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Education and Inspections Bill

My hon. Friend raises a good point. No, I was not saying that. I was saying that it would have been rather perverse to have secular groups round that table, because we were discussing how faith schools can better integrate. I will, of course, have a separate discussion with the National Secular Society. What did we find out in those discussions? We found out from Muslim representatives that as a matter of policy they would want between 20 and 25 per cent. of pupils in Muslim schools to come from outside the Muslim faith. They said, with a good deal of justification, I think, that their problem was the way their schools and the faith were misrepresented. They welcomed the opportunity to have the discussion about how we can take matters forward. We could make enormous progress on a voluntary basis. If we had continued to move down the road of compulsion, I do not think we would have had the same spirit of co-operation. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East put his finger on the two main issues—with the 25 per cent. of children from outside the faith coming into faith schools, what will happen with religious education, and what will happen to the ethos of the school? He spoke as though that was not already happening. I make three important points. First, 30 per cent. of the students in Catholic schools are not from the Catholic faith. Secondly, at the King David school in Liverpool, a Jewish school, the majority of the students—never mind 20 or 30 per cent.—are not of the Jewish faith. It is an excellent school that received a brilliant Ofsted report and is working very well. Thirdly, the St. Francis of Assisi academy in Liverpool was set up as 50 per cent. Catholic and 50 per cent. Anglican in one of the most deprived areas of Liverpool. It is a brilliant school. In schools throughout the country, we have day in, day out the experience of parents not from that faith choosing faith schools. My message to my hon. Friend is that nothing has changed in that respect. On the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), sometimes—rarely—parents do not have a choice about sending their children to those schools, but usually they want to send their children there because of the ethos of the school. Muslim parents send their children to Catholic schools because they like the ethos of the school. That happens right across faiths, so we must not talk as though there is a great problem that needs to be resolved. The problems are being resolved daily by good practice in existing schools.