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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I shall be very brief. I suspect that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, is unworkable, for the reasons given by, among others, the two noble and learned Lords who addressed the House. The horse may well have bolted because I am not sure how one could apply the 25 per cent quota to the new independent trust schools, which will be substantially financed by the state. I am not clear about it, but I guess that it would be very difficult to do that, therefore there is always a door open to escape from the requirements that might be laid upon the schools in the maintained and public sectors. Having said that, I recognise the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Baker. There are real issues here about how we deal with separate faith schools. I will conclude by saying that I am very sorry that, in this debate, we have not looked at all at the concept of confederation between schools. We cannot, I believe, make the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, work; I would not support it even if I thought that we could. I am troubled that we have had almost no discussion of the extremely helpful and fertile concept of confederation between schools, whereby schools retain their own governing bodies, but share a great many activities, and even some courses and teaching, so that there is a real mixture of cultures and faiths within schools. My noble friend Baroness Sharp, with her usual sagacity, proposed as long ago as the Education Act 2002 that we should look very carefully at the concept of confederation between schools of different faiths and non-faith schools. I am sorry that this much more constructive and, indeed, serious proposal has not been given much time in this House. I hope it will be given time by the Minister sooner or later.