Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest, or in my case a lack of interest, in that I am an atheist. I regard all religions and religious doctrines as simply nonsensical—tout court nonsensical. Over the past few years I totally opposed the Government, who I supported, in their total misuse of public money in order to increase the vast number of religious schools in this country. It is a source of pride to me that I never once voted with my own Government on that extension and waste of public money, and I stick to that view.

Referring to my noble friend’s remarks just now, only once in my 25 years in your Lordships’ House, I ended up in the Chamber by mistake and I could not get out because the doors were locked, so I was present during the act of spiritual worship or whatever it is called. I have to say that I regarded it as one of the weirdest experiences I have ever had, in a life that has included a great many broad experiences. I could not believe what I was observing, and I say that in terms.

Having said that, I am as committed as anyone in the Room to freedom of thought, belief and expression. I have never spent any time trying to persuade anyone who was religious that they should not be. Quite to the contrary, I would regard it as a disaster in our country if our young people were not brought up to read the King James version of the Bible, one of the greatest works of literature in our history. I discovered the other day on Google that there are several other versions of the Bible, and they are so bad that they must have been written by people with the prose equivalent of cloth ears. I gather that they are more correct translations of the Hebrew, but compared with the King James version, I would not allow any child to read them.

I have no difficulty whatsoever in our children knowing about religion, but I insist that this has nothing to do with religious education. I want people to know that there are many religions. Indeed, speaking as an atheist, I think that the more religions they know about, in my view, the less likely they will be to believe that any of them can be true, because how can you have so many if they are all true? Not long ago, the Chief Rabbi made the terrible mistake of saying, “Of course, we have different religions, but we all worship the same God”. The Orthodox Jewish rabbis said, “No, we don't”, and the Chief Rabbi—mistakenly, in my opinion—withdrew his remark.

Therefore, the question is not one of religion; it has nothing to do with whether you are a believer. I reiterate my point that I am not seeking to persuade those of you who are believers that you should not be—that is your choice—but the act of assembly in school, which is vital to the unity and whole atmosphere of the school, should be conducted on a totally non-religious basis.

I would go further. My view is that the assembly should be conducted largely by the pupils, not by the head teacher or other teachers. To give an example, if it were my choice, every day I would have one of the pupils talking about some great figure in the world, their courage and what they achieved, such as Aung San Suu Kyi or the woman who is being threatened with being stoned to death by the Iranians for sticking up for what she thought was right. Pupils in schools could choose those great figures, and that is exactly the atmosphere that I would want to develop—plus the bit about someone telling the school that the first 11 lost at cricket yet again, and so on, which was certainly my experience of school assembly.

As my noble friend Lady Massey brought to our attention, the whole point of the gathering is that people meet together for the sake of producing a decent spirit in the school in which religion should have no part to play, other than that people should be aware of other people’s multiplicity of opinions and views. I would have no objection if, one day, one of the pupils who spoke decided that their address would be to say why they were a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim, but they would be saying it only as a contribution to general discussion not as a formal religious matter.

Times have changed. We need to know that the world is full of different people. When I went to school, I did not know that there were any blacks around at all. There were no blacks to be seen in any of the schools where I was. I was happy, when my children went to the local comprehensive, that they knew that there was a vast range of different people in the world. I am certain that they benefited enormously from that.

I am not certain that I like the detail of any of the amendments, and I say to my noble friend that I hope that we can come back at Report with something that we can divide on so that we can at least test the opinion of the House.

The important thing is the gathering at the beginning of the school day which unites the school and does not divide it.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords—

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I confess myself to be a little confused that the exigencies of the arrangements of this Room have led to my sitting on the government side, but I will do my very best to use this to illustrate the point that, in a perfect world, people can sit anywhere and have decently held points of view without being called nonsensical for them.

I also want to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, that I will make it my resolution to work as hard as I possibly can to show the other face of Methodism for as long as we know each other. In response to my noble friend Lord Touhig—I must say that he is my noble friend, although he is sitting opposite me—I just want to mention that, although the first line of the hymn that he sang at the Baptist Sunday school anniversary is “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam”, I happen to know that its last line is,

“You in your small corner, and I in mine”,

which is pretty much what this debate seems to be turning out to be like.

