Religious Education

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I apologise to the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for not giving her notice of my desire to contribute to this debate. I am here as a lay person, a practising Catholic and a great friend of Jane Savill, who runs the master’s degree course in religious education at the Institute of Education in London.

It strikes me that a poor excuse for excluding religion from the humanities topics in the baccalaureate is that we want to promote geography and history, because that is doing to RE what we did to geography and history. As most people know, when Ofsted comes into a school, it has a whole-school programme approach and will not notice the decline in RE as a topic until it is too late and it is in the same state as history and geography. Knowing that, and understanding the history, why would we want to replicate our current problems?

For me, religious education, far from being wishy-washy, provides an understanding of our place in society and of others’ views in society. In my suburban south London constituency, many people are new to our area and have different faiths, values and attitudes, and the study of religious education is important for our understanding not only of other people’s views, but of our own place in the world. Sometimes, the religious education that young people receive outside the classroom may be a cause for concern, and for radicalism, but that may be challenged in schools in an environment where people feel safe to challenge the views of others.

I implore the Minister to look at the matter again. What big society topic can be greater than religious education? It is a subject that makes us understand the basis of our constitution, society, history and values. If we want people to look outwards, to see their place in the world and to show responsibility towards others, religious education is the very basis of that action and those values. When people ask me why I joined the Labour party and why I became an MP, it is often difficult to answer because there are so many reasons for all of us. My faith is part of the basis of that, not because I am as understanding of my faith intellectually as some hon. Members on the Government Benches, but because I am a cradle Catholic and understand my values through my education.

I suggest that the problem for religious education will not be in the Catholic schools, because they will continue to have a core understanding that the teaching of religious education is imperative to pupils’ development. It is other schools that may have a significant problem, and I ask the Minister to think about that, because of the topic’s academic value, its value to individual development and its benefit to wider society in understanding not only our own history but others’.