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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 147-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE education and skills committee
Monday 11 December 2006 THE MOST REVEREND VINCENT NICHOLS and DR MUHAMMAD ABDUL BARI MR RAJINDER SINGH SANDHU, RABBI MARK KAMPF, MR TIM MILLER and MS RACHEL ALLARD Evidence heard in Public Questions 609 - 708
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Monday 11 December 2006 Members present Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair Mr Douglas Carswell Mr David Chaytor Jeff Ennis Paul Holmes Helen Jones Fiona Mactaggart Mr Gordon Marsden Stephen Williams Mr Rob Wilson ________________ Witnesses: The Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Birmingham, Chairman of the Catholic Education Service; and Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain; gave evidence. Q609 Chairman: Can I welcome Archbishop Vincent Nichols and Dr Bari to our proceedings. I have already said to them that this is a very important inquiry for us, this inquiry into citizenship, what we mean by it, what the scope of it is and how it is best delivered in the educational setting. We are drawing somewhere towards the end of the inquiry, so we have put a lot of store on this session, and I should warn you, Archbishop and Dr Bari, that the Committee gets dangerous towards the end of an inquiry when we actually know something about the subject. What I want to ask you is, in terms of how we tackle citizenship and skills, is this something sort of trendy and fashionable, at the moment, is it something that has always happened in schools that you are familiar with, and how do you see citizenship at the moment; can we start with Archbishop Nichols? Archbishop Nichols: Preparing to come here this afternoon has been very interesting for me, because I have had to do a bit of reading and find out a lot more about the expectations around the topic of citizenship. I have come up with a little definition which was helpful to me and I want to keep in mind, at least. Citizenship I would define as the active and creative role that every person is called to play in the local, national and global community. That is a kind of starting-point. Another thing then relates very well to the three interrelated components which seem to have been put forward by the DfES and others, making up the substance of citizenship; those three are social and moral responsibility, community involvement and political literacy. It is around those three that I would hope to shape my contribution and hopefully make it helpful to you. Taking those three, there are certainly some things that are very familiar and, in that sense, would not be novel in the work and procedure of a Catholic school, but there would be others that I would have to say I have no memory of delving into when I was at school and I think they would centre around particularly the last, the political literacy. I think those three headings are the ones I would dwell on and could go on about a little bit, I could give evidence under each of the three, but I would rather pace it as you wish rather than I wish. Q610 Chairman: Thank you, Archbishop. Dr Bari? Dr Bari: Thank you, Chairman. I think, when it comes to the ethos of Islam, education is a holistic one, where citizenship, responsibility or duties, they are integrated within the Muslim education, so it is not a separate subject as such, it is part of one's own endeavour as to how to deal with others, with the society, with the state. Muslims consider this loyalty to a country where they reside or where they are born as an inevitable responsibility, so it is a civic, political aspect as well as a religious aspect. A good Muslim who understands Islam, our religion, would be from his, or her, own initiative loyal citizens in their responsibilities towards their neighbours, to society, towards Parliament even, all themes come together as a package in Islamic education. I think Muslim faith schools, in spite of all the difficulties, are trying their best to inculcate the ethos of a holistic theme in education, where citizenship is an integrated whole of the subject. Q611 Chairman: Can I ask you both, in terms of the way in which we use citizenship to grow healthy communities, communities that understand each other, that can work together, that can live together in harmony, do you think that this is one of the most important parts of citizenship? Archbishop Nichols: I think, of the three sections, the three components, I would not take any of them as being more important than another because I think they are integrated together. For example, that strand, that component of social and moral responsibility is an essential foundation, and I think, for me, demonstrates very clearly that neither citizenship nor community cohesion can ever be properly understood in morally neutral terms, or not morally neutral activities. Quite simply, they are the seeking of a good life together and that implies within it a moral coherence and some ability to think ethically and morally. So of that strand there are great foundations that every school should be laying down from its own ethos, from its own moral cohesion. I will go on a bit further and say if a school cannot give an account of its moral ethos, of its code of life, then it is going to struggle actually to have the foundation on which to build the first component of citizenship and cohesive society, which is social and moral responsibility. I think the second is equally important, of community involvement, and that tests schools in their links with the community of which they are a part or which surrounds them. Some schools, I think, have natural advantages because they are, by definition, for example, a Catholic school, by definition, is part of a wider community, indeed a worldwide community, so it has some immediate links on which to move into action in community involvement. The third factor is, and I will keep coming back to these three, political literacy, and that, I think, is the more challenging one, probably, for many church schools. There is much evidence which I could give you of the way in which schools practise within their lives rudimentary forms of political involvement and learning the skills of debate and voting, and all the rest of it. I think all those three are integral and you cannot say that citizenship is more about one than the other; it is about all those three being together. Q612 Chairman: Archbishop, even with the best of intentions, some of your critics, of faith schools, would say that it is quite difficult to understand the broader community and living together in that community, faith schools actually militate against that because faith schools, by their very definition, cluster a faith around that school and reinforce that community's separateness. Is not that a barrier to opening up to other communities? Archbishop Nichols: I know that is what people say but it is helpful sometimes to look at some of the evidence and not to confuse schools with society. Schools, education, are precisely a realism in which people are prepared for what lies ahead, so schools are not kinds of mini practice grounds for what society is like, but they are trying to lay the foundations of effective citizenship and effective social cohesion. I think a school should be examined and tested on what it does and I would say there is evidence aplenty to show that Catholic schools, and I speak for those, actually lay the foundations, for example, of respect. The recent Ofsted study said that Catholic schools in the secondary phase are twice as effective as other schools at generating the value of respect. That is a pretty central, solid foundation and I do not think it supports those who say, "Well, they're inward-looking, enclosed communities that are concerned only about themselves." Of course, Ofsted evidence tells you - I am sure you do not need me to tell you this - that Catholic schools, ethnically and socially, are as diverse as any and they have greater proportions of some, etc. You know all those facts; you do not need me to tell you. Q613 Chairman: It does worry us sometimes, as we sit here and take evidence, some of the evidence we had when we were looking at admissions to schools, that faith schools seemed, on the evidence, to be more prone to be selective, even if that selection was done in quite a sophisticated way, in the sense that we did note a lesser number and a lesser percentage of special educational needs students and students on free school meals. If you look at the range, it seemed to be that faith schools were taking fewer of those, in percentage terms, than non-faith schools. Is not that surprising? Archbishop Nichols: I am not sure of those statistics, frankly, because they are not quite the same as the ones I have got. I think you need to go back to the fundamental point, faith schools, Catholic schools, respond to the wishes of parents and that is where the drive comes from. In that sense, parents choose schools for their children; that is the right principle, rather than schools thinking they are picking the students that they want. Q614 Chairman: You would disagree with that latter view? Archbishop Nichols: The principle from which I understand education is that it is a partnership between family and school and that the people with prime responsibility for education are the parents, and the school and the state are to assist and work together with parents, but, as far as possible, the choice of school should be with the parents. Q615 Chairman: Dr Bari, what is your view on this? Dr Bari: I think parental opinion is very important. At the end of the day, education is for individuals becoming good human beings. I want to emphasise these words 'human beings'. It is so important. One is talking about human beings as holistic things, definitely the political aspect, social, all aspects are part of the whole human being. We have seen in history that good citizens of a certain country could be very detrimental to probably good citizens of another country; that is why we have some world wars and many wars. Citizenship has to be taken in the context of creating human beings that can relate to the benefit of the wider society and the state. In that sense, I can talk about Islamic ethos of education as very holistic, and what our religion teaches is our unilateral responsibility towards our neighbours, towards society, in respect of what is done. This is important in the holistic aspect of Muslim education. The Muslim faith schools definitely at the moment are Muslim-specific but we have to appreciate that the Muslims constitute probably - they come from various backgrounds. I have been related with one of the schools in Tower Hamlets and ten, 12 ethnic minority people are within those schools, and these schools teach citizenship in a holistic manner. In the framework of individuals' identity, and identity is fundamentally important for every child, an identity, multiple identity, there is a very strong aspect of religious identity, an aspect of racial identity, an aspect of citizenship or national identity and they are not exclusive to each other, so they are complementary to each other. The citizenship education in the school that I am a governor of is given, on the whole, perspective and we have seen, when a child is given self-esteem and self-confidence in his, or her, own ethnic background, religious background and overall background, as in the neighbourhood, then that child can relate to the wider society far better than the one who does not have self-esteem or self-confidence in his, or her, identity. By nature, faith schools are selective, but over the last few months we have seen there has been some debate and Muslims have 25 per cent of children from other faiths. Muslims did not have any issue on that, we agreed, and if anything