Catholic Schools (Admissions)

John Pugh Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for introducing this significant and important debate. The backdrop to debates on education is often the London scenario. Frankly, I fail to recognise the landscape spoken about in such debates: the fierce competition for places; sharp elbows; tiger mums; socially-segregated intakes; and back-door selection via baptism and church attendance. I come from an area where half the schools are denominational, with the bulk of them being Roman Catholic. Unlike the Minister, I did not go to a Roman Catholic school, but in the ’70s and early ’80s I taught at a Catholic comprehensive in Bootle, where the situation was very different from London: St Kevin’s in Kirkby was not the Oratory.

My school was run by the Salesians, a religious order that originally set out to look after the poor of Milan. When I taught there, that spirit prevailed, although over time as an order they had migrated into selective and boarding schools, as is often the way. However, some of the original fervour was certainly there: the headmaster taught remedial maths and, even after he resigned as headmaster, continued to do so.

When I joined, the school had just amalgamated with another Catholic denominational school, St Joan of Arc, which was again far from being like the Oratory. That was a school that, throughout its history, had had a proud reputation of never having entered a pupil for a public exam. It was a dockland school and the only qualification that pupils left with was the—slightly discounted now—Bootle school leaving certificate. In fact, to get a job in that area, one needed only to befriend the local shop steward to be assured a job; one did not need to be particularly good at maths or anything like that. The comedian, Tom O’Connor, honed his act in such a school.

I was latterly a governor and a parent. My children went to Christ the King school in Southport, which was a community school with a tradition of caring for pupils; it did not expel them even when they had appreciable problems. When I reflect on that, I must say that the system that we have got is not a planned system, but one that has evolved. The state took responsibility for education only after the churches had spent many decades doing so in the 19th century. It funded what was there, but, at that time, there was political sensitivity that we might now find difficult to understand about Rome on the rates, or, in fact, any church on the rates, particularly in my party. The solution was the funding of religious autonomy but only in return for a capital contribution: the Butler settlement. Congregations did indeed partly fund the schools and, as a result, got certain privileges.

That deal has now been superseded by the Blair Government and the coalition Government with a new deal that I do not claim to understand perfectly: it does not have the same funding snags, but there certainly is a protracted debate about admissions and admission policy. That policy has been developed by the coalition, but I do not claim to understand the rationale perfectly. Perhaps the Minister can help me with that.

However, insofar as the Government make the offer to religious bodies to promote schools, it is almost certainly not because they want to promote a religious ethos or because they believe that, because those schools have a religious ethos, they are good per se. The promoters certainly believe that, but secular Governments in a secular, pluralistic society cannot usually claim that. The argument appears to be that there is a demand and will to provide these schools in many parts of the country, that educational standards are good—I think that that is recognised widely—and that no social objectives are being significantly impaired.

That is a point on which most Members party to this debate are probably on a different side from, say, the British Humanist Association, which regards serious social objectives as being compromised by the sheer existence of faith schools: it talks about the promotion of sectarianism and the like. That claim is contentious, but that is not the issue of this debate. The issue today is whether schools set up for an avowedly religious purpose function in a way that separates pupils by class or ability, because that, surely, is what the Government are against and the real question is whether there is a case for saying that.

There seem to be three bits of evidence to look at. One is the disparity that occasionally exists between a school’s social mix and the neighbourhood. It must be acknowledged that that exists. Secondly, frequently cited is parents affecting religious affiliation or enthusiasm to get their children into faith schools and that schools overtly collude in that. Thirdly, which I think is the point made by the former Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), there is some evidence that, in faith schools, there are relatively lower numbers of pupils on free school meals compared with other schools.

None of that strikes me as conclusive. As the hon. Member for East Hampshire pointed out, a disparity between neighbourhood and social mix should sometimes be expected. In an area where Catholics are very much a minority population, such as Salisbury, where there is only the one Catholic church, there will be a difference between the families immediately adjacent to the Catholic school and those who send their children to that school, but that would equally apply to other faith schools. A good example is in Liverpool, where one of the most popular and successful schools is King David high school, which is a Jewish school that does not necessarily reflect the wider social area in which it sits. I do not think, therefore, that that argument is conclusive.

Equally, I do not think that it is conclusive to point out what we probably all know: sometimes, parents affect a degree of religiosity to get their children into a school that they might not otherwise succeed in doing. That argument is hard to address, because it is not possible for schools—or churches, for that matter—to have proper insight into the fervour or motives of the people who turn up en masse on a Sunday. We surely cannot ask the Government to do that either.

Therefore, we come to the crucial point, which is the most difficult point for faith schools to address: a lower proportion of children receive free school meals in faith schools than in state schools in comparable areas. It cannot be supposed that Catholics, or those of any other faith, are innately prosperous and unlikely to be on benefits. That is a dilemma for Catholic schools, but also for the Government. If there is a remedy to that, that would be for the faith schools to be more rigorous in applying the faith criterion rather than any of their others, and I am not sure that the Government could advocate that.

