Tony Baldry
Main Page: Tony Baldry (Conservative - Banbury)Department Debates - View all Tony Baldry's debates with the Department for Education
(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
I agree with everything that has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). As at least 12 hon. Friends wish to contribute to the debate, I shall be brief.
I am sure the Minister needs no persuasion of the need for religious education in the syllabus, so I suspect that the issues are essentially practical. I am also sure that the damaging and ongoing domino effect on religious education of being left out of the 2010 E-bac list has been explained to him on many occasions, as has been clearly confirmed by the survey by the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education.
My understanding is that the Minister’s concern is a practical issue and not about RE, because he wants to reverse the decline in history and geography, but that should not be done by undermining RE. Perhaps he will consider having at least a two-out-of-three option, which would add only 5% of time to the syllabus and could be easily managed. I hope that when he replies to the debate, he will not dig in but will start by saying that he has heard the mood of the Chamber, and that he will ask his officials to explore a two-out-of-three option, and return to him.
That is all the more important because under the review of the national curriculum, RE is not part of it. There is a distinction between the basic curriculum and the national curriculum. RE is the odd subject out, which does not help. As we move towards a greater number of academies—I think the Government’s perception of them is that they should be “independent” schools—we will not see RE written back into primary legislation for academies. If we are not careful, all that will undermine the position of RE.
RE teacher training has been hit by nearly 50% because of schools responding to the change in its position. I appreciate that the Minister is sympathetic regarding the question of RE in the E-bac, but I hope he will be able to square the circle because that is his ministerial task. Only religious education provides students with the opportunity to question and study spiritual and moral beliefs in a spiritual context.
I conclude by sharing with the House what I think is the clear and undisputed view of the Church of England, and which is clearly supported by other Churches. That was made clear to me when I went to the consecration of St Joseph the Worker Roman Catholic church in my constituency on Sunday. The Church of England
“is deeply concerned at the exclusion of Religious Education from the list of Humanities qualifications that are acceptable for the English Baccalaureate. It is already clear that schools are removing RE from the GCSE options for students as a direct result of this.”
I very much hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will listen to the Chamber today, and heed its collective voice.