comes from that Muslim schools will be welcoming 25 per cent, or whatever percent of children, from any other faith, so that is not an issue for us. What is important is, along with the political literacy, most important is emotional engagement, so that children, the community, feel ownership of the whole system and that relates to many of the aspects of political decisions governing also communities' performance in terms of educational, employment and other performance. The community, especially those communities who are settling in new empowerment, coming from a very different background, but they need to feel that they are part of that civil society; it is a two-way process. They have to come and try to accommodate and work with the wider society, integrate positively. At the same time, those who settled in this country many decades ago and also are in the dominating community, they have to go forward as well. As I say, that is a focal responsibility. I think emotional engagement is so important for giving proper citizenship education for our children. Chairman: Thank you for that, Archbishop and Dr Bari. Q616 Mr Wilson: I think we all agree at one level, no‑one would disagree with this concept of citizenship, it is all a bit 'motherhood and apple pie' really, depending on whose interpretation of it, or definition, you think is right. Citizenship lessons in schools is a concept being pushed on schools by politically-correct-minded, muesli-crunching people from places like Islington, is it not? Archbishop Nichols: I do not know who lives in Islington. Q617 Mr Wilson: The Prime Minister used to. Archbishop Nichols: I see. If it is understood in the kind of way that I think some of the official thinking was being presented, I think I can see it serving a good purpose. I think, clearly, given those three different components that I have outlined, there will be substantial parts of the pursuit of them that will be integral to the life certainly of a Catholic school and I would imagine in many schools. There are some which I think are very proper objectives for a school to have. For example, I was in a primary school the other day and they have a school council and they have nominations, hustings, elections, the leader of the local council comes in to read out the results and install the new school council. We never had anything like that, but I think that is an excellent way for children to begin to understand, to gain political literacy, or, in the words of Sir Bernard Crick, to learn the ways in which they can take part in processes in society by which, for example, his example, they could hope to change unjust laws. I think things like political literacy are very important. Dr Bari: I think, wherever it comes from, if it serves the purpose that is fine, whether bottom up or top down. I think, where we see citizenship, and we have taken it on board and, as I mention, in spite of resource difficulty, Muslim schools, in general, have incorporated citizenship in their PSIC and in many aspects of the curriculum, not as a separate subject, probably. What we have seen over the years, since 2002, probably, I do not know, state schools have they done their job properly, so these are big questions. Q618 Mr Wilson: Do you not think that what it is actually doing is organising lessons in indoctrination, and somebody should stand up and say that is exactly what it is and that we should not be doing it and that it is nonsense? Dr Bari: I think education is not indoctrination, and people may have certain views, and very strong views, but everybody has a choice. Q619 Mr Wilson: Children do not have a choice about the lessons they go to, do they? Dr Bari: Children do not have a choice. Q620 Mr Wilson: Then they have to accept it, do they not? Dr Bari: Whatever the syllabus is that the governors and teachers decide, yes, but in the classroom. I have been a teacher for many years in the classroom, tremendous variety, you can teach in what way you like, so that diversity in teaching style is important. I can just remind you, one of the verses of the Koran, that there is no compulsion. If there is compulsion then it is not Islam. You cannot force anyone to accept certain things. I know children could be vulnerable compared with the teachers and the establishment but it is our collective responsibility. Q621 Mr Wilson: Can I just be clear then, citizenship lessons in Muslim schools will be voluntary rather than compulsory? Dr Bari: It depends on the governing body and on the basis of the instructions. Whether voluntary or compulsory the governing body has to decide how best it can be accommodated in the holistic education process of the whole school; that is what I am saying, that it is part of the whole, not just an isolated subject. Q622 Mr Wilson: If I may ask the Archbishop, one of the problems there is with citizenship, I think, is that it is putting together a quite varied range of things - politics, morality, values, race, diversity and lots of things like that - and it is pushing them together when they all should be dealt with independently. Teaching about Britishness should be taught in history, should it not, for example? Archbishop Nichols: I think the comments I have made so far would illustrate a measure of agreement with you and a measure of disagreement. I do not think any teaching, frankly, is morally neutral. I think we have lived at a time when there has been a mistaken belief that what is done in a classroom is value-free; that is absolute nonsense, it always has been. It is perfectly clear, from research that has been published just recently, about character education and the formation of virtues, that 16-19 year olds look to their teachers to embody virtue, to embody values, and that always goes on in the classroom. There is no morally neutral education, and therefore what is very important in the school is, whatever subject is being taught, it is clear the perspective from which it is coming. That is what stops education being indoctrination. Indoctrination occurs when the values are covert, when they are hidden, and not when they are placed up forward, and people know exactly what is being presented and they are free to discuss it. I will come to your point, if I may. Therefore, citizenship is not a separate zone in an education curriculum. It has to be coherent with the whole ethos of the school and the curriculum as a whole, and when that happens it is seen to be integral to the whole effort of the school and not therefore like a cuckoo in a nest, trying to subvert what else is done in school. Q623 Mr Wilson: As you have said yourself, it is about ethics and ethos, it is not about trying to push all these things together into one subject which will be forced down the throats of children. Your schools, presumably, have these ethics and ethos so they should not need citizenship lessons because they should be good citizens anyway, should they not? Archbishop Nichols: I think they will, but there are specific skills too, as I used the phrase before, the active and creative role of every person that they are called to play in their local political community, there are specific skills to those. Q624 Mr Wilson: They do that, anyway do they not? Archbishop Nichols: I do not think they did when I was at school, frankly. Q625 Mr Wilson: Do they not do that now? Archbishop Nichols: I think they do it increasingly so, and I think the prompt over the last few years, over the citizenship agenda, as long as it is not taken in a doctrinaire manner, is a helpful prompt to many schools and to ours. Q626 Mr Wilson: What do you think citizenship education should entail, the lessons, what should be in those? Archbishop Nichols: I would probably agree with Dr Bari, that this is going to be determined, to some extent, school by school, but I would expect a school to be able to demonstrate how it handles those three component parts of what I understand to be formation for citizenship. It should be able to show quite clearly how it pursues the social and moral responsibility formation of its youngsters. It will do some of that there, occasionally it will do it in debates, in this or in other ways, asking in visiting speakers to present some of the issues of the day and seeing how they thought children handled it. It will demonstrate how it does its community responsibility, and they might do that throughout the years and in a variety of different ways, many of which I could illustrate to you. I think it should also be able to demonstrate how it begins to pull some of those together in active political literacy and involvement. Q627 Mr Wilson: Broadly are you happy with the current approach to citizenship education and advice and guidance, and all those other things from the DfES? Archbishop Nichols: I would have to turn and ask Father Joe, to be quite honest with you, I do not interface with schools all the time, so its impact on the schools. I think Mrs Stannard, when she was here, expressed a reasonably positive view of the impact it has on our schools. Looking at it from a slightly more distant point of view, I would not wish it to be seen or presented in the Catholic school, I have said this already, as a kind of segment that runs against the grain of the rest of the school activity. I do not see any reason why it should and I would resist it if it did. Q628 Mr Wilson: Have you any criticism whatsoever of the citizenship education in schools; either of you? Archbishop Nichols: I am not aware of a great deal of criticism in Catholic schools, other than the normal ones of pressure on time; it is a stretching of an already crowded curriculum, but I am not aware of great resistance to the general thrust of citizenship education and what they are trying to achieve. While Dr Bari speaks, I will ask Joe if he would like me to change that. Dr Bari: I think, state schools or faith schools, at the moment what I see, as a teacher as well as having some other roles, is that citizenship education could be more holistic; it also depends on the individual schools. It appears that this is taken sort of as a piecemeal rather than as an integrated whole; that would be my personal criticism. Archbishop Nichols: May I quickly suggest that I echo the view that Dr Bari has just given and just to add more emphasis; the need to be attentive that citizenship as a strand of education remains integrated with PSHE and other aspects of the curriculum and does not become too detached. Q629 Mr Chaytor: The Education and Inspections Act, which completed its passage through Parliament a few weeks ago, contains a new duty on schools to promote community cohesion, and, as part of the discussion around that, an agreement was reached between Government and the major faiths that new faith schools would be required to admit up to 25 per cent of children not of the faith. First of all, can I clarify something which Dr Bari said earlier, that Muslim faith schools are content to admit children not of the Muslim faith in their existing schools: is this what I understood you to say earlier? Dr Bari: When the consultation was being carried out, we had met education officers and ministers and we, association of Muslim schools, Muslim Council of Britain, educationally were represented. We said that it is not difficult at all for Muslim schools to take 25 per cent, or whatever per cent there is, from non-Muslim backgrounds. Q630 Mr Chaytor: In existing Muslim schools? Dr Bari: Yes, and in newer schools. Q631 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the Catholic Church, the 25 per cent will apply only to new schools, is that right? Archbishop Nichols: No, we did not agree to an intake of 25 per cent just like that. What Lord Baker sought was to impose 25 per cent and, as you will remember, that was rejected by the Lords eventually. The agreement that we came to was that, in the provision, in the planning of new Catholic