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Education

My Lords, I too am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, for initiating this important and timely debate. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth should be speaking at this point as he is the chair of the Church of England’s board of education and our lead Bishop on this subject, but, as most noble Lords know, he has had to be off ill for the past six months. I am very glad to report that next week he will have his last round of chemotherapy and that he very much hopes to be back in your Lordships’ House within a couple of months. Meanwhile, it is important that there should be a Church of England voice in this debate because the Church of England, through its 4,700 schools, is deeply committed to the educational life of this country, not in a narrow sense of making good members of the Church of England but on the basis of a clear and strong Christian faith, wanting to make a contribution to the educational development of children in the community as a whole. It is fundamental to the Church of England’s philosophy on education that we are there to serve the community as a whole. Although the Government’s White Paper makes many important points, I suppose that a key thrust is the greater emphasis on variety and choice, particularly parental choice. The Church of England has strongly believed in variety and choice throughout its long history in education. At the moment we have some voluntary aided schools and some voluntary controlled schools. We have worked very closely with the Government in recent years to make our contribution to new academies. Eight Church of England academies have opened and 25 are under discussion. The White Paper suggests that in addition to traditional Church of England schools, it is open to a diocese to set up a trust in which a new kind of school would be founded. It would not be a Church of England school but, again, a school serving the community as a whole. It would of course be inclusive. I know that many dioceses will be open to working with the Government if the conditions in their area are appropriate to see what kind of schools might be developed under this new kind of trust. An extraordinary change has taken place during the past 40 years in the Church of England’s attitude to its role in education. When I was first ordained, Church schools were felt by Church members, including most clergy, as something of a burden, a bit of a drag and something that we ought to get out of as quickly as possible. The situation could not be more different now. We feel proud of our schools. We believe that they make a huge contribution to the educational life of this country. In recent years, that is significantly due to the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, and the report that bears his name, which recommended that the Church of England should fund 100 new secondary schools. Although we have one in four primary schools in the country, we have only about one in 20 secondary schools. I am glad to say that the Church of England has responded to the initiative of the noble Lord and opened 44 new secondary schools, if we include the eight academies. We will work with the Government, where appropriate, to see whether schools should be re-founded under the new trust system. It is obvious that we live in a multi-faith society. Church of England schools are now regarded by most people as faith schools alongside other faith schools. It has always seemed to me only consistent and fair to argue that if the Church of England and other Christian denominations are allowed to set up faith schools, other religions should be allowed to do so as well. Like most members of the Church of England, I firmly support the liberality in our society for Hindus or Muslims to have their own schools—with one proviso, to which I shall come in a moment. However, in view of the current emphasis in the White Paper on greater variety and greater choice, I wonder whether there is room for even more experimentation with what we may call joint-faith schools—two faiths getting together to see what they might do. Here, I express a personal interest. I am a trustee of a small group seeking to set up a genuine multi-faith school. People may say, ““Are not all state schools multi-faith schools?””. They are in the sense that they have pupils from different denominations and different religions and teach RE from a variety of different standpoints, but the kind of school that we have in mind is one in which religion is taken very seriously. The pupils will get a serious education in their own religion, whether it is Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or Christianity, but they will do so in the context of pupils of other religions taking their own religion equally seriously. I am glad to say that a great deal of interest has been shown in that idea. We have had a number of bites, but we are still looking for a local authority to be a partner with whom we can pioneer that new kind of school. I said that I had one proviso or question mark in my mind about multi-faith schools—whether they are Church of England schools or faith schools of any other kind. That is that what goes on in there must be education, not propaganda. That is a crucial matter not only of the curriculum but of how the curriculum is taught. However attached people are to their religion, they must be taught to look at their religion from a historical and critical point of view as well as a respectful one and to be open to the possibility of their vision of the world being enlarged and enriched by other perspectives. It is fundamental that schools are in the business of education, not propaganda. The Church of England has always recognised that and that needs to be so for other faith schools of any kind. Religious education is one aspect of faith schools. There is no doubt that some religious education is very good. Not long ago, I read that the fastest-growing subject at A-level is religious studies. So clearly some schools are taking it very seriously indeed. All noble Lords are aware that there is dissatisfaction with religious education from a number of points of view. Non-Christian communities feel that the Church of England is unfairly privileged in the field. Christians feel that everything is taught except Christianity. Opinion polls indicate that 50 per cent of the people of this country—perhaps the figure is not quite as high as that—have no clue of the meaning of Easter. We want children to leave school able to read and write. They should also have a basic knowledge of what is fundamental to our cultural heritage; that is, the religion that has formed and shaped the whole way in which our society operates. That leads on to the great variety in quality in the different kinds of schools. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, emphasised, some schools are very good. The majority of schools are good, and we want to celebrate that fact, but there is no doubt that schools vary enormously. I might go into a primary school for, let us say, an assembly, and the children are so quiet and good that it almost brings tears to your eyes. I visit other schools where perhaps 40 per cent of the children are on special needs and all one can do is admire the heroic work of the teachers who are achieving something in that environment. As the White Paper emphasises, leadership, including the leadership of the head, is key. I reiterate the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, about the current difficulty of appointing heads for schools. In London, 50 per cent of headship appointments had to be re-advertised. That must be a very worrying indication which the Government need to take seriously. There can be no improvement in our worst performing schools unless they have heads of real quality who are very strongly supported. I do not know what can be done to ensure that the right heads are in those schools. Education is not just about achieving certain educational standards, as the noble Baroness rightly emphasised; it is about creating an ethos in which children are formed, nurtured and shaped for the future. I reiterate the importance of citizenship education. We have recently heard from the Chancellor about Britishness. For me, it is not a question of waving flags or putting flags in gardens. It is about all of us, including children, deeply appreciating and rejoicing in the institutions that we have in this country—our liberty under the rule of law, democratic government and the kind of values that make all of this possible. If we are thinking about the ethos of a school and forming citizens for the future, we may realise that citizenship education is a vital part of the school curriculum and is related to the whole issue of school morale . The Church of England is delighted to be able to make a continuing contribution to the education of children in this country. We will work as closely as possible with the Government in a number of ways to achieve the highest possible standards not only in educational attainment but in achieving the right ethos in our schools.