Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)

MR SIMON GOULDEN, DR MOHAMMED MUKADAM, MR NICK MCKEMEY AND MS OONA STANNARD

22 MAY 2006

  Q280  Chairman: Most of the state schools I visit, the good ones, have a pretty clear code of what a good citizen is and that is not only taught in citizenship classes; it imbues the behaviour and activity of the school. Is that not the case?

  Mr Goulden: I am sure you are right but I am here representing Jewish faith schools and I cannot talk for the others.

  Q281  Chairman: There was just a little bit of, "We are all right but we are worried about the rest of the world".

  Ms Stannard: May I step out of my Catholic role for a moment and look back to my time as an HMI and also the time when I acted as a consultant to the National Healthy Schools standard? I have no doubt that there are other schools that do citizenship very well too based on good human values which, of course, people will say come from good Christian values. I am not knocking other schools and saying we do everything supremely well by any means. I think we can find some jolly good examples if we look at things like the National Healthy Schools standard and work in community schools too.

  Q282  Chairman: The British Humanists have given evidence to us on this: some people might argue that faith schools are the problem, that the last 1,000 or 2,000 years has been a history of different religions fighting each other in the most unpleasant way, whether they be Catholics, Protestants, Jews or Muslims. The faith is the problem, not the answer.

  Ms Stannard: Mr Sheerman, I could not possibly agree with you on that one. What we might be hearing about is tribalism at times rather than religion and I think also the different faiths have an amazing history of providing education to people who become well developed and assimilated citizens serving very well the wide diversity of the society in which they live.

  Dr Mukadam: I think it is about how schools and the education institutes teach citizenship through a faith perspective; that is the important thing. Done properly I think it will show and it does indeed show that young people can become very good citizens because they have a solid base, their own faith. All faiths teach a belief in God and to treat every human being as they would themselves like to be treated. It is how it is taught which is important and in my opinion in our comprehensive schools we employ a very reductionist approach because we do not provide a full faith perspective in developing good citizenship. As a person coming from a faith background I feel that we are denying an opportunity to our young people to develop an inquiring mind to search for the eternal truth and then to find universal values that will help throughout life's struggles to become good citizens. From a faith perspective I do feel that there needs to be a good debate on how good citizenship can be taught but taught from a faith perspective. That is a debate that I would welcome, not just for faith schools but also across different schools, those schools of no faith, simply because it is important to give young people a holistic approach in education rather than the one that exists in many of our schools which I term a reductionist approach.

  Q283  Mr Chaytor: Can I pursue that line of argument and ask each of our witnesses are you confident that, in the schools you represent, within the citizenship component of the curriculum the school could manage an objective discussion of the issues surrounding the war in Iraq? I would like to hear from each of you. How would the faith perspective come into that discussion?

  Mr McKemey: I think the best answer I can give there is that we would expect that that discussion would be freely undertaken and that all the issues could be discussed openly and freely. In our case we talk about Christian values driving the school and two of them are openness and honesty. Over the last two years I have been involved in developing a new section 48 system for our schools and somebody in one particular diocese said, "But it is not really very Christian to criticise, is it?", and we said, "Actually, we think that is the essence of our belief, that we are open, we are honest, but we can do that in a loving and supporting way, so we would expect that any issue can be dealt with". Obviously, you have an enormous range of approaches you need to bring to that, depending on the age, the size of the school, the kinds of pupils you have got, if you have pupils in the school who are particularly associated with that. For instance, that of a school full of service families who are in Iraq and this was very much part of the open agenda in that school. That is what we would expect. I could not possibly sign for every single Church of England school to say they do but that is an expectation which I think they would share.

  Q284  Mr Chaytor: Had the Archbishop of Canterbury made a statement about the moral issues involved in that war or another war would that influence the way in which the issue was discussed within Anglican faith schools?

  Mr McKemey: I think it could do if it was a particular headline issue and the teachers had noticed and it had been taken on board. I think anything the Archbishop of Canterbury said would probably be broadly reflected across other areas of the church anyway, but others would differ, so there would be a range of views on that which would equally be explored.

  Chairman: I think we had better contrast the last Archbishop with this one. We will not go into that! David?

  Q285  Mr Chaytor: I am just interested in our witnesses commenting on this question.

  Ms Stannard: We are educating pupils in citizenship; we are not indoctrinating them, so the importance of being able to hear evidence and listen respectfully to one another's views and discern from that would in my view be one of the most critical aspects of good citizenship education, so I would hope that that which you are asking would in fact be done well in our schools, whether it is directly under the title of citizenship or there would be other areas of the curriculum it could come into as well. In fact, I was interested when I was getting feedback from some of our schools in advance of today to hear from one school in an area close to Army bases where the Army has been in and working with senior pupils to do simulations of the issues facing the peacekeeping force, in this case in Bosnia and the problem-solving and so on that goes with that. Giving people the space to share their views, to share opinions and to delve down further I think is one of the positives in this.

