Education Bill

Lord McAvoy Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

It was not as good as mine. I remember a story told by a very humorous Roman Catholic nun. She was on a health education course with me some years ago. She said that she had been told to say that a girl should, when she danced with a boy, have the width of a telephone directory between them and that, if she got into difficulty, she should yell, “Stop it! I am a young Ursuline”. Incidentally, some excellent PSHE education takes place in Catholic schools, to which I shall come in a minute.

So I say yes to the amendments, but I want some modification. The notion of what I call the spiral curriculum gets lost in the amendments. By spiral curriculum, I mean teaching an issue very simply when a child is young and going into more detail as the child matures. Young children are able to grasp what foods are good for them and which are not without going into detail of nutritional bases and chemical formulae. Young children can explore the notion of friendships and good, respectful relationships without details of sex—they would not grasp them anyway, and that would be inappropriate teaching.

I remember the story of a little boy asking his mother where he came from. She thought, “Right, this is the teaching moment”, and went into stories about daddy's seeds and mummy’s seeds meeting. After a while, the little boy said, “Yes, but did I come from Birmingham or Luton?”. When I was teaching my two year-old grandson to play cricket, I did not toss a Michael Holding fast ball at him first thing: they were gentle lobs. Then they got faster. My point is that I would not exclude any stage of education from certain teaching; I would make the teaching suitable to the child and then build on what had been learnt. That is why a curriculum of PSHE is necessary—just like in maths or English—which builds on knowledge and skills that children learn gradually.

The other area where I have some difficulty with the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is in paragraphs (7) to (11) concerning faith schools and SRE. Although faith schools will still be required to teach SRE, they are exempted from teaching it in a balanced way which promotes equity and diversity. The amendment would give faith schools the right to allow the tenets of religion to override the principles that must guide the teaching of SRE in other maintained schools. That could lead to narrower teaching. The amendment tabled by me and my noble friends Lord Knight and Lady Gould would not prevent faith schools teaching SRE in ways that reflect their religious character, but it would guarantee pupils a right to teaching about all aspects of PSHE.

To return to Roman Catholic nuns, I have talked to many of them on courses. They say, “We can be very clear about our boundaries in what we teach in personal, social and health education. It does not mean that we cannot talk about contraception, abortion, homosexuality and what they mean. It means that we must give the perspective of our faith on those issues”. How sensible. That is all I am looking for.

We all have a particular perspective on all sorts of issues. We can make that perspective clear to young people. However, they should be given full and comprehensive education. I am a humanist, but I believe that young people should be taught about different faiths and cultures. Otherwise, we are in the dangerous territory of indoctrination—a word disliked by my noble friend Lord McAvoy. Indoctrination is not education. Education seeks to bring out the best in young people.

I say to the Minister: please say yes to the principle of having PSHE as a statutory right for all pupils of whatever age or faith. Let us get the appropriate curriculum and teaching sorted out.

[Lord McAvoy]

Can my noble friend give us a definition of what she considers to be education and what she considers to be indoctrination?

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I certainly can. If the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, were here, she would give the example of a particular school where they learned the Koran for about 80 per cent of the curriculum, and very little else. I think that is indoctrination. Education should consider all aspects of a particular faith, of other faiths, of personal, social and health education, without restriction. Trying to persuade young people to adhere to a particular thing, which they may not be ready to adhere to anyway, may influence them in unfortunate ways.

[Lord McAvoy]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that clarification. I am sure she is fed up with me, but perhaps I could test her patience further. She considers indoctrination to be a set percentage of the curriculum by a Catholic school, for instance. Does she not accept that parents choose to send their children to Catholic schools or a particular faith school? I cannot grasp why people making legislation should restrict people’s choices. People are not dragged into these faith schools. People choose to send their children to these faith schools.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, with all due respect, I think my noble friend is misunderstanding me. I am not saying that parents should not send their children to the school of their choice. All I am saying is that, as a parent, I would not wish my child to have his or her education limited to a particular doctrine or creed or particular way of teaching or particular aspects of teaching. I would want my child to have a very broad education. Earlier I gave the example of a Roman Catholic school where the nuns say they will teach in a broad sense but within the ethos of their own faith. That is fine by me.

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[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I should like to make three brief points. First, I join in the general applause for the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, on the application of the law of diminishing returns in this area: the more you specify, the more you tend to lose. My second point may also relate to later debates. As far as possible in education, we should try to maintain one framework that covers all schools. There may be some adaptation in schools of different character, but it is in the spirit of our educational system to aim for a framework that brings a Church of England school, a Roman Catholic school, a Jewish school and a local authority maintained school under the same umbrella. We are one society, and it is important to make that point in our education system.

Finally, and perhaps more significantly, I suppose that a Bishop would have to comment on sex and relationships, but sometimes I think that people get obsessed with this area. Generally, the debate has been skewed too much towards it. I also think that linking sex and relationships, while I understand entirely why we do it—we do not want to disentangle sexual relationships from relationships—we do not want to get into the way of thinking that all relationships are therefore fundamentally sexualised as an outcome. I read Frank Field’s report to the Government on children in our society, which is a serious issue. Surveys show that one of the things that children most want to learn is how to be good parents. There is something of a lacuna in these proposals in the area of what I would call parenthood, quite apart from the issues of sexualised or sexually related relationships. I rather agree with the right honourable gentleman down the corridor that what is key to our society is how we hand on civilisation to the next generation. There is some wisdom in the observation in his report that children want more than anything else to learn to be good parents. However, I do not see that coming through, and I certainly do not want to see this education reduced to sex and relationships.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, all the contributions have reflected positive attitudes and have contained many positive words. The danger is that if someone like myself dissents from what I consider to be the main thrust of the amendment of my noble friend Lady Massey, they are portrayed as dinosaurs, male chauvinists and all the litany of abusive terms that suggest discrimination against women. However, let me declare my credentials from when I served in another place because they will totally contradict that kind of attitude towards me. I voted for the equal age of consent. I voted for civil partnerships. Even when there was a free vote, I voted for every single equality measure. It was not a case of being whipped to vote for something because the Government said so. I hope that if that attitude has been inculcated, it will have been quickly dispelled by my record. Perhaps I would carry more credibility with my noble friend Lady Massey if she took into account the fact that the Roman Catholic church attacked me for those votes, but as far as I am concerned, it establishes my independence.

