Education: Citizenship

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for calling this debate. Citizenship education is an important subject and I will speak mainly about it as it is lived in, through and around what happens in schools rather than necessarily what happens after those school years; although what the noble Lord spoke about is important.

Citizenship education prepares young people for life in a complex, modern society where we all need to take our political, legal and economic responsibilities seriously, within the context of a sustaining moral framework. I want just to draw attention to a particular partnership which should exist in this whole field of citizenship education, which is the one with religious education. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Education held a meeting last week where a whole number of young people, from different schools, spoke movingly about how important RE has been to them as the only opportunity they have at the moment to examine how they can live respectfully with difference, how they can understand people who have a very different world view and how they can live together in a harmonious community when they are encouraged to be in an adversarial relationship.

It is undoubtedly the case that you cannot understand the modern world without understanding religion, which has become more, not less, important in the past 20 years. Some of that religion of course, as we know, has been unhealthy; but most of it is of huge value, especially when it is realised that religious faith is the driving force behind the lives of over 70% of the world’s population.

Good RE encourages respect, tolerance, participation, community building, charitable activity, social engagement—all the things that we believe are part of citizenship education as well. Good RE creates active, informed and responsible citizens. The trouble is that RE is under severe strain at present, not through the intentional actions of the DfE, but through the unintended consequences of several key decisions. The English baccalaureate excludes RE; the reform of the so-called national curriculum excludes RE; RE is way down the list for GCSE reform; RE teacher training places have been halved in the last three years; bursaries for teacher training in RE have been removed; and so on. This has resulted in a reduction in staff, in classroom time, in resources and in exam entries and a deep fall in teacher morale. The British Humanist Association is as concerned about this as the RE council of which it is a part.

I mention this because RE is a natural handmaid for citizenship education and this malaise in RE is deeply damaging to the long-term health of society. WB Yeats said that the purpose of education is not to fill a bucket but to light a fire. The fire here is that of young people believing in a healthy, participative, respectful, values-based democracy. Citizenship education and RE are the best tools we have to shape such a society and to rescue it from utilitarian ideology. The noble Lord’s Question concerning citizenship education is therefore deeply important and I am very pleased to take part in this discussion.