  Q286  Mr Chaytor: Had there been again a statement from the Vatican would that influence the nature of the discussion and the amount of space that a Catholic school could provide for that discussion?

  Ms Stannard: Certainly it could influence the manner in which the work was introduced and the material that would be covered and perhaps where it would be covered. In our schools we expect that 10% of curriculum time will be given to religious education, so something coming up from the Vatican in that way may well find a very quick home there and plenty of time for it, but even coming from the Vatican does not mean that it does not get discussed and even possibly tossed around and questioned by some people.

  Q287  Chairman: Are there any questions in your Catholic schools that you would evade because they are too difficult; they are uncomfortable?

  Ms Stannard: I certainly hope not, Chairman, because to evade such questions would run counter to good education. I think what I would not in any type of school be dwelling upon is where there is a prying into the particular lifestyle, relationships and so on of the members of staff in that school. Whether that is more likely to happen in citizenship is not something I am suggesting.

  Q288  Chairman: Or it might be Catholic teaching on contraception that you were discussing, the high rate of teenage pregnancy, say, or the attitude to contraception in Africa where HIV/AIDS is such a problem.

  Ms Stannard: I do not think the discussion would be avoided.

  Q289  Chairman: It is a difficult area, is it not?

  Ms Stannard: It is a difficult area but it would be very likely to come up and it would not be evaded. It would be discussed as is appropriate to the age range of those pupils. In fact, it is important that it does come up when they are reading about it in the media and so on.

  Mr Goulden: On the war in Iraq, I have no doubt that there have been a number of lively debates, particularly in Key Stage 4, discussing the morality of war as an overarching subject. There is a religious imperative and there are certainly Jewish religious attitudes towards war and whether there is such a thing as a just war and who can wage war and why and a whole range of things and what you can do and what our texts teach us about what happens when a war is waged, what you do with prisoners of war and the like. There are texts going back 3,500 years to teach us that. Whether specifically the rights and wrongs of the war in Iraq have been discussed I could not say.

  Q290  Mr Chaytor: Should they be?

  Mr Goulden: As opposed to any other war, Chairman? Just the war in Iraq or every other war?

  Q291  Chairman: The difficult ones; the crisis in the Middle East, Palestine and Israel. They must be difficult.

  Mr Goulden: Undoubtedly there are many lively discussions on the subject of the situation in the Middle East and it is inevitable in a Jewish school that that would happen. It is inevitable when you find that in many of the schools the pupils will be taking trips, either on their own or in school groups, to Israel. It is undoubtedly a question that is raised and discussed in enormous detail. The subject would not be shirked. I do not think the Chief Rabbi has come out about the war in Iraq though.

  Q292  Mr Chaytor: On the question of the discussion, each of you is saying that the discussion would take place, but the question is would the framework for discussion be objective and balanced? That is the issue, is it not? Could a Jewish school have an objective and balanced discussion about the election victory of Hamas, for example?

  Mr Goulden: Of course.

  Q293  Mr Chaytor: And you would expect that to be a principle of the teaching of citizenship within a Jewish school?

  Mr Goulden: Of course, it is not British citizenship but we have strayed a little bit into international politics, which is a fine discussion. I have no doubt that a whole range of subjects could be dealt with within history, within citizenship, indeed through literature and all of these different things. The subject would not be swept under the carpet; that is an absolute certainty. The phrase "two Jews, three opinions" is one which should always be remembered.

  Mr McKemey: We would see the purpose of citizenship as being to equip young people to be able to undertake those discussions and to be able to work over a range of topics, and probably also to be able to cope within what we would like to think is a Christian learning community with a range of possibly violently different opinions and views and still remain a cohesive community. That is part of the skill base that we would be looking to develop in the sense that you may have rather extreme views about somebody else's opinion but that is not tantamount to the view that you have about the individual. We would want to put it in that context. The other point I would make is that I do not think any faith school could be hermetically sealed from the outside world and those discussions will occur whether the school is consciously engaged or not.

  Dr Mukadam: The straight answer is yes, we would not only allow it; we would encourage discussion on difficult issues, and in principle that can be done in an objective fashion because the highest object is the truth within a faith school regardless of your affiliation to a political party or this party or that party. The highest object is the truth. In that sense in principle there is no objection at all and it would pose no problems to have an objective discussion on issues such as the war in Iraq or, for that matter, any other thing. I believe it is important that these discussions take place in school. The only problem is that we need to make sure that it is the right teacher who has a good knowledge about Islam and also a broad approach in seeking to establish that young people are thinking things through in a way that will benefit society, always bearing in mind that object, the truth.