schools, on the basis of local agreement and of consultation with people in the locality, those schools could be planned and built so as to contain additional places for those that wanted them up to 25 per cent, which is very different from a normal provision for Catholic schools of 25 per cent sliced off for those who are not of the Catholic faith. Q632 Mr Chaytor: The 25 per cent is in addition to what would have been the normal intake of those schools. I understand that. Archbishop Nichols: Yes, with local agreement and in response to local demand. Q633 Mr Chaytor: My question is, how does each of you see the development of citizenship education being different in a school which comprises children wholly of a faith as against a faith school which includes children of other faiths, or should it not make any difference whatsoever? Dr Bari: I think for us it is not difficult because what happens, our religion is very diverse, it is like Christianity, we have Shia, Sunni and really many variations and denominations. If a Muslim school can accommodate all sorts of people within the diverse Muslim faith then there should not be any difficulty in taking other faith groups. Overall, the emphasis is, as I mentioned, to create good human beings. Whilst citizenship is a part of that aspect, where citizenship responsibility, responsibility towards others, neighbours, they come as not only political or as national curriculum teaching but also from a diverse perspective. We have thought between ourselves and we came to an agreement that it would not create any difficulty for us. Q634 Mr Chaytor: Do you see there is an advantage to the development of citizenship education in having non-Muslim pupils in Muslim schools, or does it make no difference? Dr Bari: It depends upon the individual situation. That could be an advantage, that could be a disappointment, but if the decision is taken then the school and the governing body should work on that. We could not foresee any difficulty in accommodating this. Archbishop Nichols: In response, I think I would have to start by saying that, on average, there are virtually 30 per cent of children not of the Catholic faith in Catholic schools anyway. Q635 Mr Chaytor: Why was the Church so resistant to the suggested 25 per cent? You argue that it is a strength to have an ethnically mixed and diverse pupil body; why should you resist it? Archbishop Nichols: Let us not confuse ethnicity and religion. We have very ethnically diverse schools as they are; even when they are 80, 90 per cent Catholics, they are ethnically very diverse. Q636 Mr Chaytor: Why the pressure to keep those which are not ethnically diverse as they are? Archbishop Nichols: No; those that are religiously diverse, the diversity, on average, is 30 per cent. The provision that Lord Baker put forward was that a school would be built on its customary basis, which is the basis of Catholic need, and then 25 per cent would be taken off. That would mean, in effect, turning away 25 per cent of the pupils for whom the school was built; that was why we objected to that. The fact that there will be a proportion of students who are not Catholics in a Catholic school has proved not to be a problem, and on the whole we would welcome the opportunity of expanding the opportunities for people to come to Catholic schools because we believe Catholic education is humanly sound and delivers a good education for whoever receives it. That is our experience in this country and it is our experience across the world, that many, many people go to Catholic schools and benefit enormously, whatever their religious adherence. Q637 Mr Chaytor: Would you argue, therefore, that the proportion of faith schools in the total provision of schools should be increased and that there are no issues for social segregation whatsoever? Archbishop Nichols: I would go back to my original point, and that is that education must be responsive to the wishes of parents. I think it was the argument of the Church of England over the last five years that they wanted to expand the provision of Church of England schools because that was going to respond to the parents' need and what they want. Q638 Mr Chaytor: There is not an increasing proportion of Church of England parents in the population as a whole, rather the opposite, I would have thought? Archbishop Nichols: I do not know about that. The parents sometimes choose their children's schools because they like the education that they deliver, not necessarily or solely because of religious adherence. The situation the Catholic Church has been in for the last 100 years is that it has not been allowed to plan or build schools beyond its own need; we have been restricted to that. I welcome this new agreement, which might mean we are not so restricted and are able to spread the benefits of Catholic education more widely. Q639 Mr Chaytor: You have not really answered the question as to whether an increasing proportion of faith schools in the nation as a whole would lead inevitably to greater social segregation? Archbishop Nichols: Again, I do not see any evidence for the basis of that assumption. Q640 Mr Chaytor: Northern Ireland? Archbishop Nichols: Where do you want to begin; this is put forward constantly. I would happily leave you a letter which was sent to Lord Baker from a man called Tony Spencer, who worked for the DfES in Northern Ireland and founded the Integrated School Trusts, and therefore speaks of these issues probably with more authority than most people, and certainly than I do. He says there are absolutely no applications of the situation in Northern Ireland to this country, because, in a nutshell, Northern Ireland is a socially divided country, and part of the substance of that division is religious identity, and that is not the case in Britain. Q641 Mr Chaytor: What about Bradford? Archbishop Nichols: My impression would be that, in Bradford and in Birmingham and in places like that, what we are talking about is a social division, what we are talking about is an economic division and not a division that is reinforced particularly by religious identity. Q642 Mr Chaytor: Could I ask one other question on a different issue. One of the characteristics of faith schools in the teaching of citizenship context must be that a set of values is handed down from generation to generation. I am interested in the aspect of citizenship which encourages critical thinking and questioning. My question to both of you is would it be seen to be a successful outcome for a faith school if the result of a programme of citizenship education led a young person to reject the faith at the age of 16 or 18? Would that be success or failure in the context of a faith school? Dr Bari: I think, tolerance, respect, celebration, these are not only religious value diversion; throughout history human beings have acquired these and tolerance is probably the minimum, the bottom line. I think we are expected from our religion not only to tolerate but respect other people's opinion, whether we agree or not, and that brings us to the issue, of being changeable, as you mention; religion is a choice, individual choice, people can change. In our religion, of course, there are not restrictions, I should say discouragement, on changing of religion, but if somebody decides to change religion there is no way Islam will ask someone to force or coerce them to bring that person to religion, because, at the end of the day, every human being is responsible for his, or her, own act; that is according to the verse of the Koran. If an adult takes individual choice then that is his, or hers. Q643 Mr Chaytor: Would it be seen as a triumph for the citizenship teacher who had developed such creative thinking, or would it be seen as a matter of regret? Dr Bari: No. I think the citizenship teacher, or any teacher, should teach pupils critically to ask questions, so it is not only a citizenship teacher, it is a science teacher, I am a science teacher. As a science teacher, or whatever teacher I am, the main part of education in school is to create mental faculties so that people can ask questions. Obviously, questions have to be based on empiricism or on the basis of knowledge, not emotionally. This critical analysis of what it achieves, if this influences a child to remain in religion, so be it, and to change the religion, then what could you do. Archbishop Nichols: I am very grateful to you for opening up this question of the purpose of citizenship at least to produce a critique. I think it was Sir Bernard Crick who constantly used the phrase "it should produce critical democracy." I think some exponents of citizenship seem to see it as a way of generating conformity with current social mores, which I think is quite underhand and not right at all. I am also grateful for the scenario you put of a 16 year old stopping being a Catholic, or stopping practising his faith. I can assure you, that has gone on for a long time, and it would not be the product of citizenship, and nor would it be, necessarily, for me, a great regret. The purpose of Catholic schools is not, as the priest would be wanting to say, to get bums on seats in church, that is not the point; the point is to educate people to their full dignity. I could switch into religious language very easily, but I will not. That is the purpose of it, and part of that is to generate a critical faculty. The fundamental stance of somebody committed to the truth of the Catholic faith is that they will respect that process of thought and criticism. Maybe moving off onto a different path, they will remain confident in their Catholic faith and they will be assured that the bottom line, the outcome of a person's life, and therefore of their education, is not drawn when they are 16. Chairman: If we can change our focus just slightly to open on the more controversial issues of diversity and Britishness, Stephen is going to open up on this. Q644 Stephen Williams: Can I start off with the Archbishop and just read out, for the record, a short extract from a sermon you gave on 26 November, if you do not mind your words being quoted back to you. You said: "It is simply unacceptable to suggest that the resources of the faith communities, whether in schools, adoption agencies, welfare programmes, halls and shelters can work in cooperation with public authorities only if the faith communities accept not simply a legal framework but also the moral standards at present being touted by Government." Could I ask you to expand on that and tell the Committee which moral standards you object to being touted by the present Government? Archbishop Nichols: You must understand that the context of the sermon was a Civic Mass, so what I was doing in that was reflecting a little bit on the nature of civic life and the distinction between civic life and political life. What I was encouraging the community, which those in front of me there represented, to see was the importance of civic life as co‑operation between all of us, and that is an important foundation, and indeed I think contribution, to a more particularly political life whose main objective is good order, and therefore the formulation of laws and legal expectations that we must all meet and happily would strive to do so. I illustrated the kinds of values in the sermon, and if you want to quote those bits at me as well I am very happy. They were things to do with the beginnings of life, about the substance of human life, the creation of human life, they were to do with the endings of human life and they were to do with requiring a Catholic agency, such as an adoption agency, to act on the belief that it is as morally acceptable for a child to be placed with a same-sex couple as it is to be placed with a man and a woman in marriage. It was the potential of that obligation being placed on them to which I was objecting. Q645 Stephen Williams: Could I tease out some of