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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, gales of belief have been blowing around this Chamber tonight—the beliefs of those who are atheists and Roman Catholics and even a moderate wind from the Anglican Benches. It seems rather feeble then to say that one is an agnostic but, feeble as I am, that does not mean that I do not believe anything. It means that I share beliefs with many people. Like all noble Lords, I believe in a tolerant society in which an attempt is made to understand the position of other people and their formal cultural influences. I believe in a society in which freedom of speech and thought and teaching children to ask awkward questions, be it about religion or science or whatever, are all tremendously important. Most of all, in tonight’s context, I believe, like all noble Lords, in an inclusive society. No one has preached the cause of exclusion, nor would I expect that in this place. The question is one of ways and means and how we capture that in our education system. To make one point in passing, I think there has been a confusion in the debate between religious worship and religious education in schools. Government Amendment No. 79 gets it just about right on religious worship. In relation to religious education, I would resist any attempt to diminish its place in schools. Indeed, if our political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic knew more about religion—the Islamic religion and the Christian religion and the way in which extremes can show themselves in those religions—we would be in a better position now than we are in all sorts of other contexts. I also believe in the importance of a remark by David Hume, which I have quoted before in this place. He said: "““Whereas the mistakes in philosophy are merely ridiculous””—" I speak as a philosopher, noble Lords will understand— "““those in religion are dangerous””." I think we all agree to that, because we know that whatever form of religion we espouse or reject, there are dangerous extreme forms. The question is how we ensure that our school system is moving in the right direction. That is all we will do in this Bill; we will not change the situation radically forever, but we can move it continually in the right direction. I do not support the notion of quotas, as I do not think that they would work. The reasons for that have been given; I would repeat them but it is too late. However, I propose an alternative way in which to attempt to deal with the issue and the dangers of religion and what will be initially schools that recruit from a particular religious community—and I look to the Anglican example here. It is to use our inspection system thoroughly and radically and for Ministers to back up the judgments that will come from that inspection system. Ofsted has the responsibility to report on the ethos of a school. These issues are all partly to do with the ethos of a school and the direction in which it moves. It has to report on the social, moral, spiritual and cultural education provided for pupils in schools. Again, all these are fundamental to the direction in which we should be moving. Of course now we have citizenship taught in schools. All that comes within these three bands. If instructions to inspectors were strengthened and made more precise so that these areas were inspected clearly and certainly in the case of all faith schools, with a punctiliousness that we would all benefit from, I would look to Ministers to be willing to support the tough judgments that will come up in some places and act on them. There will be tough judgments to make and Ministers will have to stand firm against a press campaign and a community campaign—and that applies to Christian schools as well as Muslim schools and Jewish schools. An amendment could be brought forward at Third Reading, if that were thought to be worthwhile.