Education Bill

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

That is even more important now than it has ever been, because we have separate faith schools. We are allowing different faiths to have their own schools. At one time, we had just Church of England schools, because they were the first to provide education for poor children. That is an historic and wonderful thing. People do not even know that that is why they came about. Catholic schools came about because so many schools did not accept Catholics. Jewish schools came about because so many schools did not accept Jews. Times have changed. Everyone accepts everybody, and we should be furthering that, not denting it.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

I, too, declare an interest as a bishop of the Church of England. It will not surprise your Lordships to know that I resist the amendments in this group. As a preliminary, I say that we easily encounter in this kind of debate the myth of neutrality, with the idea that the amendments might lead us into a distinction between church schools—or, at least, religious schools—and religiously neutral schools. That is a common myth: that we would have religious schools and non-religious schools. I am not sure that we have a basic philosophical agreement on that point; I do not want to pretend that we do.

It is unnecessary to change the law, which seems to be working well. We have the existing safeguards; we have the possibility of withdrawal. The fact that so few parents use that right of withdrawal suggests to me that most parents think that it is working pretty well. A generous experience of spiritual and religious reflection goes on in assemblies; obviously, I go to a lot of them. In them, I experience not just Christian worship but spiritual reflection. I know that that is one possibility under the amendments, but it is the religious and spiritual element that is really important. If we take religion out, we have lost the key domain.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I had no intention to intervene in this debate, but the right reverend Prelate said that he thought that the current law was working well. I have no doubt that it may be from parents’ perspective, but when Ofsted inspections of schools take place, do they not often find that the daily act of collective worship is not taking place? From the point of view of the practicality of the school, it is not working that well. I am not aware of huge numbers of parents complaining that the daily act of collective worship is not taking place. People like school assemblies, but if, for practical reasons, it is hard for them to come off because there is not a big enough hall, parents are not complaining in large numbers.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

I just point out the statistic that 98 per cent of primary schools have a daily act of worship. The noble Lord is quite right that in secondary schools the figure is not as high as that: it is between two and three acts of collective worship a week; on other occasions, the school is meeting for an assembly purpose. That is what I mean by the generous interpretation of religious and spiritual reflection, which is crucial.

Secondly, the system of opt-in rather than opt-out would drive a wedge into our schools which would be regrettable. We could find social division. As it is, there is a difference between collective worship and corporate worship. Collective worship is a gathering of everyone who is together in a certain place at a certain time, such as a school. Corporate worship is when people opt into the faith and want to go to a church. Therefore, we have a collective gathering which allows youngsters to experience something and not just learn about it. As we are legally charged with promoting the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and society, experience matters, and the candle, the singing, the prayer, the stillness and the silence, which are so often present, are all part of the experience of the spiritual, which is part of what we are required to provide.

Thirdly, there is the problem of a wedge appearing between two different types of school. One of the glories of our system is that it is an integrated church state system or a system of church schools within the state. It works well because it is integrated and, if we drive a wedge by saying that there are church schools over here and non-religious schools over there, we will deny ourselves something rather precious about the British system. There is much more that I could say but I will not go on.

Lastly, let us remember that in 2010 the Office for National Statistics said that 71 per cent of the population of this country still want to identify with—I think that that is the phrase—the Christian religion. If we are swapping statistics, 86 per cent of people in this country go into a church at some point during the year, but if 71 per cent want to identify with the religion, that would seem to indicate that most parents are happy with the way that we go about things at the moment. We have a good British compromise and, if we rock the boat with this, I do not know quite where that will lead. I think that it will probably be to our detriment.

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I support the contributions of my noble friend Lady Massey and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, to this debate. In my view, the law as it stands is a legacy of a society which is unrecognisable compared with the one that we have today, with its wide variety of beliefs and traditions. The Bill provides an ideal opportunity to modernise an outdated and overly prescriptive law, and the amendments give us the opportunity to do precisely that.

Although it is true that parents have the right to withdraw their child from collective worship, for many parents this is very unsatisfactory because it means that the child may feel excluded and separated from their classmates, and this can have a very damaging effect, particularly on very young children. In some respects, I speak from personal experience in that regard. My mother was a Roman Catholic and my father was not, but they insisted that we went to state schools, and my mother filled in the appropriate forms to the effect that I was a Roman Catholic. Therefore, when I went to school, instead of going in with everyone else, I sat outside the door. It was thought right and proper that I should be separated from the rest of the children. I remember being very upset about this, getting home and saying to my mother, “They don’t really like me, you know, because I’m a Roman Catholic”. Perhaps that is one reason why I grew up to be a secularist. That is by the way but the fact remains that it is not a very good solution simply to say that parents can withdraw their children. Much better in my view is the kind of assembly envisaged by my noble friend Lady Massey, which is available for everybody. People can attend irrespective of their religion or no religion.

I turn to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. Amendment 92 would at least ensure that conducting an act of worship was made optional for schools without a religious designation, and Amendment 93 would make attendance at worship optional for all children. However, the less satisfactory amendment from my perspective is Amendment 94, which would lower the age at which pupils may withdraw themselves from collective worship from sixth-form age to a default age of 15.

The three amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, would certainly be an improvement on the present situation, and we now have an opportunity to reform what I think is a very outdated way of looking at collective worship. I therefore hope that the Government will be prepared to respond suitably to these amendments.