those issues then, Chairman. Archbishop, in your remarks earlier in the session, you mentioned several times political literacy, and emotional literacy is something that I hope all faith schools would want to equip their pupils with as well, and clearly that falls within the PSHE lessons and the moral ethos of the school. Within the context of citizenship, I am not talking about emotional literacy, it is about empathy for others in society as well, and whatever the teachings of the particular faith, whether it is Catholicism or Islam, when children go into the wider world they will meet people who come from same-sex relationships, or are the children perhaps of people who are in same-sex relationships who have engaged in a civil partnership, and so on. In the context of citizenship, how do you equip the children who attend Catholic faith schools to deal with the world as it is rather than how you would like it to be? Archbishop Nichols: I would like to repeat a comment that I made earlier, that I would not expect citizenship to be a forum in which there was a kind of moral neutrality suddenly declared, because that is not how life is either. We do have to struggle, in conversation, in discussion, with what makes for human goodness and what makes for human happiness. Clearly, what I would expect in any part of Catholic education, whether it is an ethics class or a citizenship class, it should not really make any difference, would be both a willingness to look at the reality, to stand firmly against what is evidently evil, which would be discrimination and hostility and any expression of violence, of language or of action, towards people who are different, whether that be in their sexual orientation, their ethnicity, or whatever, and yet also a readiness to explore the reasons for the moral framework that our country has been used to for a long time. Q646 Stephen Williams: I think, Archbishop, you mentioned that teachers should not come from a neutral standpoint. Would you expect the teachers in Catholic schools to encourage debate and controversy within the context of citizenship lessons, or somebody either in the class or the teachers could put an opposing viewpoint to the teachings of the Church, for instance, on sexuality or abortion, euthanasia, which are the other subjects you mentioned? Archbishop Nichols: According to the age of the children, I would expect this in any class, and certainly I would expect it in an RE class. You do not have to have a citizenship class in order to generate discussion. Q647 Stephen Williams: Could I turn to Dr Bari, Chairman, largely on the same line of questioning. In your earlier answers you mentioned that you wanted Islamic schools to turn out holistic human beings who relate to wider society. On the same point as I put to the Archbishop, in the context of a citizenship lesson in an Islamic school, how do you prepare your children for the wider world as it is, where they will meet 'gay' MPs, people who engage in same-sex relationships, civil partnerships, and so on, who do not necessarily accept the teachings of the Islamic faith? Dr Bari: I think there are realities in this world and social trends change throughout the ages, and Britain has changed, Europe has changed and most societies change, but this change could be cyclical as well. What Islam and, in many senses, Christianity have, as religions, are some core values and principles. What the education will be, whether institutes of education or PSHE or in RE or in science education, these real issues that are in the society have to be discussed, and from the religious point of view it is clear that Islam and Christianity, according to religious principles, do not accept certain ways of life. It is like some people accept certain things, some people do not accept certain things, but it is not the teaching of Islam that you force people to accept your life as well as you hate or discriminate. That is probably the fundamental theme, that, in spite of disagreement on many aspects and quality of disagreement and aspects of disagreement in our personal way of thinking and their social style, there could be agreement. This will be treated as people coming from different backgrounds, different perspectives, diversities, and in Muslim schools pupils should be taught not only to tolerate but to accommodate this; not accepting, from the religious point of view, but not just hating or discriminating. That will be the fundamental core of teaching in Muslim schools, I think. Q648 Stephen Williams: My colleague wants to come in on this as well, so if I may end with one final question on a related inquiry that we have at the moment into bullying, which is just about to draw to a conclusion. One of the findings in the evidence which has come to us is that the majority of schools, whether they are faith or otherwise, currently do not have a policy on homophobic bullying. Do you expect Islamic schools and Catholic schools to have a policy specifically about homophobic bullying which gives a whole-school statement that homophobic bullying is wrong and unacceptable, and are there policies in place to tackle it, in respect of either type of school? Dr Bari: I think phobia should not be the issue of a religion because, from a religious point of view, if you hate someone then you are not a Muslim. A Muslim should not hate anyone because of a view or the practices of other people, so accommodation is important. I think that should be like any other discipline policy, or exclusion policy; there should be policies, an anti-bullying policy, there should be policies on this as well. There is no room for hate and phobia against certain types of people because of their belief or practice. Q649 Stephen Williams: That is a welcome statement, but do you believe that Islamic schools within the state sector in Britain actually have policies which say that homophobic bullying is wrong? Dr Bari: I am not fully aware; probably my colleague knows, who has been working with Muslim schools across the country. We have only a few, probably 140 schools, very small schools, some of them are new, and I do not know whether this policy is already available at the moment in all of these schools. I am not expert on that. Q650 Stephen Williams: Exactly the same question to the Archbishop? Archbishop Nichols: My guardian angel tells me that when these issues are discussed in Catholic schools the general consensus is that it is very, very important to have a clear, unambiguous policy put into practice about bullying. If you begin to pick out particular sections then the list of special policies is going to get very, very long and probably there would not be too much room on the walls to put them all up, because you are going to pick out every potential target group and have a discreet policy for each one. I think his advice, from the teachers who have discussed these things, is that a strong, coherent policy which addresses all bullying is the most effective way of dealing with this. Q651 Stephen Williams: It is "No" then? Archbishop Nichols: A strong, coherent policy which deals with this is in place in every school. Q652 Mr Marsden: Archbishop, can I just return to this general area of the tension between what the Roman Catholic Church promotes and believes and what is discussed in classrooms in your schools. It would be true to say, would it not, that far from every member of the Roman Catholic Church, including practising young Catholics who go to Mass every Sunday, accepts key tenets of the current Church hierarchy on issues such as homosexuality, or divorce, or contraception? Archbishop Nichols: By all means, I will engage with this, but it seems a broad and odd theological question to put. Q653 Mr Marsden: Is that the case, would you say, that there is a division of view within the Roman Catholic Church about some of these key issues? Archbishop Nichols: I do not think there would be much of a division about divorce, if by divorce you mean the acceptability of a marriage that has fallen down being concluded and putting civil agreements through the divorce courts; that is not against Catholic teaching. Q654 Mr Marsden: What about the other two issues I have mentioned? Archbishop Nichols: Contraception, I think there would be really difficult issues and contentious disagreement on the use of contraception and the different ways of birth control within a marriage, yes. On homosexuality, I think the Catholic Church makes a very clear distinction, which I can elaborate on if you like, between the orientation of a person and their sexual behaviour. The Catholic Church would stand very firmly for the equal dignity and right of a person, no matter their homosexual orientation, and would argue very strongly that it is a real foreshortening of human dignity to identify somebody by their sexual orientation, which, unfortunately, I think our society does. As to the moral codes concerning sexual behaviour, there is a single principle on this, which is that sexual intercourse belongs within marriage, and that is the principal teaching of the Catholic Church. Q655 Mr Marsden: The reason why I was pressing you on those points was that I wanted to come on to the way in which you do actually, in practice, engage in Catholic schools with some of the issues to which I have referred. There is a tension, is there not, between what you said, I think you used the phrase 16-19 year olds look up to teachers as expressers of values, or models of virtue, or something like that, and the fact that not all teachers, even in Catholic schools, will accept necessarily some of the key tenets of the Catholic hierarchy's views on these issues? How do you deal with that in the context of the classroom; do you say, "Well, this is my view, the Church says this, let's have a debate about it," or do you, if you are a Catholic teacher, say "This is what the Church says" and keep shtum? Archbishop Nichols: It depends on the age of the children, in my experience. It is quite different in a primary school than it is in a sixth form. The last time I was a chaplain in a sixth form college, what we used to do was invite different members of the staff, for example, to come and present their philosophy of life and their framework and engage with the sixth-formers in an open discussion in that way. Those things are handled differently according to the class that is being conducted and according to the age of the children and according to the relationships in the school, frankly. Those teachers who come and teach in a Catholic school know precisely the framework and the ethos that they are working out of, and most of them welcome it, because it is clearer than in a school which has no defined ethos. Q656 Mr Marsden: You would not see a problem then in citizenship education, as currently defined, engaging with and embracing those controversial and difficult issues within the context of Catholic education? Archbishop Nichols: I would expect those difficult issues to be dealt with in RE. We do not need citizenship education to engage with them; they are engaged with anyway. Q657 Mr Marsden: With respect, are you telling me that the list of issues which I and my colleague Stephen Williams have touched on are dealt with routinely in Catholic RE classes? Archbishop Nichols: We have just developed, with the full co‑operation of the Teenage Pregnancy Unit, a programme All That I Am, which is to do with personal and sexual education and it deals with all those issues and it does so in a very mature and proper fashion. Yes, they are dealt with, and we do not need citizenship education to deal with them. Q658 Mr Marsden: Chairman, if I could come on to Dr Bari, you may be aware, Dr Bari, that the Government has commissioned Keith Ajegbo, in fact who came before this Committee at the beginning of this inquiry, to look at whether, in fact, there should be the inclusion in secondary education