Schools: Indoctrination

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, as all of you will know, faith schools play a very important part in the fabric of our state education. We have more than 4,000 Church of England schools and 2,000 Catholic schools. All the guidance around education and religion is about tolerance and understanding it in the context of our own society. The recent provision for the promotion of fundamental British values builds on that. As noble Lords may be aware, we now have specialist Ofsted inspection officers who look specifically for any incidence of where religion is not taught in that context.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, would the Minister care to comment on the Written Answer I received on 21 June last year, which admitted that the Government have no idea how much violent Islamic teaching is taking place in our madrassas, nor indeed how many of them there are; and furthermore, that the Government do not intend to find out, or do anything about it? Is that still government policy?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, between January 2016 and August 2017, with additional funding from us, Ofsted identified 125 unregistered schools. It visited 38 of those, 34 of which have now closed. Two more have closed since they were investigated and two are still under investigation. We have appointed I think 36 Prevent officers at the last count to support local authorities in areas of concern to provide advice to schools on exactly these areas. I am concerned about this. I am the department’s Minister with responsibility for extremism, so it is one of my main briefs. I believe we are doing a lot, and we continue to be alert to where more needs to be done.