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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I begin by saying to the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that I respect those who take the view that there should not be faith schools, but it is because we have faith schools that we havethe amendment. To the noble Earl, I say that I understand his point and I am glad that he made it. If the amendment stated just that schools should be in favour of community cohesion, he would be right, but it states ““promote””. There is an active verb there and that makes the difference. To the noble Baroness, Lady David, I say that I listened to what she said about twinning. That could be one way in which cohesion could be promoted in particular cases. I join with others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for promoting—no, provoking is the right word—the amendment. I am glad to hear support because I have felt for a long time that this is the kind of thing that we needed state schools and faith schools to be doing actively. I have argued actively for that within my own Church and more widely. The noble Lord said that there were limits within which it was practical to expect schools of different faiths to relate to one another. I understand that. But I have been to Church of England schools that predominantly contain children of the Muslim faith. They get on and it works. We play Pakistan at hockey and it works—except that they win. So there are these opportunities. I want to be brief, so I mention a practical suggestion for promoting cohesion that came fromSir Cyril Taylor, chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. He wrote a paper arguing that one of the problems in promoting community cohesion is that many immigrants do not have much capacity to speak English. That is especially true of many Muslim mothers who come to this country. Many of them cannot speak any English. His proposal is that schools in such areas should take it on themselves to run English classes after school for those people. He points out that the Learning and Skills Council has recently withdrawn funding for such courses in Tower Hamlets, where there is a huge demand for them. I say to the Minister that that is something that is practical, useful, to the point and deserves funding. Perhaps, in the fullness of time, it would be good if the Minister made available non-statutory guidance on what constitutes good practice in that regard.