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Education and Inspections Bill

moved Amendment No. 3: Page 7, line 21, at end insert- ““(aa) state how the proposed school will promote community cohesion in accordance with section 38”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, this group of amendments will, I hope, pave the way to greater responsibility from schools in their role in improving integration and cohesion in the community. Amendment No. 3 is a probing amendment to ensure that the proposers of new schools are expected to set out their plans for fostering community cohesion in their submissions under Clause 7. I am sure that, with the provisions of the amendments in my name and in the names of others, that would be a routine matter. I therefore propose to spend my few moments talking about the other amendments. Of those, Amendments Nos. 7 and 19 are substantial and indeed incorporate new material. Amendment No. 24 is a matter of tidying up thereafter. Amendments Nos. 7 and 19 specify significant and important new duties and where these new duties should lie. Amendment No. 7 places a duty on the governing body of a maintained school to promote the well-being of pupils at that school and, in the case of a school in England, to promote community cohesion. Amendment No. 19 places a duty on the chief inspector to report on, "““the contribution made by the school to community cohesion””." I shall be focusing in my comments upon community cohesion; others, I am sure, will welcome and focus upon well-being. The background to this is the debate that we have been having for some weeks, nationally and within this House, on the nature and responsibilities of faith schools in our system. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for initiating an important debate on this at Report. I must, however, distinguish between paying tribute and necessarily agreeing. That is for further down the road. How are we to deal with the dangers of what David Hume referred to as ““errors in religion””? A thorough education in the history of religions indicates both the benefits that religion can give and has given to society as well as to individuals and also the disastrous consequences of what Hume called ““errors in religion””—errors which can promote exclusion rather than inclusion, myopia rather than vision, imprisonment of the mind rather than freedom of thought, zippered lips rather than free-flowing pens, and, from the point of view of the amendment before us, errors which might promote disruption rather than cohesion. These errors are dangerous, and there is no one in this House who would encourage them. In the context of education—education of the young—these errors are doubly dangerous. The question is how to avoid them, and that is the intent of these amendments. The force of the amendments is first to give a duty to school governing bodies and to point schools in the direction of promoting cohesion—that is, towards cohesion and inclusion rather than disruption and exclusion. Secondly, they would give a duty to the chief inspector to inspect and report on how effectively such a responsibility is being met. I believe that the inspection system we have is capable of doing this in a thorough, fair and comprehensive—as well as comprehensible—manner. As a way of avoiding the danger of such errors, the amendments can be commended for three distinct reasons. Many ways of avoiding the dangers of error have been proposed, but I suggest there are three reasons for supporting these amendments. First, they build on an established, proven and universally applied set of procedures developed by Ofsted over the years. This is no new and uncertain proposal introduced to deal with a specific group of new emerging schools. Secondly, they rightly link this duty to promote cohesion and the duty to inspect that with the inspection of the whole school. Let me illustrate. Among other responsibilities that the chief inspector has for reporting, he or she has to report on the quality of education, educational standards, and the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils. These matters for report and inspection are a roll call of the markers of excellence in education. The point that this makes is that cohesion in our society starts with literacy and numeracy, with educational standards and quality of education. That has to do with cohesion in society, but it does not end there. Cohesion in society has much more to it than that. The amendment affirms, and does so emphatically, that in our society, promoting cohesion shares in the order of priorities at the heart of our education system. The third advantage of this way of dealing with potential difficulties born of errors is that our call for cohesion in society is presented not as an additional rod for the back of new or even existing schools; this is not a new way of subjugating the aspirations of schools. Rather, it is a positive encouragement to join an educational system which is informed by the core values and aspirations of our society, of which cohesion is one, and rightly features very highly in current times. It is also an invitation to participate in encouraging those values—here summed up by the word ““cohesion””—and to help embed these values in the education system, the education that is provided by each school according to its own lights, if they are good schools, as a whole education for the wholeness of individuals within society. In addition, it is clear that this group of amendments is a clear statement that judgments will be made, and they will be acted upon, within a legislative and universal envelope. These judgments are to be made by the school inspection system about the effectiveness and the will of governing bodies to promote community cohesion. We expect that such reports will be acted upon if necessary. They are not simply pieces of paper; there is a firmness and an intention to deal with the dangers of what would disrupt, rather than provide, cohesion within the community. On behalf of what I can regard only as a rainbow coalition, I beg to move.