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Education and Inspections Bill

I was taken by surprise by the speed with which the Secretary of State came to his conclusion. I hope that he will intervene on me, because there is one point that I wish to clarify. We welcome the Lords amendments and have reached the same conclusion as the Secretary of State: they are a sensible approach to the role that schools, and particularly faith schools, can play in the promotion of community cohesion. We should pay tribute to the efforts of Lord Alton, who put an enormous amount of work into ensuring that this consensus was created, Baroness Buscombe, Lord Ahmed, Lord Sutherland and Lord Adonis, who also contributed to the creation of this consensus. Consensus has been the hallmark of the Bill. The Bill has reached this stage because the Opposition have been willing to support the Government on it. We would have liked it to be bolder, but we see that it is a step in the right direction and we welcome it. Today may see the final stages of its progress through both Houses of Parliament. We welcome the amendments because they clearly place the emphasis on the social responsibility of schools to promote cohesion. That is far better than a rigid, nationally imposed and legally enforceable quota system for new faith schools. That is why my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition last month praised the Church of England’s decision to offer at least 25 per cent. of places to children with no requirement that they be from families of practising members of the Church of England. We praised that as an example of social responsibility by an individual faith group, not as something that should lead to nationwide legislative requirements on other faith groups to do the same. The Anglican Church has gone out of its way to make it clear that, although that was its initiative, it did not necessary expect other faith groups to follow in exactly that same way. Those are matters for individual faith groups, not the state. I know from the exchange of letters that the Secretary of State has heard from Archbishop Nichols. I had a useful conversation with him in which he made absolutely clear the position of the Catholic Church, which is eloquent on the role that Catholic churches can play in the local community. We welcome this alternative approach based on inspection by Ofsted. Schools that fail to promote community cohesion will be identified and expected to take appropriate action. I had hoped to hear a bit more from the Secretary of State on the exact role of admissions codes—a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) raised. It would be helpful if the Secretary of State were able to tell us at the Dispatch Box today whether, as Lord Adonis suggested in the other place, there will be any changes in admissions codes. The Secretary of State will know that there has been some concern about possible changes to the admissions code. If he envisages any such changes, it would be helpful if he could state authoritatively as part of our exchanges exactly what they might be and what their effect would be. We also welcome the fact that the duty applies to all schools, not just faith schools, because that recognises that faith is only one of a variety of factors that we need to take into account. One argument that has impressed me, as I am sure that it has impressed Members on both sides of the House, is that faith schools can often achieve high levels of social and ethnic mix. The Catholic Church has made the point to us that, if anything, its schools achieve higher levels of ethnic and social mix than some of the secular schools in the area. That important point needs to be taken into account. The Secretary of State referred to the conversations that he had with representatives of the Muslim community. Does he agree that one of the big prizes is to attract more Muslim schools into the maintained sector? It would be welcome if those Muslim schools that are outside the maintained sector could preserve their ethos, but at the same time benefit from the breadth of the national curriculum and some of the other obligations that follow from being in the maintained sector. It would be interesting to hear from the Secretary of State about that. I had hoped that he would say more about how the Government were approaching what we understand to be negotiations with more than 100 independent Muslim schools, what he thinks might be the prospects for those negotiations, and the terms on which the schools should enter the maintained sector. I hope that that would not include, however, any suggestion of different Ofsted arrangements for maintained schools for the Muslim community. The record of most maintained faith schools is very impressive. They are producing results that are, on average, several percentage points higher than those of non-faith schools, both at primary and secondary level. Many of those schools are beacons of excellence in their communities. Above all, they are schools that many parents want their children to attend.