of an overview of more recent British history so that those children at schools will have a clearer idea of the society in which they are now operating. I think the time which has been given is 100-150 years. Is that something you would welcome in the context of citizenship education and is it something that would be of value and applicable in Muslim schools? Dr Bari: I do not know whether it falls in citizenship education or history education, but I think history is important and British history has wider probably a sphere and our Commonwealth countries probably come in, and provided all these things are brought in, in a very positive, holistic way, I do not see any issues, but it all depends on ex-pats and hopefully ex-pats come up and see how best they could benefit the pluralist base in Britain, at the moment. Q659 Mr Marsden: Archbishop, could I come back to you and put a similar question, particularly in the light of, I think, again, when you spoke at the beginning, you talked about citizenship, I think, as having local, national and international aspects. Would you have a problem with the sort of thing that Keith Ajegbo is looking at and may be about to recommend; if you did not, how would you see the coverage of Britishness over the last 150 years being taught in Catholic schools? Archbishop Nichols: To be quite honest, I am not sure exactly what you are referring to. Q660 Mr Marsden: Let me clarify. The Education Department have commissioned from Keith Ajegbo, whom I think is Deputy Head at Deptford School and who came before this Select Committee at the beginning of our inquiry, a survey, a consultation, to consider whether there should be more coverage in secondary schools of the history of Britain over the last 150 years, with a specific focus on how it has created the sort of society in which we live today. That is what Keith Ajegbo is looking at currently. The recommendations, we understand, are going to come before the Government after Christmas and that was what my question was related to. Archbishop Nichols: I do not feel very competent to give you a clear answer, frankly. History is very important but, again, history is the most speculative of all studies, and I am just not terribly confident about giving an answer. Q661 Mr Marsden: Britishness as a concept, is that something which you see as a pluralistic issue or something which can be handed down? Archbishop Nichols: If you mean as an identity, I think it is really quite difficult to struggle with, actually, and obviously there is plenty of public debate about it. I think every one of us lives with a number of identities and I do think they are interlinked. I think the first and the most formative of all identities is the family. I think that is the foundation on which others develop and grow. I think often the local community, however that is expressed, it might be a sports club, it might be all sorts of things, is the stepping-stone. I am quite certain you cannot impose a wider identity of Britishness, or whatever, when those foundations are not there; you cannot jump from nothing to being British. You have first of all to have some stability in your own life, you need widening circles of identity, which will indeed, I think, in my case, feed into a broad identity of Britishness. I find it very difficult to envisage how it can be encouraged, except as a broadening out of experience and a sense of self that one has already. Q662 Helen Jones: If I could perhaps just follow this up. There is a belief, and the Government has proposed, that this idea of Britishness and what it is to be British ought to become more central to citizenship education. My question to both of you really is about that kind of definition. There seems to be a kind of amorphous feeling that we all know what it means to be British, and if you ask some people they will give you a very limited definition of that. My question to both of you as regards faith schools is, can you come to a definition of Britishness, which you can pass on to children, which includes the values, the history of the kinds of communities which both Catholic schools and Islamic schools deal with, which may not be quite the same as, if you like, the tabloid version of Britishness, for want of a better word? That is a very simplistic way of putting it. Archbishop Nichols: I think your question demonstrates how difficult such a notion of Britishness is to struggle with. There is an implicit suggestion in your question that there is a problem between being Catholic and being British; now there has been in the past. This place over here witnessed it very dramatically a few hundred years ago. Q663 Helen Jones: I am sorry to interrupt you; that was not what I was implying at all. I was saying, many people have a definition of Britishness which might be very different from the ones that the communities hold. I am not suggesting that they are less British. Archbishop Nichols: I am sure that is true and, if I may quote Mr Wilson, I am sure somebody living in Liverpool, where I grew up, has a very different notion of being British than has somebody who lives in Islington. I think it is very difficult; but I think it has to be built gradually. Dr Bari: Britishness is not a constant, one dimensional issue, it evolves. Britishness 150 years ago was different than Britishness today, with many communities, many faiths, and Britain in the post-war, post-modernist age, definitely it is the freedom of ever-changing. Also, it includes, in my opinion, all the dimensions, varieties and, if I can use it, the flowers of the garden in this isle, human flowers. If present Britishness cannot cope with accommodating all the flowers in this garden then it will go one dimensional, which will be failing. I think, in that aspect, that I sometimes come back to the religious text; our religion teaches us that human beings have been created in tribes and communities and races so that they know each other. At the end of the day, the one who is good, he, or she, is the best. In that sense, modern Britishness, with all its diversity is evolving and we are taking it forward in Muslim schools, per se, through the curriculum, through the Islamic studies and through the ethos, they are more or less accommodating with this. I do not think there is any specific answer to this. It is a continuous evolution, because the Muslim community itself is an evolving community and there are newer communities and they are within the fold of the Muslim community. Hopefully, because our religion teaches diversity, the Muslim community will be able to take forward the Britishness, Muslim identity and all multiple identities together to the forefront. Q664 Helen Jones: Could I ask you, Archbishop, can you define Britishness as adherence to a set of values, things which have evolved through history, tolerance and respect for the law? Archbishop Nichols: Yes, I am familiar with the list. One of the points of research which I mentioned earlier on character education, the 16 year olds actually come up with a list of values, which is very telling. I am not sure how an Italian would react if we said "These are British values," because they would say, "Well, actually, they're Italian values too." How do you move on? I know we British are decent human beings but how do you get beyond being decently human to something which is more specific to this country; that is my problem. Of course I agree with those values, but I am not sure they are explicitly British. Q665 Fiona Mactaggart: I was wondering if you would be surprised by research which suggests that young people who identify themselves through their faith most strongly are actually the least likely to be politically active in the form of voting or other political activity? Archbishop Nichols: I have got research on my desk which shows the opposite, so I am surprised. Q666 Fiona Mactaggart: There is in every faith, I think, certainly, for example, the Muslim faith, if you look at a group like Hizb-ut Tahrir, there are extremists who suggest that voting and participation in the democratic process is against their religion. What advice do you give teachers to deal with that phenomenon, which must exist in your Muslim schools, Dr Bari? Dr Bari: I do not know whether they exist in Muslim schools, but the one organisation that you mention, they used to say that and there were a couple of other problems with a more extreme organisation than them who considered putting not only harm, anyone who would be putting Muslim would be under (caffe ?). In the Muslim community, we have been tackling this issue, and an overwhelming number of Muslim people in Britain have rejected them. A big debate is going on and we see now that those Hizb-ut Tahrir that you mention, many of them are now gradually coming into the mainstream. What we say is that if we can debate and argue and discuss with them then there is the potential that many of them will come back, rather than probably proscribing them, as unfortunately sometimes it is proposed. Proscribing any organisation will simply take them underground and it is not going to help anyone. In the same way, in the university there are radical views, and radicalism is probably a part of human nature, and probably a youthful quality is rebellion radicalism, so, as parents and as society, we have to at best discourage radicalism. Sometimes tragically they come from a certain age and they go; so it is a matter of continuous debate, discussion and holistic discussion with our young people so that they are not marginalised and they do not feel themselves marginalised. Q667 Fiona Mactaggart: Archbishop, could you provide us with the research to which you referred? Archbishop Nichols: I would; but I will ask them. Q668 Mr Wilson: Just something which the Archbishop said, in response to the line of questioning from Stephen and Gordon, on sexual orientation and sexual relations and civic morality; you said, and I quote: "We don't need citizenship education to deal with that." Surely you cannot choose which bits of citizenship education you want to do and which bits you do not want to do? Archbishop Nichols: No. I am sorry. The point I was making was that these issues, which are quite rightly brought up, are dealt with in RE and PSHE. We have developed excellent material, in co‑operation with the Teenage Pregnancy Unit, precisely to deal with these issues. Q669 Mr Wilson: If they were to be dealt with as part of the curriculum, would they be taught in your faith schools? Archbishop Nichols: I am sorry, I did not quite follow. What I am saying is they are dealt with in our schools. Q670 Mr Wilson: I know, and what I am saying is, if the curriculum for citizenship included modules involving those sorts of issues, would you be against those being taught in your schools, because you think you have them already? Archbishop Nichols: I would expect them to be taught, as I have said a number of times this afternoon, in a way that is consistent with the pattern and the teaching of a Catholic school. I do not believe citizenship education should or can claim to be a morally neutral area in which a whole set of other moral values are subversively introduced. Mr Wilson: Thank you. That is very clear. Q671 Stephen Williams: Much the same as what Fiona Mactaggart asked; please can you send the Committee your excellent material, as you called it, on the teaching of homosexuality and abortion in Catholic schools? I am sure we would be interested to see it. Archbishop Nichols: It is quite substantial but you are welcome to it. Q672 Chairman: It has been an extremely good session and we have learned a lot, but what do you think of Trevor Phillips' view that we are sleep-walking towards some pretty dismal future, in terms of the segregation of our communities? Do you share his pessimism, or do you think, from a faith perspective, an active involvement of faith in the community can