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Education Bill

My Lords, I apologise to your Lordships' House for not being here at the beginning of the debate. I want to make a few remarks in response to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. No one is suggesting that the teaching of Christianity should be banned from school. That is not the point at all. The question is whether people should be required to take part in worship. It is all very well for the right reverend Prelate to say that pupils can be excluded, but being excluded puts them aside, apart from everyone else, and makes them feel outcasts. That surely cannot be the intention. One final point is that all sorts of things are taught in school—Greek mythology for example—but nobody expects people to believe it.