---

Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I am encouraged to follow the noble Baroness and to agree very much with her. I support the gallant efforts of my noble friend and others to struggle with the problem in Amendment No. 16. I am encouraged in that by a conversation with a knowledgeable, thoughtful, Muslim friend of mine, who is a newsagent in my home town. He has two daughters, one of whom is a qualified doctor and the other is studying to be a doctor. His experience of local education at home leads him to think that the amendment would be a good idea provided that it applies to all schools. That is a very important point to make. If we are to pass a provision like this to solve the problem, it must apply to all schools and to new schools in the future. I think the noble Lord, Lord Alton, sees that point, although it presents a problem which I deeply understand from his speech and from my own knowledge of Roman Catholic schools. Faith schools have a great deal going for them. The ethos of a school, the atmosphere—what people call the hidden curriculum of a school—is usually very strong in a faith school. My experience of Roman Catholic schools is that it is very strong there. You can tell the ethos the minute you go into a school. I really do not believe that there can be exclusive schools in future. One needs to look no further than the past few days’ news media to see how easy it is in the name of national or religious solidarity to provoke the very conflict that we want to avoid. Young people must learn when discussion things to consider other people’s viewpoint, if we are going to avoid conflict. Jack Straw, in his quiet, tactful way, was wise to raise a big subject, as he did. I am not quite so sure about the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, who six months before the Scots parliamentary election has just announced that he advocates Scottish independence. We await results, but I do not know what is going to happen after that. What school should nowadays be about is beautifully described by Karen Armstrong in her recent book, The Great Transformation. Tracing the development of the great religions of the world from their origins in 1600 to 900 BC, she shows how from the beginning and today those religions at heart embody a shared purpose. All seek to promote sympathy and understanding between people. She makes one wonder if that is what our faith leaders must remember as we proceed into the future with our policies. In the conclusion, the author writes: "““There can be no simple answers. We must learn to see things from other people’s point of view. If religion is to bring light to our broken world we need … to go in search of the lost heart, the spirit of compassion that lies at the heart of all our traditions””." I believe that my noble friend Lord Baker’s amendment would help young people to do that. There are many problems that will have to be overcome, because if we are to shape a future in which our young people can compete in the modern world, we cannot have exclusive schools.