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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I would like to speak to Amendment No. 79, because I have a series of amendments to that government amendment. It looks complicated, but it is not as complicated as it would appear. Amendment No. 79 is to be moved by my noble friend Lord Adonis and concerns the right of sixth-form pupils to be excused attendance at religious worship. Currently only parents can withdraw pupils from collective worship and religious education through the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. Following his undertaking in Committee, my noble friend tabled a government amendment to allow sixth-formers to withdraw from collective worship. The Joint Committee on Human Rights issued a report on 13 October noting that human rights incompatibility would be reduced if older pupils were permitted to withdraw themselves from collective worship and religious education, and the criterion for ability to withdraw should be their competence to make such a decision. The differences between my amendment and that of my noble friend are as follows. In my noble friend’s, qualifying pupils can take advantage only of part of the statutory withdrawal rights enjoyed by the parents. The amendment does not extend withdrawal to religious education for competent pupils as the law already does for parents and the JCHR suggests that it should. Why should a 15 year-old who is mature enough to have the pill or an abortion without parental knowledge not be capable of deciding whether she wants to pray or attend religious education in her state school until she is well over 16 under the government amendment? If the withdrawal from religious education is exercisable by parents, why should it not be for parents considered adults for human rights purposes? Is there a reason why religious education withdrawal should be withheld? We do not think so. Even for schools with a religious ethos, some pupils attend at their parents’ behest, some may simply have been enrolled because there was no other suitable school and some may have changed their mind about whether they wish to attend. Why should they be forced to attend religious education if they do not wish to? Both the Catholic Education Service and the RE Council have suggested that attendance at a religious school is some kind of package where pupils are obliged to attend worship and presumably religious education—in essence leaving their human rights behind at the school gate. It is hardly as if they will be ignorant of religious matters. They will already have had to sit through10 years of RE. Religious education is not supposed to be religious instruction. It is not a national curriculum subject so there is little national or even LEA control over the syllabus and style of teaching. Voluntary aided schools with a religious ethos are permitted very wide scope in what they teach. AtSt Luke’s Sixth Form RC College in Sidcup, religious education included compulsory attendance at certain events. Even pupils over 16 were not permitted to leave when they expressed a strong desire to do so. More than 100 of them rebelled at that time. It is interesting to see precisely what the JCHR said as it is very important for this discussion. It stated: "““Children enjoy the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion under both Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 14(1) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UK is also under an obligation to assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, and to give those views due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child. The latter obligation finds expression in UK law in the concept of ‘Gillick competence’, according to which a child should be treated as legally competent to make their own decisions if they have ‘sufficient maturity and intelligence’ to understand the nature and implications of their decision””." The document continues: "““In our view the current legal framework is incompatible with these obligations in so far as it fails to guarantee a child of sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding the right to withdraw from both compulsory religious education and collective worship. An amendment to the Bill which gave pupils over the age of 16 the right to withdraw from collective worship would therefore reduce the extent of the incompatibility of the present law with the UK’s human rights obligations, but it would not remove that incompatibility altogether.""To remove the incompatibility, in our view, it would be necessary to go further in two respects: first, by granting a right to withdraw from religious education as well as collective worship; and, second, by affording the right to withdraw from both religious education and collective worship to any pupil of sufficient maturity, understanding and intelligence to make an informed decision about whether or not to withdraw””." This is a sensible amendment to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I and my supporters believe that the way forward is to accept the principle involved in Amendment No. 79, but to make these amendments, which would bring it in line with the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.