make a difference? Archbishop Nichols: I have been of the view, for quite a long time, that the effort to build a harmonious society, which consists de facto of so many different cultures and faiths, can never work on one version of the secular model. It can never work like that because aggressive secularism actually denies people of faith the right to be who they are, it tells them to take their faith and put it in a private box, and that is no basis on which to gain their corporate effort in building a common future. There is a version of secularism which I think is coherent which accepts that the broad political institutions are secular in their nature, which creates a public forum in which people are allowed to contribute their best, which for many people is motivated and shaped by their religious faith. That model, I think, does hold out a good future for us. Dr Bari: I am not pessimistic at all, but we have to be realistically optimistic and, for that, we all need to work together. Britain is having lots of new communities and newer communities are coming. I think it would be the strength of overall British society to accommodate all newer communities, maybe having very diverse views, but, as I mentioned, diversity is in human nature. Unless a community or individual breaks the law, creates hatred and creates other social problems, I think we are in a position to debate, discuss and take the agenda forward of creating modern Britain with this pluralised Britishness. I am realistically optimistic. Chairman: On that note, thank you very much. It has been a very good session. Thank you for your time. If you think of anything, on the way home or when you get home to your respective destinations, that you should have said to the Committee which would have added value to our discussion, please do be in communication with us. Thank you. Witnesses: Mr Rajinder Singh Sandhu, Head Teacher, Guru Nanak Sikh Secondary School; Rabbi Mark Kampf, Deputy Head, and Mr Tim Miller, Deputy Head, Jewish Free School; and Ms Rachel Allard, Head Teacher, Grey Coat Hospital Church of England School for Girls; gave evidence. Q673 Chairman: Can I welcome Tim Miller, who is a Deputy Head of the Jewish Free School, Rabbi Mark Kampf, who is a Deputy Head of the Jewish Free School, Rachel Allard, who is the Head Teacher of the Grey Coat Hospital Church of England School for Girls, and Rajinder Singh Sandhu, Head Teacher of the Guru Nanak Sikh School. Welcome to you all, and thank you for sitting there listening to the first session, to which I saw you all paying rapt attention, better attention than some members of my Committee, I think, sometimes. This is going to be quite a brisk session, so I am going to persuade my colleagues to ask relatively succinct questions and I hope and know that you are going to come back with reasonably succinct answers. I will start with Rachel, just in terms of your view, you are really hands-on people in schools, you are really at the sharp end; how is citizenship embedding in the institution which you head, Rachel? Ms Allard: My school is 300 years old and its original Charter set it out as one of its goals to bring children up to be solid citizens; so, for us, citizenship is something we have been doing for 300 years. When the actual requirements of citizenship education as part of the National Curriculum were brought in, we reviewed what we were doing already, because we felt that our aim is to prepare our students to take their place in society and to understand that they have a role and know how to play that role. We were very interested to see where we felt we were actually already doing the things that were required and where we needed to reflect on how we could introduce more; we felt that schools equally were encouraged to teach citizenship across the curriculum, to have separate lessons. I think possibly the emphasis is changing, or has changed, but at the time we felt that what we wanted to do was do it in a cross-curricular way and that we were able to achieve good citizenship education that way. I think we still have work to do on that in some of the areas in which we were not doing so well before, for example, the financial preparation areas. Q674 Chairman: Thank you for that. Rajinder Singh? Mr Singh Sandhu: In contrast with Rachel, we are one of the younger schools. We opened as an independent school in 1993 and became a state school in 1999. When we opened in 1993, as somebody who had come through the system in the UK, I went to primary and secondary school in Wolverhampton, in the state comprehensive system, when our Chairman told me that he wanted to open a school I was in two minds until he said that the purpose of opening this particular school was to create our future Mother Teresas, Nelson Mandelas and people who would go out and help humanity. That was a brief given to me in 1993. Through the early years, the school struggled very much financially because it was a new concept. We were given plenty of advice on how to become elitist, how to open up a school which would cater towards private education and therefore would make money, and the school never wavered from its early concepts. I think the current citizenship, if anything, has formalised what the school did. There are lots of very good things about citizenship and in a lot of ways it fits in very, very nicely with the concepts in Sikhism, which is a religion, you are probably all aware, so I am just skimming through it, the three pillars the school has always worked upon, always remembering God, irrespective of the religion which you are in. The school works very closely with other faith schools and other state schools to ensure that it is encompassing everybody's views. Alongside that, our key concept is (kirt karna ?), which means working very, very hard, and, if you are an employer, treating people with sensitivity. The third aspect is sharing your fortune with others. These are the key principles on which the school has always functioned and I think lots of it has come into the current citizenship, in terms of teaching them things, although there are aspects within our RE department, I might say, within the citizenship and we had to make decisions. For example, on citizenship the teacher has a log, I ask the kids to make a log of all the things they do to help out in the local community, but within the religious side if you do good things they should be kept invisible, so there is a sort of slight contradiction in terms. We welcome it and it has helped to form us into a Guru school. Q675 Chairman: Thank you. Rabbi Mark Kampf? Rabbi Kampf: I would echo much of what my colleague said before. Your question was about embedding and I was embedded in the school. This is a question which I think we need to elaborate on. Our school was started in 1732 and its purpose was to have our students live in a diverse society. We also took a strategic view, when citizenship came in, we took a cross-curricular approach, plus it is being taught within what we call Jewish education within the school, so it has the framework of the Jewish faith, together with the cross-curricular approach, and we did an audit of the curriculum, the syllabus, and saw what was not being taught. Because the teachers' workload was as such, we took a pragmatic view of what could best be delivered, things like political literacy, for example, through assemblies; so we did an audit of what we could deliver, where was it best delivered and that is the sort of programme we are on now. Q676 Chairman: Thank you. Tim, do you want to add anything to that? Mr Miller: I think all I would wish perhaps to add to what Mark has said is that, in a way, our approach has been that we do not stop the clock at 12 o'clock and say "We're now doing citizenship," it is very much an approach of students learning by doing, and I think that relates to all three of the central tenets of social and moral responsibility, political literacy and community involvement. It is a very, very key part of the school and our approach that we involve our students, and we have 2,000, so that is a lot of people to involve all the time. I would not claim that every single one of them is entirely active in this respect, but we involve as many students as we possibly can in a whole range of what might well be called citizenship activities, which might involve work in terms of supporting younger students, it might involve work within student council, within our buddying systems and our peer mentoring systems, work in which they are exposed to the concept that they are members of a community in school. We hope they understand the sense of being a good citizen, in the first instance, through that. The purpose of both Mark and I coming, the 'two for the price of one' deal that the Committee is getting today, from JFS, is very much I think that, from my perspective, and my role in the school is Head of Sixth Form, I am seeing the outcomes, if you like, in terms of what has been the experience of students over their first five years and then their last two years in school before they go on, as almost all of them do, to university. I think, when one is conducting the interviews we do to write their UCAS references, one of the things we are looking at, and we have a checklist of things we are asking them about, is their experience in school, out of school in their communities, their youth groups, and so on, where they have become active as citizens in society in that way. I think, when they go on to university, certainly our evidence, as far as we have got it, and we try to keep in close touch with our alumni, very much so, is that they do adapt well, having come from a faith school, they adapt well to the outside world, to university life, participate in that fully, and in the secular world they enter thereafter. Q677 Chairman: Can we whiz through, in terms of essential information about you. Are all the students at your school Jewish? Mr Miller: Yes. Q678 Chairman: You have to be Jewish to attend? Mr Miller: They have to be Jewish. That stipulation, however, in a sense, is a very broad one. Although the school's outlook is Orthodox Judaism, it is, in a sense, a very broad church, if I may use that word, in relation to the practice of the students, I think. When the students come into the school, for the most part they are not particularly rooted within their Jewish faith. One of the things that the school, in its ethos, strives to do, besides creating tolerant and caring citizens of the wider community, is introduce those students to and provide them with that framework within their own faith. Q679 Chairman: What percentage of free school meals would you have? Mr Miller: It is ten per cent. In terms of social class and all of the other indicators, students from single-parent families and all of that, it is a pretty average school, from that perspective. Q680 Chairman: It reflects the balance in your community? Mr Miller: Very much so, yes, I would think so. Q681 Chairman: Rajinder Singh, are all the pupils in your school Sikhs? Mr Singh Sandhu: We have students from the Islam faith, Hindu faith, we have got our first Christian child in the primary school. Until recently, if the school has become oversubscribed, we have actually been very active in ensuring that the school reflects the community. Q682 Chairman: What is the percentage of Sikhs compared with other students? Mr Singh Sandhu: It is about five per cent, at the moment, and that is mainly because, not because the school is trying, because the school is so heavily oversubscribed we are having to go by the criteria which the governors have been looking at in parallel with the decisions being made in Parliament, in seeing how the admissions criteria could be changed so that the school reflects the community outside. Q683 Chairman: Free school meals? Mr Singh Sandhu: It is about ten or 11 per cent. Q684 Chairman: Rachel; what about your school? Ms Allard: Until fairly recently, the school was a mixture, which occurred by accident, because it had admissions criteria for Church of England, until we realised, a number of years ago, actually, by oversubscription, as you have described, that was creating a school where all the children were Church of England. The governors changed the admissions criteria to allow for some open places, some non Church of England Christian places; we also have students who come, because we are a language college, by language aptitude, so that there are opportunities for a larger number and a broader range to come into the school. That has been in operation for about three years, so that is growing up the school, and greatly to the benefit of the students also. Q685 Chairman: What percentage of free school meals would you have? Ms Allard: We have about nine per cent, at the moment. I think that does not really reflect our population though. The PANDA put us in the top 17 per cent of the country for deprivation, but we are not able to feed our children, so I think there are numbers who probably would qualify but do not; they do not bother to claim. Chairman: Thank you very much for those introductory remarks. Q686 Jeff Ennis: Mark and Rachel emphasised in their opening comments, Chairman, the cross-curricular approach that they took to citizenship education. Rajinder, could you also indicate whether you took a cross-curricular approach? Mr Singh Sandhu: It goes beyond a cross-curricular approach. I said at the beginning about the whole-school approach and how it is intertwined with RE, intertwined with the whole ethos of the school, which is actually going out to help others. The school teaches quite passionately that kids put others before themselves, that humility is a place of strength. One of the things which worried us at the beginning, in 1993, when the school was opened, about the concepts which have earlier been touched upon, indoctrination, and so on, in fact, I think, along with some schools in the country, our assemblies, both at primary level and secondary level, are run by the kids, there are no priests involved, the kids run their own assemblies. I speak at the end or a member of the senior team and that sets the tone throughout the school. The sixth-formers help in every aspect of the school life. They do not do it because it is enjoyable, or anything, it is an aspect of helping others. Another thing, if I could mention it, is that currently the school has a huge building programme, at £16 million; as a voluntary-aided school, we are responsible for ten per cent of it. That is an issue, as the governors have been raising money, but as a school population rather than resort to asking the kids to help in different ways the kids have never been asked once to raise money for the school. Instead, they have been funding the maintenance of an orphanage in Colombia, and, through Oxfam, they have built classrooms in Kenya. My point is that very often citizenship runs right throughout the whole school; it is the ethos of the school. Q687 Jeff Ennis: Given that every different school before us at this moment in time takes a cross-curricular approach to citizenship education, is there any aspect of citizenship education which does not lend itself to being taught on a cross-curricular basis, or does it all fit neatly into that sort of approach? Rabbi Kampf: It does not all fit neatly into a cross-curricular approach, which is why I said that, within our RE, which we call Jewish education, the moral, ethical part, which was touched on before we arrived here, what we are doing currently within our faith teachings is about critical thinking, which is about moral and social dilemmas, and citizenship, in a sense, simply dovetailed with that. The moral framework and the discussion fit very well within what we are doing currently within the faith education; we also teach part of the curriculum, if you look at it, it is the PSHE curriculum, so that fits together. When you say does it fit neatly, it does not fit neatly, the curriculum is crowded and we try to identify what teachers are teaching currently, and we felt, as Tim said a few minutes ago, we do not want to take the approach "Let's stop what we are doing now. Now we're going to be good citizens, and teaching citizenship, that's enough of that, now we're going to move on to real life, which is getting our results that we need to get because that is what we are judged on." We do not want to take that approach; we want the children to feel that it is part of the school, it is quite right for you to be involved in the school community and outside the school community. Q688 Jeff Ennis: I do not know whether Rajinder or Rachel have got anything to add to what Mark said, in terms of that question? Ms Allard: I feel that when we first did our audit we found that the vast majority of work did find a home in a cross-curricular way and that where it was not already happening one could find places for it. You can ask a maths department to create the financial literacy elements that you want to introduce, for example. That does not mean it is all easy to do. I think it is easy to fit in but the teachers in each of the different subjects do have a particular subject way of looking at what they are teaching and there are training issues. If we want to continue in this way, we will need to look very closely at how they really bring out what are the specific citizenship aspects of the topics that they are being asked to cover, and those are big training issues, I think, you cannot minimise them. At the same time, if we look at possibly moving to the alternative model of having specialist citizenship teachers and a particular slot, our timetable is a very, very crowded one and to find a place where you can reduce something so as to create a new slot and employ new teachers to teach in that slot is a challenge that we do not find is any easier to deal with, and perhaps would be less easy to deal with. As a language college, we teach languages for all up to GCSE and 60 per cent do two languages; those things take time. As a church school, we teach RE and it would have a vast amount of the citizenship curriculum within it; that would go up to GCSE for all students. We are not looking at a curriculum which has a lot of space for introducing new, separate topics, but I do not think one can minimise the challenge of making sure that teachers who are doing citizenship in a cross-curricular way really are dealing with the issues as the citizenship curriculum expects them to be dealt with. Q689 Jeff Ennis: Thank you for that. I think, Tim, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that your school has got a school council, and I understand that all three schools giving evidence at the moment operate school councils. I am just wondering how significant a role you feel that school councils are playing in delivering the citizenship education agenda in schools; how important is it to have a school council to help do that? Mr Miller: I think it is exceptionally important. I think it plays a very important role. I think, in the first instance, one is looking at how it has a role in relation to political literacy. We have a student council which has all its representatives in the years from seven up to 11 elected by their year groups. It is chaired by the head boy/girl team, who are themselves elected by the whole of the sixth form, the staff and the year 11 prefects. That is the electoral college for that, and it is given very high status, I think, by the fact that when there are meetings these are attended by usually almost all the members of the senior leadership team, always the headteacher at the meeting, and when an agenda is arranged by the head boy/head girl team, in conjunction with our student leadership co‑ordinator, a member of staff, who is herself a politics teacher so has a role in that respect as well, they will perhaps wish to raise an issue about, I do not know, IT and will go to the head of IT to not quite summon him before the student council but invite him to come along in order to respond to the debate which takes place. While we would not say that we have a system of accountability on the part of staff, I think that would be exaggerating, I do think there is an acknowledgement that staff engage with the student council, and that is effective. The student council is an area for which I also have some responsibility and I think there is much more we can do in making it more visible across the school and things we can do there. I do think it is very important to have that as an element in political literacy and anything which addresses issues of community responsibility too. It also opens up to students issues of decision-making and what would be the consequences of if we did that, why they do that, and those kinds of dilemmas, I think, are very important to confront students with. Q690 Jeff Ennis: Do you think there is a possibility that schools ought to be considering allowing representatives from school councils to attend school governing body meetings in an observation capacity, or indeed to sit on as an associate member of a governing body? Mr Miller: I know that some schools do that. We have a particular involvement that the governing body has a catering sub-committee, and in order to avoid the student council being tied down all the time over "Should we have this on the school menu or not?" we have student representatives on that governors sub-committee. Certainly, when we are appointing senior members of staff, although students are not sitting on the appointments committee, we do always make sure that visitors to the school, applicants, have an informal lunch or session with, for instance, members of the head boy/girl elected team. Q691 Jeff Ennis: Would that level of school council involvement apply to the other two schools? Mr Singh Sandhu: Yes, we have quite an active student council. If I may just go to the earlier question of citizenship, I think schools which have run good citizenship, or it is really cross-curricular, that if we have good teachers who actually are well trained in that respect I think we are fortunate. Some schools cannot do it because of the teacher training there. Going on to the student council, we actually run it like this, we are sitting here, that is the way it is run by a very good member of staff and the school is involved in the Jack Petchy award, where £300 a month is given to a particular student who makes an effort. A student councillor decides how actually to use that award and is very much involved in a lot of it. We have not graduated onto the governing bodies yet, but that is under consideration. They have also been involved in a dialogue with a local councillor on issues in the neighbourhood, particularly (what has closed the acceptor ?) so they are very much involved. I think the local councillor was put though their paces by the student council, but it is very, very active within the school. Ms Allard: I would say that our student council is also a very important forum for learning the role of democracy and the way it works. One of the things which are happening at the moment at our school is that the student council, and we have three because we are on two sites and they have Lower School, Upper School and Sixth Form Councils, they are considering the student councils' constitution, how that should properly be. One of the challenges is to work something out which would then be applied across the school and would be the best way, for example, of electing the members of the school council and how they should proceed. It is a very formative experience for them to be thinking about these things and creating their own constitution. We also do similar things to what was mentioned at the Jewish Free School, we do have involvement of our students in senior appointments, though