  Q294  Helen Jones: Following on from what David asked you, what do you think the advantages and the disadvantages are of trying to teach citizenship in faith-based schools? You have outlined the advantages for us of a very clear religious framework. Are there not also disadvantages in a multi-faith, multi-ethnic society of having to try to teach citizenship in a school where your pupils perhaps come from very similar backgrounds and, if so, how do you overcome those disadvantages? How do you engage not simply with your own community but also with the wider community?

  Mr Goulden: I think it is a mistake to think that a faith-based school, even a school where 100% of the children are of the same faith, is necessarily a homogeneous school. All of our schools are comprehensive in their intake. Many of them will have children from homes where English is an additional language and many of them are first or second generation in this country, so to think that they are homogeneous in the way that perhaps a school in Cornwall or Cumbria might be is perhaps something that needs to be reflected on. How one teaches in a single faith school about other faiths is by engaging with other schools. I certainly know of Jewish schools which have joint programmes and meetings with pupils from other faith schools and other state schools. A number of schools have programmes where they bring in experts, imams or others from Christian denominations, to talk about their religion and what it is like to be a black West Indian in London or Britain today, and going out into other schools, having inter-school football competitions and chess competitions and debating societies. It means that the schools are not hermetically sealed, nor indeed should they be. That is very important. I hope I have answered your question.

  Q295  Helen Jones: You have partly answered it. What I am trying to get at is this. You can teach citizenship within Islamic schools, Jewish schools, Muslim schools, I understand that absolutely; my own background is all in Catholic education, but the difficulty, it seems to me, when you are doing that, and perhaps another member of the panel might try and answer that, is that what children miss out on is daily interaction with people from different backgrounds, different faiths and so on. How do you promote the kind of respect, tolerance, acceptance, which I think was a word that Simon used earlier, which we want our children to grow up with in a very mixed society?

  Dr Mukadam: That is a very important question you have raised and one which is quite often put to us by many different people. I would point to the evidence which is around us. If you see young people who have gone through faith schools, we need to follow them through to further education colleges, which tend to be comprehensive, the universities and, of course, into their own careers, and then look at the evidence to see whether there has been a failure or a success in terms of promoting good citizenship. We can make judgments on whether or not these young people find it easy to integrate with members of different communities and whether or not these people hold deep respect for their fellow citizens, regardless of their faith or no faith and so forth. There are factors there and empirical evidence which needs to be looked at and so forth. In so far as the Association of Muslim Schools, and of course I am sure my other colleagues would say so as well, we have had some evidence which shows that young people who come from faith backgrounds do not have the facilities to be able to interact, in their foundation years and secondary years, with people of different faiths on the whole within the school. However, I would like to say that the values we teach, nurture and develop within them, such as having deep respect for fellow human beings, the skills to communicate and so forth, are so profound that when they do go into colleges and universities and take up their rightful place in our wider society, you will find that there is no problem, they are good citizens and, in a sense, they find it quite easy to integrate, to play their rightful role in society. I would also like to point to the evidence which exists regarding those disturbances in our northern cities and, indeed, the atrocities which we all know about. To the best of my knowledge, I have not seen a single person who was caught, let alone convicted, who went to a faith school. If we separate our preconceived understandings and notions from the empirical data that is around we will find that generally speaking there is not a problem or a disadvantage so long as the teaching within those faith schools promotes the universal values which are, of course, to treat any other human being, regardless of his or her faith or background, the same as you would like to be treated yourself. These fundamental values ensure that although they do not have the practical opportunity to interact within schools, but let us face it school is only part of their lives, there are other areas where they can put that into practice. The data which is available clearly shows that if we use different approaches it does not necessarily disadvantage these young people in the way that we are talking.

  Q296  Helen Jones: Can I ask about some of the practicalities before we go on. I appreciate what you are saying, Dr Mukadam. If there is any evidence that you would like to give us later that would be very helpful. When we look at citizenship, we are also looking at active citizenship, about people becoming engaged within communities. What steps do faith schools take, in your experience, to ensure that when we talk about community engagement, for instance, it is not simply their own faith community? We can all stay within our own comfort zones, can we not? How do we overcome that?

  Mr McKemey: If I can add a little footnote to the previous question. 38.4% of all children in Church of England schools are in rural schools and a lot of those are very small schools and are mono-cultural. We think the issue of developing notions of broader citizenship across British society in those contexts is extremely important. Very often the local perspectives are, "Why do we need to know about other cultures and faiths because they are not here?" Equally, those children are probably going to grow up and go and work in Birmingham or London or somewhere else and make their way in the world, so we think there is a duty there to them, and I just wanted to put that down.

