Education Regulations and Faith Schools — House of Commons, 2015-03-12
Topic: Civil Rights
Ian Swales (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Extreme teaching—and, indeed, extreme inspection, I suppose—is maybe what we are hearing about. Like him, I have not had any complaints from schools in my area about this issue. I do not want to predict the Minister’s speech, but the Department for Education itself has said that it is not true to suggest that schools would ever be penalised for having a faith ethos, so clearly the Department is not taking that position. If there is an issue, it is somewhere in the middle I talked about community cohesion, and there are undoubtedly potential issues there. I know we do not always like to talk about this in this House, but it is not new. We still have a huge sectarian problem in the UK in Northern Ireland. The Netherlands in the 1930s had major Protestant-Catholic problems, and one of its policy solutions was to stop educating people separately. I do not put that forward as a policy I think we should necessarily jump into, but it is notable that there are now 62 schools in Northern Ireland that are educating people on a multi-faith basis, and I think the people who live in those communities do see it as part of the peace process, in a place where sectarian divisions run very deep. I am happy to say that there are few parts of the mainland where that seems to be the case In a multicultural society, which we undoubtedly have, "respect and toleration for others" are vital, and those words are in the motion, so I do not have a problem with its wording. What we are really talking about is Ofsted acting where those things are not seen to be in place. It may well be over-acting, but it is right that it has a role to act if it sees that This is not just about parental rights, religion or the state; it is also about the child. It is important to note that article 14 of the UN convention on the rights of the child—the one that is in child-friendly language—says: "You have the right to choose your own religion and beliefs." To be fair, it goes on to say: "Your parents should help you decide what is right and wrong, and what is best for you", so there is an issue about the extent to which children should be indoctrinated and what sort of freedoms they should have. That is encapsulated in the UN convention on the rights of the child. I think children also have a right to be educated to be fit for life in the country in which they live—in this case, Britain. That goes to the heart of what sort of education they should get. Many groups have different views about this. I am standing down in a couple of weeks, but I am sure that this issue will not go away. I think it could grow with the proliferation of religions and cultures. Our laws need to be fit for purpose, as do our inspection processes and the way we fund schools As I have said, I have a partial view that not everyone in the House will agree with, but I shall finish with a quote from the chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Jonathan Romain from Maidenhead synagogue. He recently said: "I want my children to go to a school where they can sit next to a Christian, play football at break time with a Muslim, do homework with a Hindu and walk home with an atheist—and with other children getting to know what a Jewish child is like. Schools should build bridges, not erect barriers."