This is a terribly important debate and the points of view that I have been hearing are necessary and are to be engaged with, but I just feel uncertain that they sit comfortably within the scope of this Bill. I feel that this proposal would take a stance against the historic position. Let us remind ourselves that the 1944 Act, which brought this collective worship idea into being, was really an attempt to bring together the provision of schools by a variety of bodies, most of which were Christian. It is still the case that the Church of England has a significant stake in secondary education and a predominant stake in primary education. Therefore, we are talking really about history and culture—this is who we are and this is our identity—and I do not at all want to discount other religions or other points of view.

I listened to what was said by the noble Lord, although apparently I am not being listened to myself, but I just feel that the demonising of collective acts of worship is not consistent with my experience of actually performing them. In the hundreds of different kinds of school where I have led assemblies all over the world, I can promise you—perhaps I should not promise, as there are bishops here—that, in any school where I have been a governor or led a school assembly, I have never met antagonism, objection or dissent about what is being offered.

In the East End of London, one of the two schools for which I have responsibility attracts 60 per cent of its pupils from a Bengali population. People send their girls to the school because it has a religious basis and they want the structures that go with that; there is no proselytising and, if there were, the people doing it would be on the carpet. In the boys’ school where I lead collective acts of worship, I am conscious of the range of religions and I suppose that there are people of no religion. That does not worry me in the slightest. We can conjure up an idea, we can play with a thought and we can ground that thought in the traditional religious position, indicate that there are other ways of looking at it and then call for a silence—which is what I do—during which people can think their own thoughts according to their own inner light. There are ways of doing these things without us getting into this silly antagonistic position.

In response to my noble friend Lady Massey, who was my mentor in bringing me into the House of Lords—she wanted a religious person to see if it was all right, but now that we are sitting on opposite sides I am not so sure about that—I just feel honestly that we are making more of this than needs to be made. It is not a problem in the experience of the schools that I know about, and I know about lots and lots of schools. Let us have the debate another day. If a consensus emerges from a debate dedicated to this subject, then let us see what we have to do about that, but piggy-backing the subject on this Bill seems to me to be inappropriate.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I am very pleased that I gave way to the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths. It was a humane contribution to a discussion that was otherwise beginning to polarise. I do not have interests to declare of the kind that others have declared. I am not a card-carrying member of any secular society or indeed of any church or religion. I suppose that my interest, if I have one, is that I was once a professor of philosophy of religion. In that context, I learnt that there are all sorts of philosophies, and on the whole the one that I liked best was that of David Hume, who taught me a bit of pragmatism. For example, I have discovered pragmatically that if you want a seat that allows you to take part at Question Time and you are a Cross-Bencher, you have little choice but to attend worship in the main Chamber. It is between me and my conscience what I am thinking when all that is going on, although I am not quite as clear in my mind as perhaps some of my noble friends are.

In this context, the reality—and this has been happening for a number of years—is that in many schools assembly is withering on the vine. In other schools, the assembly is very important because they have either a statutory or at least a common religious character that is accepted in the community. There, the assembly fits very well into the day’s activities and, by and large, the parents respect it.

I reiterate an additional point that the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, drew out. If you were to replace assembly completely by fiat and say that assemblies must not take place, that would be a rational position that I would understand, although I would not share it. However, if you do that, you need properly to sort out the alternative. The one thing that assembly does is to engage the emotions of young people, which, sadly, is what we have failed to do with much of the curriculum. There are a variety of alternative ways of engaging the emotions of young people and, for some, religious worship in the community is one. Therefore, I would be very reluctant to get my tanks lined up and say, “Shoot it out of the Bill now”. If, as a matter of evolution, assembly is withering on the vine—which, I believe, is the reality—alternatives will, in an evolutionary way, begin to emerge, and that would seem a wholly satisfactory way of changing the situation in our schools. However, without further discussion and without a further clear picture of the alternative, I would not want to support the amendment.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, I think that my noble friend Lord Griffiths, who is temporarily sitting on the other side, is very disarming but I disagree with him about the relevance of these amendments. I am sure that many people in this Room and outside share the view that a moral and spiritual dimension to school life is essential. I personally think that it is essential for school students to join in a morally and spiritually uplifting act every day. The problem is that, if it is a Christian act, quite a lot of children are not Christian and some are not of that particular sect of Christianity. Those children are deprived. When I went to school, the children who were withdrawn sat outside, as has been said, and I do not think that that is what school is about.