  Ms Stannard: I am pleased that you have asked that question. When I was preparing for this I was delighted at the number of examples that came through which show citizenship as a catalyst for young people working in many activities beyond their own school. I think that is important if we are talking about faith schools or community schools. I would certainly refute any idea of faith schools being insular and not seeking all sorts of opportunities to work with others. For example, I am getting heads and others telling me about local youth forum, things like the Young Essex Assembly, shared mock magistrate trials, youth parliaments, running Make Poverty History campaigns together, Amnesty International campaigns across schools, and hearing about some schools in Bradford where the Catholic school had been working with a school where there were many Muslim pupils to offer a lunch club to the women of the area to get them meeting and talking together. I think things like that show where citizenship education is doing a lot to prompt working across communities rather than seeing citizenship in faith schools as necessarily being any more separatist.

  Q297  Mr Marsden: In your opening statements all four of you talked about the importance of citizenship being absolutely interlinked with what you are trying to do as faith schools and therefore, I think, if I remember rightly, all four of you said it was so closely interlinked with everything that those schools should be doing. Interestingly enough, as we drill down with some of the questions from my colleagues, particularly the questions which David Chaytor asked, what appears to me to come out very strongly is that some of the most striking ways in which you address those issues are through looking at specific subjects. I hesitate in present company to say the devil is in the detail, but is there not some case—I will start off with you, Nick, because you were the one who talked about the immense breadth of the sorts of schools you represent, and as a fellow Anglican I well understand it—for saying that perhaps you should take a closer look and see whether in fact some of these citizenship issues should not be more ring-fenced in order to provide the very valuable opportunities which you have all given specific examples of?

  Mr McKemey: Do you mean there should be a specific focus on a particular point?

  Q298  Mr Marsden: What I think I am saying is you gave some indication—if I am misconstruing it, forgive me—of the preference for the idea that citizenship should go through the whole ethos with the school rather than saying, "This is citizenship half hour, and this week we are going to discuss Iraq or contraception" or whatever it might be. The point I am putting to you is given the enormous variety, particularly of Anglican schools, would it not make more sense not to assume that all schools will do what the best schools will do, which is to do both, and look more specifically at ring-fencing sometime to discuss the sorts of issues which you have all agreed are valuable?

  Mr McKemey: I think to some extent within the curriculum it is going to be about the quality of the broad curriculum, including areas where you might identify something like opportunities for social service, which is something that a lot of their schools, for instance, were keen on, or areas for developing the ability to discuss, debate and weigh arguments and so on. In that sense, we would agree with that approach and that is why I think we would like to support not just a notion of citizenship but some more clearly defined ideas as to what we are looking at there. When I talked about shallow tolerance, in a sense that is a rather lazy concept, it is about going beyond those things. Broadly, whether it is delivered through the subject curriculum or in other ways—and in small schools these things, by and large, are delivered as cross-curricula holistic topics, so that can be done—it is more complicated in large secondary schools. I think there are bigger dangers in large secondary schools of getting inept pockets of something, because it is there they are going to do it. I think it is very much about the quality with which you deliver it. I would agree that we need to pick out certain areas. I think it comes back to the point I was making that we have a focus in this inspection forum that we have got which is about how does the distinctive Christian character of the school meet the needs of all learners, and within that there is the focus on developing the whole child in every aspect, and we would see citizenship within that. What you are saying is you need particular things to make it work and, yes, we would agree with that.

  Q299  Mr Marsden: Again, speaking earlier you talked about—I think you mentioned it more than once—some of the feedback you have had from your heads about the pressure on the time on the curriculum and so on and so forth. Again, given the vast range of schools that you are representing, is there not a danger that if there is not some quite specific ring-fencing the good schools will always do the mixture of working across the curriculum, doing the specific stuff and indeed picking up the volunteering and community service which you referred to and my colleague Helen Jones asked about? Is there not a danger that the coasting schools will just either say, "Oh well, we are a Catholic school and this is not viewed in our ethos. We will either not do it at all specifically or possibly it will get shoehorned into the tail ends of PSHE lessons"?

  Ms Stannard: I think one might describe our education system as a bit of a stick and carrot system at the moment with the inspection and monitoring and so on. My experience has been that our schools operate within a mixed economy, and there is evidence of some ring-fencing, particularly years where time is devoted throughout the curriculum on a weekly basis to citizenship and other examples of discrete packages alongside what is also being provided for cross-curricula. I would also say it is going to be very important for any type of school that we have Ofsted monitoring what is happening in citizenship and its provision so that the very thing you fear does not happen and we know what the state of the nation is in terms of the provision and quality. Maybe I have not interpreted your question correctly?


 
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