Kevin Brennan
Main Page: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)Department Debates - View all Kevin Brennan's debates with the Department for Education
(13 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Order. May I gently appeal to the Minister of State to face the House when giving his replies so that we can all hear them?
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I am sure the Minister has read the bishops’ e-alert which arrived from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales at 2.18 pm this afternoon, in which the bishops say that they
“have serious reservations over the omission of Religious Education from the English Baccalaureate”
and
“urge the government to reconsider its decision”.
Given the state of rebellion on the Government Benches about this and the uncertainty across the country, will the Minister take this opportunity to confirm that he is not planning another U-turn, this time about RE and the E-bac?
Mr Gibb
Unlike the Pope, the bishops are not infallible. We believe that there is plenty of room in the English baccalaureate curriculum to continue to study subjects such as RE, economics, music, art and vocational subjects, and we have deliberately kept the English baccalaureate small to enable that to happen. In addition, RE is a compulsory subject, and we have seen a very large rise in the proportion of the cohort taking religious studies to GCSE, whereas we have seen a fall in the numbers and the proportion taking geography and history to GCSE.