Of course, I have absolutely no objection to children learning about Christianity. It is one of our glorious traditions which I do not happen to share but, like my noble friend, I am very glad to have known the King James Bible and, for that matter, the Bible of Tyndale. I would have no objection at all to my children experiencing a Christian religious ceremony or a collective act referring to the Christian approach. What I really think we should move away from, for all the reasons which have been given and which I shall not repeat, is a sectarian approach to morality and spirituality. We really cannot allow our children in this wide, diverse world to think that only one way to truth is the right way, that only one morality is right and that only one spirituality has any validity. Therefore, I am extremely happy to support the spirit behind all these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

My question to the Minister is: if you take away the last Government’s mechanism for solving the three problems what are you going to put in place? The problems are: first, the complexity of the system, even more so now that every school has responsibility for its own admissions arrangements; secondly, the behaviour of the schools, given that it has been proven that schools will endeavour to take the children that are easiest to teach; and, thirdly, the need to protect those schools whose chances of increasing or improving standards can be detrimentally affected by the admissions arrangements of a neighbouring school.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I support the idea that schools should have discretion in relation to admissions policy but it should be a clear, publicly stated admissions policy. Out of that, however, come two difficulties, one of which is the possibility of anarchy. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, indicated how that was the case. As a young, innocent parent who came to joust within the Inner London Education Authority, longer ago than I care to remember, there was an element of anarchy in the system. As a parent, if you were not savvy or did not know x, y and z, you could not crack it. There is an issue of anarchy here. If every school has its own admissions policy and there is no co-ordination, parents will find themselves in an anarchic situation but will not quite know it. The knowing and the well attached will do well. The second danger is fairness and unfairness. The point has been made and we need someone to take responsibility for saying whether or not cumulatively these admissions policies add up either to anarchy or unfairness. There may be better ways of doing it. The best way is having many excellent schools, but we are where we are.

I draw quick comparisons with universities. There was a risk of anarchy in admissions systems a number of years ago as a number of universities expanded in the 1960s and thereafter. That anarchy was dealt with in part through creating UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. For example, there was an agreement that you could not apply to both Oxford and Cambridge, and that if you wanted to apply to one of them, you had to apply earlier. Rules were worked out so that people knew where they were.

On the question of fairness, and here I put a direct question to the Government, in universities there is a sudden interest in fairness and access and OFFA may well have its powers increased to deal with a set of financial regulations about how universities are funded. It is interesting that in one educational context regulation and the imposition of fairness and unfairness is taking place, and yet in schools the same question of fairness is going in the other direction. We need consistency here.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I look forward to what my noble friend has to say because I share some of the concerns of other Members of the Committee. I think it is important that we should continue to move schools admissions towards fairness. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has pointed out, this is not the history of schools. They have always been interested in finding ways of covert selection. The history of the last 10 years or so has been a gradual winding back from that. We even have Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, that great Catholic school in west London, removing some of the most objectionable means of social selection which were in its admissions criteria. There are other examples of progress throughout the UK.

The Anglican church has been very helpful in what it has done to make schools fairer. However, it is a process that goes against the natural inclination of schools and governors. Once parents capture a school, they tend to want to keep it captured. I find it hard to understand how the proposals in the Bill will improve fairness. At this point, I shall sit down and listen to my noble friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Touhig]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for clarifying that point, because it is important that we fully understand her views on this. I am glad that I gave her the opportunity to explain in more detail what she believes and understands. I accept her final point. I have been the governor of a faith school and there are instances where people move around in order to try to get their child into a faith school.

I am troubled and confused about Amendment 138. It states:

“No Academy may select more than 50% of its pupils on criteria based on religious characteristics”.

It goes on to say that those who attend will be required,

“to take a full part in the school’s religious life”.

It seems to state that half the school population should not be of any particular faith but that all the school population must take part in the school’s religious life. To my mind, that is wrong. I strongly support the view that parents should have the right to withdraw their child or children from the religious life of a school if they so wish. At the moment, Catholic schools that convert to academy status retain their existing admissions arrangements. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, would mean that 50 per cent of the pupils would not be admitted on the basis of faith. This makes no sense whatsoever and is really discriminatory. My noble friend Lady Massey made the point about public funding for faith schools. The Catholic church, like others, pays a great deal of money towards supporting its own schools in any event. We should bear that in mind.

Amendment 140, moved by my noble friend Lady Massey, states,

“admission arrangements for the school should make no provision for selection on the basis of religion or belief”.

I am sure that it is not my noble friend’s intention, but that would put at risk every Catholic school and faith school in the country. What is the point of having a Catholic school, or a faith school of any kind, if there is to be no provision based on faith, belief or religion in deciding the admissions policy? I am sure it is not her intention—I am sure it would never be the intention of my party—to close every faith school in the country, but that is the risk of this amendment.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that the issue of parents who try to move into areas near schools is not confined to faith schools. I remember the distant days of people of the most surprising political background being able to afford houses near Holland Park because it was not a bog standard comprehensive. That has gone on for quite some time in a variety of communities; it is not confined to faith schools.