None of the solutions would satisfy the critics of faith schools. I regard the Government’s policy as a muddle to some extent, though not a pernicious or problematic muddle. I do not see how what we have in the way of faith schools at the moment can concern a Government who are seeking to address the joint objectives of promoting educational achievement and ensuring that all pupils have fair access to it.

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[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Dobbin, to participate in this debate under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on his charity in taking on this debate when the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) was unable to. As ever, he led the debate ably and elucidated the issues very well.

The hon. Member for East Hampshire mentioned that free schools—this may come up in the Minister’s response—are given priority over the setting-up of a new voluntary-aided school. If a new Catholic school is needed because there is demand from a sufficient number of Catholics in an area, why should free schools or any other schools be given priority over voluntary-aided schools? The Minister could solve the problem here and now, and perhaps he will pick that up in his response. I do not see why that should not be possible.

The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) told us that he taught at St Kevin’s school in Kirkby.

[John Pugh]

To put the record straight, I should say that I used St Kevin’s in Kirkby as an example; I believe it does not exist any more. I taught at Salesian high school.

[Kevin Brennan]

I apologise, Mr Dobbin. I obviously did not listen carefully enough to the hon. Gentleman’s philosophical—as always—contribution. In view of his usual intellectual contributions, perhaps he should have taught at St Thomas Aquinas high school.

[John Pugh]

There was indeed a St Thomas Aquinas high school down the road from Salesian high. It was known locally as “Tommy Ackers”.

[Kevin Brennan]

I understand that school could squeeze the pupils into very small spaces.

We also had contributions from the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), who referred to free schools, and the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who thought that some critics of Catholic admissions and education were sneering. I congratulate all hon. Members on their contributions and interventions.

Like other hon. Members here, I attended a Catholic school and I am a Roman Catholic. I attended St David’s Roman Catholic school in Cwmbran and St Alban’s Roman Catholic comprehensive school in Pontypool, which, as was said earlier, drew from a wide catchment area in that part of what was first Monmouthshire and then Gwent. It included my home town, Cwmbran, and Pontypool, Blaenavon, Abertillery, Ebbw Vale and other areas of the Gwent valleys.

Given my name, which is Irish, hon. Members may not be surprised that I had a Catholic education, and the names on the school register were diverse. I shared classes with people such as Michael Sczymanski, Endonio Cordero, Maria Bracchi and the usual mixture of people with names such as Mario Evans and so on. There were many Italians, Irish and Poles mingling with the Welsh, and they were a diverse and interesting group of colleagues.

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[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin. I join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) on securing the debate and my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on taking on the mantle so well and setting out his concerns so clearly. I also join him in the comments that he made at the beginning of his speech about the tragedy that has occurred in Leeds. It is on the minds of all hon. Members. Our condolences are very much with the relatives of the teacher who died, and our thoughts are with the governors, teachers and pupils at that school.

We have had an extensive debate, with good participation from a number of hon. Members. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh) and the hon. Members for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), for Fareham (Mr Hoban), for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) and for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for their contributions. We have had good representation from those of the Catholic faith here today. They even seem to have got through to the Front Benches, because I also have to declare an interest, having been educated only at Catholic schools—at a Catholic state primary school and an independent Catholic secondary school. I think that I can therefore speak with a bit of knowledge and some sympathy for the points made by hon. Members.

I want to place on record the fact that the Government recognise the important contribution that the Churches and faith schools—schools of all faiths—make to our education system. About one third of the schools in England are Church or faith schools and, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said, about 10% of all schools are Roman Catholic. These schools are usually popular with parents and include some of the highest-performing schools in the country. Catholic schools in particular generally outperform other types of state school. Last year, at primary level, 81% of pupils in Catholic schools achieved level 4 and above in reading, writing and maths at key stage 2, compared with 75% of pupils at all state schools. At secondary level, 67% of students secured five good GCSEs, including English and maths, in contrast to 61% of students at all state schools in 2013.

A number of hon. Members have commented on the composition by deprivation of pupils in Catholic schools compared with other schools. Obviously, that is a complicated issue, because the fact that there are differences between schools in their disadvantaged cohorts does not necessarily prove that there has been an attempt by schools to skew their intake in one way or the other. The underlying demographics of the area and the people who want to access the faith schools may mean that they are represented in different ways from the national average in terms of their deprivation characteristics. It is worth noting that the proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals in Roman Catholic schools are not notably different from the percentages of all pupils who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[John Pugh]

The Minister has just profiled the difference between Catholic schools and other kinds of school in terms of educational achievement, but to the credit of a lot of Catholic schools, they also have very good pastoral arrangements. Has the Department any data showing, for example, the number of exclusions from Catholic schools as opposed to other sorts of school? My instinct is that they are rather better at catering for pupils who have problematic histories than normal state schools.