Religious Education in Modern Britain
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Bruce(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Nick Gibb
My right hon. Friend will recall that when that decision was taken by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), Catholic schools were encouraged to use the voluntary aided route to establish a new school. Of course, we will continue to keep all these issues under review.
I reiterate the Government’s commitment that schools in England should continue to teach religious education. It is mandatory now and we have no plans to change that, but there is scope to work on achieving greater consistency in standards. We will seek to improve that through the work of the Oak National Academy.
Fiona Bruce
The Minister may recall that this summer the UK hosted a very successful international conference on freedom of religion or belief, to which 88 Governments sent delegates. Out of that, the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance is working on developing workbooks for primary school pupils to help them to understand the importance of not discriminating against others of different faiths or beliefs, just as pupils in many countries across the world understand not to discriminate against, say, disabled pupils. Will the Minister meet me as we work on that project? We now have 42 countries in our alliance, and our aim is eventually—while respecting those countries’ different cultures—to promote and ideally disseminate that through the Education Departments of our respective countries.
Nick Gibb
I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend. I pay tribute to her for the superb work she does in her role as special envoy. I would also be delighted to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes and the RE Policy Unit to discuss these issues further. I think that is a good note to end on, so I will finish my remarks there.