I support Amendment 138. The direction of travel is the right one, to open up the community, and it seems compatible that those liberal churchmen and women whom I know would want this. There may be a practical problem. If this is seen as a restriction in terms of faith background, I am not sure that Muslim schools would be able to fill all their places. We would have to be a bit careful about that formulation. On the second part of Amendment 138, if we have faith schools, that seems to me to be part of the deal. If my parents had decided to send me to a sports academy—God forbid—part of their understanding would have been that I would spend hours in the gym and on wet, cold, miserable sports fields. Although I might never have forgiven them, that would have been part of going to that kind of school. The same applies to technical schools and other sorts of schools. I think it not unreasonable that a faith school with a particular ethos and direction should say to parents, “You understand that this is how we do things here”. Then you inspect them independently and see whether they do it in a fair and reasonable way.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, has said, and I support Amendments 138 and 140. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in her characteristically charming way, may have gone a little far in wanting to end all faith schools in our country. The view I have taken consistently in my political life is that one should live with the existing faith schools and make them more inclusive, but I have always resisted the creation of new faith schools. When I had responsibility for these matters, I did not approve an exclusive faith school, and I think it was a mistake on the part of the Labour Government in 1997 to open up that possibility again.

Why do I say that? During the war, I went to an Anglican primary school in Southport. I loved it. It was a Victorian building and I had, as the basis of such education as I have had, a Victorian education. The school was right next door to the church. However, religion was not thrust down our throats. We went to church twice a year, at Christmas and at Easter. Of course we started each day with a hymn and a prayer, but everyone did that in those days. It was really a community school and embodied for me the great attractions of Anglicanism. Belief was a comfort rather than a passion and there was a welcome absence of fervour. It was, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield said, a community school which included everybody. My closest friend was a Jewish boy who was the son of a refugee. When I went to see his family, his mother explained the Jewish faith to me. I believe strongly that in schools, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists should all sit alongside each other, play alongside each other, eat alongside each other and go home on the same bus together, because that way lies tolerance, understanding and forbearance. If one moves away from that, one creates intolerance and all the troubles of a divided society.

It was interesting to hear the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, speak, because he recalled the debates we had four years ago when the policy of the Labour party, I am glad to say, was that in all new faith schools, 25 per cent of the pupils should come from outside the faith. It was a view expounded by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in the House of Lords, and I shared it. It was not shared by the leaders of my party, but they were mistaken in that. They are not always mistaken, but they were mistaken then. I campaigned with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to support the view. Unfortunately, the Labour party was rattled by a quite unscrupulous campaign by the Catholic church—I see the noble Lord is nodding so he must have been part of it—in which it tried to pretend that this would undermine all Catholic schools in the country for ever. But it was only for new Catholic schools, and the Catholic church had founded only two new schools in England since the war. The Catholic church thought that with all these Poles coming into the country, there would be lots more Catholic children in future, although I think that that particular ambition has been dashed. It was a quite unscrupulous campaign and the Labour Party gave in and surrendered.

The amendments were drawn up. I had seen the amendments ready to be tabled saying that new faith schools should ensure that 25 per cent of their intake was from outside the faith. During those debates, the present Archbishop enunciated the policy of the Anglican church, which has been developed by the right reverend Prelate today, and said that for new Anglican church schools, 25 per cent of the intake should be from outside the faith or of no faith. That has now been extended to 50 per cent, and I do not disagree with that at all. It is the best way to go forward.

If, during the next five to 10 years, we see the establishment of faith schools, particularly of the new faiths in our country, we are going to have very exclusive schools that I think will create divisions in society, particularly in our towns and cities. I favour very much the idea of all new schools at least being inclusive and extending that slowly to all schools. In fact, that is the reality. Very few Catholic schools today have 100 per cent Catholic pupils, so they are part of the policy. Why do you not announce it? There must be a direction somewhere from on high that you do not. The Anglican community of faith schools is very inclusive today—by nature, it always is. As the right reverend Prelate said, some of these schools are 100 per cent Muslim but they still have the rigour of teaching that comes from a belief. That is very important.

I know that I am not going to persuade the Minister to agree with us because I think that they are going to approve some new faith schools. I must say that that would be a profound mistake.