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Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 192: 192: Clause 129, page 71, line 37, leave out from ““education”” to end of line 38 and insert— ““(i) in the case of a pupil of sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding, in accordance with the pupil’s own wishes; and (ii) in any other case, in accordance with the wishes of the pupil’s parent, and”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, we now return to the issue of young people of sufficient competence opting out of religious worship and religious education as it is now taught in many schools. Because this Bill forces young people to remain in some sort of education until they are 18, Clause 129 allows those over 16 to exempt themselves from religious worship. I do not believe that that goes far enough. Amendment Nos. 192 to 194 would allow a pupil of sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding to opt out of religious worship in school, and Amendment No. 195 would allow such a pupil also to exempt themselves from religious education. I want to make it clear at the outset that by using the word ““intelligence”” it is not my intention to exclude from these measures young people with special educational needs or those whose IQ is below the average. Many of those young people know their own mind in matters of morals and ethics perfectly well, and they should not be excluded from the meaning of these amendments. Since we discussed these matters in Committee, I have received briefings from a new multifaith organisation, Accord, which shares my concerns about the quality and content of religious education in the UK of today. It believes that in a pluralist society, it is important that students are taught about different values and beliefs. While this is done well in some schools, it is not in others. It reports that at the moment RE syllabuses fail to take sufficient account of the many children who are not religious, or who have a different religion from the one they are assumed to have. Many children are not receiving the benefit of instruction about the wide range of faiths in our country and around the world. Religion is an important aspect of culture and, if well taught, can add enormously to a child’s understanding of the world around him. If I believed that it was being well and broadly taught everywhere, I may not have felt the need to propose these opt-outs. Surveys have found that a high proportion of young people are not religious, and the Human Rights Act now equally protects the right to hold and to manifest either religious or non-religious beliefs. However, the views of Accord are not just those of people who profess no religion, but also those of many, of several different faiths, who are profoundly religious but are concerned about the quality of RE syllabuses. So I call their views in aid to support my case, though they have not overtly supported my amendments. I also call in aid the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which does support my amendments. Since our original discussion of this issue in debates on the Education and Inspections Act, the JCHR has produced a trenchant report with very strong recommendations to the Government. In our discussions on this Bill in July, the Minister ignored those recommendations, saying that the Government’s position had not changed since the previous Bill. Section 70 of the School Standards and Framework Act requires pupils to ““take part in”” a daily act of worship, not just to attend—a rule that is honoured more in the breach than in the observance by most schools. It is manifestly obnoxious to expect or require older children to worship a god or act in accordance with rites in which they do not believe. At the very least, that section needs to be amended to remove that requirement. Would it not be far better to require schools to have inspiring, inclusive assemblies that explore ethics to which all pupils can relate and which bring people together, rather than giving them something to mock? The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, relied heavily in his response on the so-called administrative burden on schools, suggesting that a large number of young people would seek to opt out and the so-called Gillick test would have to be applied to each. Our children are some of the most tested in the world, and I cannot see that it would be beyond the capacity of schools to include a test of all children at some stage to gauge their understanding of the importance of moral issues and the strength of their personal beliefs. As I said in July, the thing is done by school nurses every day, when young people under 16 ask for contraceptive services but do not want their parents to know. This situation does not bring schools to a halt. Giving young people their human rights under UN conventions to which we are signatories would not bring schools to a halt either, and it is not an adequate excuse. Young people would not be likely to fulfil the Gillick competence criteria until they had already sat through about 10 years of compulsory religious education and worship. If that is not enough time to convince a child that he wants to hear more, I do not think there is any justification for forcing him to carry on any longer. Passing these amendments would put pressure on the local standing advisory councils on religious education and on the agreed syllabus conferences to improve and broaden the syllabuses and bring them more into line with what children need in the 21st century to prepare them to live in our multifaith society. If the content and quality were better, fewer students would wish to opt out. It would also put pressure on those schools that do not do it already to prepare the sort of inclusive, inspiring assemblies to which I referred earlier. A lot depends on the schools themselves, but they are currently fettered by the unreasonable and unfair requirements of legislation. By these amendments, I seek to free schools and students from those constraints. I beg to move.