Out-of-school Education Settings

Debate between Seema Kennedy and Edward Leigh

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I believe that Ofsted has neither the capacity nor the resources. It should concentrate on its job of ensuring good educational standards.

The DFE consultation document also mentions settings that are used during school holidays. Clearly, summer camps were in view. The Department now says that “one off residential activities” will not be covered. Fair enough. The body charged with registration is the local authority, but I am afraid we have seen enough local authorities banning Christmas and pulling funding from church groups to know that there will be places where relationships between local churches and the council are not friendly.

Apparently, out-of-school settings will be

“eligible for investigation, and if appropriate, intervention where concerns were reported”.

Investigation? Intervention? This is pretty intrusive stuff. The Government say that all this has

“the broad aim of keeping children safe generally from the risk of harm, including emotional harm”.

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I speak as somebody who, like other Members, has run residential courses like those that have been mentioned. Does he agree that we might end up with all the good, diligent organisations registering, while the ones we are trying to crack down on will not bother registering at all?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is precisely the point, and I will come to it in a moment. Extremists will not register and will not talk about cutting off people’s heads when the Ofsted inspector is around.

Emotional harm is a vague concept. Atheists such as Richard Dawkins say it is “mental abuse” to teach children that the Bible is true. Does the Department agree? I am sure not. Do some Ofsted inspectors agree? I hope not.

The system includes a requirement to “register”, a power for Ofsted to inspect and a power to impose sanctions, including barring people from working with children and closing premises. Although the consultation process was, I believe, inadequate, the Department received thousands of responses, because people, especially Christian groups, are really worried. They are terrified because, for the first time, Ofsted will decide whether to bar someone or close down their youth work by assessing whether their teaching is

“compatible with, and does not undermine, fundamental British values.”

The Department says that prohibited activities will include:

“Undesirable teaching, for example teaching which undermines or is incompatible with fundamental British values.”

Does the Department really have a right to decide what is desirable and undesirable teaching in churches? Many groups focus on hobbies, sports, music, the outdoors —things that have no relevance whatever to British values. The truth is that those thousands of hobby groups are being forced to register only so the system looks even-handed. That is the point: the Government are terrified of not looking even-handed, and therefore they are bringing in all those other harmless groups.