I would like to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, to turn to page 6 of the Marshalled List, which sets out the proposed new section. Subsection (6) states:

“The second principle is that PSHE should be taught in a way that”—

as outlined in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of the amendment. Subsection (7) also has three paragraphs.

However, I worry about the practicality of that. The practicality is that new Section 85B(8) says,

“Subsections (4) to (7) are not to be read as preventing the governing body or head teacher of a school within subsection (9) from causing or allowing PSHE to be taught in a way that reflects the school’s religious character”.

Who decides? Who judges? Who makes a judgment if someone objects to the way in which that has been done at a school?

[Baroness Walmsley]

I think the answer is that a school does; and it would be held to account for that by Ofsted and by individual parents. If individual parents did not like what was going on, they would retain the right to withdraw their child. Of course, in all the best schools parents are involved anyway in the design of the curriculum covering sensitive issues like this.

[Lord McAvoy]

I am delighted to hear the noble Baroness say that she supports the rights of parents. If parents send their children to a particular school, she will obviously support them in that, and she will also support them in ensuring that the ethos of that school is maintained, especially one of a religious nature.

When it comes to the new section in Amendment 90, the difficulty is that I maintain—I will no doubt encourage further contributions with this—that the common threads of the amendments are designed to minimise, damage and gradually remove the religious element of faith schools.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I am so sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again but I think that he has misunderstood a great deal of what I was saying. I am not trying to damage the ethos of faith schools. I am saying that the ethos of faith schools may well exist but children have the right to know about other faiths. I was talking today to a friend from Northern Ireland who said, “Look at what damage has been done in Northern Ireland by people not learning about other faiths”. I say no more.

[Lord McAvoy]

That is the second time that my noble friend has accused me of misunderstanding her. I fully confess that I have a very limited formal education but I do not have limited intelligence, and it is my responsibility to make a judgment that I see a thread in maybe one or two contributions from my noble friend, seeing as how she has introduced this subject. It is my opinion that there is a common thread to the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend that are designed to—I withdraw the word “damage”—minimise or devalue the existence and practice of faith schools.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again, but could he please be specific about what it is in my amendments that seeks to devalue faith schools?

[Lord McAvoy]

I said there was a thread running through the amendments.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I apologise for intervening on the noble Lord, but we have a group coming later that is all to do with faith and religious worship. I think the comments that he is making might possibly be more appropriate when we come to the next group. Given the lateness of the hour, we might perhaps let the Opposition and the Minister wind up this particular debate, but focusing on PSHE rather than the broader issues of faith.

[Lord McAvoy]

Very briefly, in response to the Minister, I have not said much different from my noble friend Lady Massey, so it seems to me a strange distinction that she is making. But if it is the will of the Committee that I shut up and sit down, tell me. It is? That is fine.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I am not going to sum up on what has been a wide-ranging debate; I just want to make a quick comment. First, I want to put on record my support and that of my noble friend for the amendment on PSHE in the name of my noble friend Lady Massey, and those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. Secondly, I was disappointed that such provisions disappeared from our legislation in the wash-up before the general election, because we were proceeding with this. Thirdly, these amendments appeared in our legislation following a wide-ranging review that my noble friend Lord Knight conducted over a long period and which involved all the faith schools, other schools and lots of interested parties. It reached a remarkable consensus on the way forward. Provisions similar to these amendments appeared in our legislation. I should like to ask the Minister: given the progress that was made, what else could the review that this Government are now carrying out possibly be looking at? Could they not move a little quicker to get these provisions into legislation, given that that work was already completed?

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[Baroness Walmsley]

I accept what the noble Baroness has heard, but it is not my understanding that that is the case. However, I am sure that we can look at it outside the Committee.

What I am really saying is that we want children to be learning-ready. PSHE is not an extra subject that I am trying to put into the curriculum. I agree absolutely with the Minister that we need to slim the curriculum down. However, PSHE is not any old subject; it is a fundamental underpinning. None of us ladies would go around without foundation garments because they make our fashions look better on the outside. It is really important that children have the skills and understanding that enable them to benefit from all the other subjects that we decide that they must learn—the core ones they must learn or the additional ones that they may take.

I understand where the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, is coming from. I would not want to load the curriculum with a lot of extra subjects, but he did make the point that we do not do this very well. That is exactly why I would like to make PSHE statutory. People would then train as specialists. As the noble Lord rightly said, without training, some of these areas are difficult to teach. I myself was thrown in at the deep end—many teachers are. I would certainly have benefited from training but, if that were a statutory part of the national curriculum, Ofsted would have to inspect it at every school level.

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester for raising the subject of parenthood. As far as I am concerned, that would come into the relationships and sex part of PSHE. Parents have relationships between each other and with their children. It is particularly their relationship with their children that would be important there. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and his passion for getting young people taught some parenting skills. That is very important.

Finally, on the voting record of the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, I am quite sure that he would want to support my amendments. I reassure him that what he seeks would not be precluded by my three amendments in any way whatever.

[Lord McAvoy]

I accept the noble Baroness’s point of view.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord. That is a good point on which to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.