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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I am also a signatory to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. I am always amazed how much theological energy there is still left, especially when we debate education. I wonder whether the Minister may sometimes feel he is back in the age of Gladstone, about whom he knows a great deal. All the issues we are discussing today would have been completely familiar to the grand old man, and he would have attempted to discourse on them at immense length, though much more eruditely than any of us can probably manage—except perhaps the Bishops’ Bench. The basic historical situation is perfectly clear. The Roman Catholics, having been driven into a defensive posture by nonconformist attack, have long since joined forces with the Church of England in dogmatic defence of the 1902 Education Act, as amended in 1944, which, in Lloyd George’s words, ““put Rome on the rates””. This is exactly the same debate as we were having in 1902, only now it is not Rome but Mecca. I dare say that the best solution would have been that proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that most rational of men: that all state education, new and old, should be severely secular, with religious education left to churches, Sunday schools, mosques and other private foundations. That was essentially the solution of the Church/state conflict in France, but they were too logical for us. That is not the position we are faced with here; we have run a dual system in which church and voluntary schools have received state money, have been supported by the taxpayer and have had to give very little in return over the 100 years or more that the system has existed. I know that they want to continue that, as they had a good deal from the state. The 1944 Act established a principle, of which we should be aware in considering the amendment, that voluntary schools were supposed to give something in return for state support. They could opt to be controlled and obtain 100 per cent grant, or aided and get 50 per cent grant, or have special agreements and a 75 per cent grant. Each had a graduated obligation attached to it—the grant was in inverse ratio to the freedom to provide denominational instruction. In other words, the less they got, the freer they were to be religious missionaries. The principle is clear; if the state gives money to schools, it has a right to a say in school policy and aims. What aims of educational policy do the Government want to see served by allowing new schools to be set up? That goes back to a debate that we have been having for the past 10 to 15 years, the main point of which is that such schools are part of the Government’s choice agenda. Some of us have urged for a long time the idea that parents should be given a wider choice than they now have regarding to which schools they send their children. The Government could have pursued that by allowing only secular promoters to set up state schools. In fact, as I understood it, the main clamour for new state-supported schools came from Muslim communities. So the Government decided, as part of their choice agenda, to put Mecca on the rates, just as Rome was put on the rates in 1902. The Church of England and Roman Catholics do not want to disturb the existing concordat. They are relaxed that Muslim schools can be fitted into it without any major change. But we need something more robust, as I suggested in my previous intervention. First, we are dealing with large, newly arrived communities, not old, established ones. That presents us with problems of a completely different order from those that gave rise to the Church/state debates of the previous century. Nebulous words, or even instructions, such as ““promoting social cohesion”” are inadequate to that situation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, pointed out. Secondly, the position is more complicated because Islam has more implications for the curriculum than Christian denominations. The problem is the requirement stated in a standard text that Islamic education should in all respects conform to Koranic guidance. That is particularly relevant to such areas of the curriculum as physical education, swimming, art, music, dance and sex education. Do we want government money to be invested in such deeply separated curricula? We should not want that and we should impose some requirement. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, is one way of ensuring that Mecca will not be put on the rates without substantial modifications. Requiring Muslim schools to take 25 per cent non-Muslim pupils will be a continuous check on any tendency to extreme separation, which would otherwise become unchecked. There are other ways of achieving greater integration of educational practices, but until the Government come up with something more robust, I urge the House to support the amendment.