not have a huge number of unwanted teenage pregnancies. Education does not lead young people suddenly to think of doing things that they might not have thought of doing were they not to have had that education. On the contrary, education is one of the best forms of contraception.
The British Humanist Association has asked, legitimately, whether a new, state-funded, Catholic academy would be allowed not to teach sexual reproduction in biology lessons, let alone wider and more objective sex and relationships education. Again, as far as we can see, nothing in the new, deregulated system proposed by the Bill would seem to prohibit that from happening.
These are not the only concerns, because despite this being paid for by the taxpayer, sponsors of academies have enormous powers to dictate how and what pupils learn more generally. I read today with horror that one academy is apparently installing a “call centre” so that pupils’ “aspirations” can be raised by training for this type of work. In Manchester and Birmingham, for example, a range of academies are being planned, each specialising in preparing pupils for employment in specific industries or commercial activities. I read that Manchester airport, which is one such prospective sponsor, has overtly stated that the principal purpose of its academy will be to provide employees for the airport. That is a pretty reductionist interpretation of the purpose of education. That is why we must ensure that academies do follow the national curriculum, which is what my amendment seeks to do.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
As the hon. Lady mentions the subject, may I say that that does seem an absurdly reductionist approach to academies? Could she explain what she believes the purpose of education is?
Caroline Lucas
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to expand more widely on this point. I believe that the purpose of education is to enable the potential of every human being to be properly fulfilled, whatever that might be in—it might be in a very academic, artistic or practical way. What education is not about is giving very narrow training for a specific job that has somehow been set up already by the time a child goes into an academy at a young age. We risk dumbing down in a worrying way for the pupils who come through our schools if that is what we think education is about. Education should be for life. It is about fulfilling people’s potential and is not about becoming a narrow cog in a wheel.
Dan Rogerson
The hon. Lady is speaking in very inspirational terms about education and I happen to agree with her on this point. However, I do not recognise in the national curriculum, in all its glory, that has been forced on teachers in all schools, the freedom to teach in that inspirational way. I recognise her concerns about the possible dangers and I hope that the Minister will reply to them, but, by tying schools to the national curriculum, the hon. Lady’s amendment would do a disservice to young people, who might want the sort of education that she is describing.
Caroline Lucas
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I do not think that the national curriculum is the best possible curriculum we could have but it is a bulwark and a protection against the kind of laissez-faire approach that will be unleashed by the Bill if we do not have some protections. I assure the hon. Gentleman that if we had more time and if I had more of my colleagues on these Benches, I would love to put forward a Green party policy on the kind of inspirational education that I would love to see. That is in our manifesto. Right now, though, we are looking at damage limitation and that is what my amendment is about. I want to make sure that we do not have sponsors imposing on wide numbers of pupils their personal views about what education should be about. That is why my amendment is important.
Chris Skidmore
Does the hon. Lady agree that having freedom from national curriculum restrictions was extremely valuable for the academies that the previous Government set up in deprived communities? Those academies were able to filter down subjects and to teach maths and English in ways that the national curriculum would have prevented. I know that she is talking off her brief and I have enjoyed listening to the National Union of Teachers’ briefing that she has produced today, but she might like to know, given her praise of the Netherlands’ system, that the Netherlands does not have a national curriculum.
Caroline Lucas
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the only part of my notes that is from the briefing from the NUT, much as I respect it, is the reference to the particular school I mentioned. I have made it very clear that even if that practice is not carrying on at that school, the wider point remains that it could carry on in any academy at any time because there is absolutely no protection in the Bill to prevent sponsors from imposing on schools any particular educational direction that they choose. That is deeply worrying and that is why there is, for the moment, a need for the national curriculum as a protection against that kind of utter and complete deregulation.
In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question about whether the freeing of academies from the national curriculum has been a positive thing, there is no overall evidence that academies perform better than other schools. Where academies have done better, it is often because they have managed to exclude more children and to use a different kind of curriculum by choosing from within the curriculum the subjects to pursue—possibly less rigorous ones academically. There is no educational argument in favour of academies—even those under the previous Government’s proposals. The Green party and I were not in favour of academies under the previous Government and we are even less in favour of them under this Government, because it is quite clear that they are going in the wrong direction.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I am sorry that I missed part of the hon. Lady’s speech. Will she confirm that removing academies from the ambit of the national curriculum, as the Bill suggests, will restrict the career and life choices of those students who might leave those schools under-educated and not having been exposed at all to certain subjects?
Caroline Lucas
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his wise observation. He is exactly right. If children are put into particular training perspectives very early on, the wider set of possibilities and potential that could have been available to them will no longer exist if they have only the particularly narrow kind of education that the sponsors of academies often seem to pursue. I thank all hon. Members who have intervened and I stand by my amendment.
Diana R. Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I wish to speak to amendments 25, 30 and 26 in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends, but first I turn to amendment 1, the lead amendment, in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who has just passionately explained why she put it forward.
The Opposition do not support amendment 1, which is designed to make academies adopt the whole national curriculum. The previous Labour Government’s view was clear on the curriculum that an academy should follow. We said that the core national curriculum subjects of science, mathematics, information technology and English should be taught in academies, but that left room for flexibility so that academies could design their own, local curriculum to meet the needs of their local population.
The Opposition still take the view that that is the most appropriate approach to the curriculum in academies, in marked contrast to clause 1(6)(a), which refers only to the requirement for a broad and balanced curriculum. Amendment 25, which sets out the core subjects that all pupils should be required to study, would provide the best approach to ensuring that those important subjects were taught in academy schools, while retaining some flexibility for academies. I hope that the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), who spoke from the Liberal Democrat Benches, feels able to support that approach.
Amendment 30 sets out the Opposition’s view that section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006 should apply to academies.
Caroline Lucas
I thank the Minister for his reply, but he will not be surprised to hear me say that I do not think that he goes far enough. Nothing in what he said reassures me that academies will teach a genuinely objective and balanced curriculum. Perhaps part of the problem is in the language, because what might feel objective and balanced to one person is patently not to another. There are not sufficient safeguards in the Bill to prevent the real risks that other hon. Members and I discussed; they are just not there. However, reluctantly, I have decided not to push the amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment, but I hope very much that this debate means that the Government will give more thought to those particular concerns.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 26, in clause 1, page 2, line 2, at end insert—
( ) the school has a curriculum which includes personal, social and health education as a statutory entitlement for all pupils;’.—(Diana R. Johnson.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.