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Education and Inspections Bill

There are two questions arising from the amendments on which I seek assurances and answers from the Secretary of State. The first relates to my intervention to ask whether a parent sending a child to a faith school under the 25 per cent. voluntary agreement would be able to say, straight-faced, ““I want to withdraw my child from the religious elements of the education.”” My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) believes that if parents have chosen to send their children to a faith school, it would be wrong to withdraw the children from religious lessons. However, parents do not necessarily have a choice. Often, the only neighbourhood schools, especially at primary level, are faith schools. If parents want their child to travel only a short distance to school, they have to send the child to a faith school. The alternative is to subject the child to a much longer journey each day, which we believe is undesirable. There is not always a choice, so the Secretary of State has to explain what guidance he will offer schools on determining their policies in respect of non-believers at a school where religious lessons are the norm. The second question is how on earth do we inspect for community cohesion? Which model of cohesion do we think is the right one? Will inspectors be inspected to find out whether they have a proper understanding of what is meant by community cohesion? There is an ongoing and important debate in which some say that they are not sure that the celebration of different identities and views is the correct model for British society in the 21st century—they argue that we should be urging a far greater degree of homogeneity of understanding, reference points and signposts to bring people together. How can I know whether an Ofsted inspector is knowledgeable and has a coherent view? Will the Government state what they mean by their model of community cohesion?