not all appointments, and our head girl is invited to meetings of the governing body. Q692 Mr Carswell: Towards the end of the last session there was a very interesting series of questions and answers about Britishness and multiculturalism, and, if I may, I want to put some of those questions to you; as headteachers of faith schools, I would be very interested in your perspective. For a long time, the notion of Britishness has been defined, some may say redefined, by officialdom in terms of multiculturalism; we are being told constantly we are a multicultural country. It is implicit that there is a sort of cultural relativism to being British, yet there is now a very interesting debate taking place about multiculturalism. Trevor Phillips has said some very interesting things; Mr Blair said some very interesting things. If there was a wholesale re‑evaluation of multiculturalism, would it have any impact in terms of how you approach citizenship? Do you think that this debate on what is and what is not multiculturalism would affect the way you, as a faith school, teach citizenship? Ms Allard: I will have a go. It is a tough one. We feel that our school is the primary community for our children and it is an accepting community, all children are welcome, and what they bring is part of what all of us can benefit from; so I suppose, in that sense, you would say it is a multicultural perspective. We also have a shared history, it is a 300 year old school, as I mentioned, and one of the things that I always do with year seven is teach them that 300-year history, and to find that they have this shared history fascinates them, they all love to know that they all belong to this institution and that they are all part of it and they inherit it as a group. They come from all over, we have a huge range in our school of cultural backgrounds, but they love to join in sharing that history. I think perhaps, in microcosm, that is a kind of expression of what the debate within this country might be. When we ask our students what their cultural adherence is, many of them do define themselves as British. Whatever their further cultural origin might be in relation to their grandparents and parents, many of them will define themselves as British. Mr Miller: I think Rachel mentioned the school being the primary community and I think, in JFS, one can see a series of circles that go ever outwards from the school to their own Jewish community, to certainly a sense of Britishness and beyond that. A number of our students, quite a number, I do not have any exact figures, come from a range of places around the world; we have a lot of South African students, a lot of students have come from, in terms of their family background, not necessarily themselves, Iraq, Iran, from Israel, and that I think creates an international flavour, to an extent, as well. Certainly we want them to be aware of an international context to their lives. As I said in the opening remarks, one of the things that the school also strives to do is ensure that students are certainly as aware of the sense of their faith as they are of their sense of Britishness. We have no issue about their sense of Britishness, or, at least, Englishness, if you look at how quickly people are out of the building to go and watch England World Cup football matches, they certainly have that. I think the other thing which is important is that we do lay a lot of stress on students of respect for their history; we have both exhibitions about Holocaust and every summer we have a group of veteran soldiers who come in to do if not all the history lessons about their experiences in mostly the second world war and meet with year nine, year ten students about this. There is a sense of respect for the past and certainly, after what Rachel said about the history of the school, which is a very long one, again that is something which I think is an attractive element for the students and gives them a context and a place and a rooting within a continuum, that they are there now and many of their parents were in the school and some of their grandparents were at the school when it used to be in the East End. Mr Singh Sandhu: I think, as one of the younger schools, we face an opposite dilemma really, that the bulk of our children are fourth, fifth generations coming into the school and are very much British through and through, but what they seem to have lost actually is what Sikhism stands for. One of the main reasons is that the parents have endeavoured to take them to a (Guru ?) at the weekends, etc., and because the priests have not been able to have a dialogue with them in English, as most of the kids could not understand Punjabi, particularly at the sort of level which reading from the Holy book is, the actual concept of what Sikhism stands for has been lost through and through. They seem to think that just wearing symbols is what Sikhism is about, and I think what the school has done actually is confirm their values, one could say, that this religion stands for respect for the religion, stands for doing good to others, and so on. I think it sort of helped the school, but, as far as the Britishness is concerned, that has never been an issue within the school. Ms Allard: I would like just to add something, if I may. I spoke at first very much from the welcoming in of the little ones and I would like to add that one of the things that we lay a lot of stress on as they grow older is developing the outward-looking aspect. I warmed very much to what was said about the fact that schools in London inevitably are international schools, they are composed of not only students who define themselves as British but many who come from many other places and perhaps will stay for only a short time. The place of Britain in Europe and Britain in the world, represented by the United Nations, for example, is something that we need students to think about and we do work towards. In the sixth form every year they will model the United Nations or model the European Union General Assembly, or Parliament, or whatever, to help them see their place in the wider world as well as being welcomed into our smaller world. Q693 Mr Carswell: I know I am very fortunate to have been invited to go and speak at a number of schools about our relationship with the European Union. Given that an important element of citizenship is that, as the people who live on this island, we can have a shared narrative, a shared island story, do you think that, citizenship and inculcating a sense of citizenship, instead of celebrating diversity perhaps what we need to do is celebrate achievement, the achievements of the West generally but of Britain in particular: cultural achievements, medical achievements, technological achievements, philosophical achievements? Do you think that citizenship needs to be more a question of celebrating our achievements as a country than emphasising divisiveness? Rabbi Kampf: You can define citizenship any way you like, I suppose, but that is not how we interpret it anyway. It is not about necessarily celebrating, as we look at it. The question is based on the first question as well. It is about, I think, giving students educationally a sense of self-respect and respect for others and participation in a community. That seems to me the heart of citizenship, and then the question is what is the methodology for delivering it; achievement is the method that achieves. Again, it is not about knowledge, good, we achieve A, we do B, that does not change action. We look at citizenship as not having acquired knowledge, though it is about knowledge, and it is not even necessarily about attitudes, which is difficult in a school to change anyway. Cynicism says, society has problems; go into schools and let them deal with it. Okay, thanks, so we will try to change attitudes; but, again, it is how we change, with what the Jewish faith is about, it is about participation, which is about what citizenship is, how we become positive, proactive, citizens in the local community, to the person sitting next to you, to your classmate, to your school, your family, out. To me, it is about the education, it is more than teaching, it is about changing attitudes, which leads to a change of behaviour. Therefore, what you are suggesting is a methodology to get there perhaps which may not be valid. If it becomes law and that is what we have to do, we will all do it, and you will ask us how we are doing and we are doing fine. Is it achieving its ends, I am not sure. Within the Jewish faith there is a law which says that in whichever country Jews find themselves they need to adhere to the law of that country. That is not for debate; that is the way it goes. How do you define your Britishness: "Here you are, guys, this is the framework we're in; let's go with it." In our school, and I am speaking only for our school, we need to say, as Tim said, we want to root you in your Jewishness and to play a full part in society, a positive role there. So I have not answered your question 100 per cent, other than saying I am not sure of the outcomes. Mr Singh Sandhu: I agree whole-heartedly with Mark and I think if we looked at, you have got citizenship guidelines, what is the aim, is the end product aim to produce good citizens, if it is to produce really good citizens they need models, models to aspire to and models of good citizens. The strands which come out of it would be social, would be moral, would be on the political debate, it would be real role models who have helped out others. Those would be the sorts of people that kids would aspire to be, and that would be the sort of thing you are looking at in the product of your guidelines. Chairman: I sometimes wonder, when people talk about our island story, whether my ancestors are included. I am from a Huguenot background and we were sort of washed up on the shore. Do we get included? We are included, are we: jolly good. Q694 Mr Marsden: You have all laid emphasis on the fact that in all of your schools, and I well understand this, citizenship is embedded in the ethos and everything else that you try to do in the school, but I wonder if there is one aspect of the current citizenship education debate or the curriculum that you would miss, as it were, if you did not have it embedded in your school. What would it be; what is there that the citizenship education debate has made you change, if I can put it another way, the way in which you do things in your school? Ms Allard: I think perhaps we have been challenged to be more specific about the sorts of things that children might learn about the way democracy is organised in this country, for example. We would say that they are learning to think about democracy and how to do things in the way that we do things in the school, the school councils and so on, but we make sure now that we do have some experience, like a model United Nations, every year. We do not do it some years, we do it every year, there are things that we do every year and with all the students, which before might have been left more to chance, I think. Q695 Mr Marsden: It is a more systematic approach? Ms Allard: It is more systematic, yes; for example, activities for charity even. We now have a charity week for each year group and every class in that year group must do something on one day of the week, and the method by which they discuss it and decide it will be helping them to learn all the various aspects of how you debate and decide in citizenship. It will not be just the enthusiasts; everybody will be getting involved and these experiences will be for all. Q696 Mr Marsden: Tim and Mark, is it about putting tents of information across, which perhaps you did not put across previously? Mr Miller: As Mark said in his opening comments, it is about, as we started off some years ago, initially doing an audit, looking at what we did within the aspect of social and moral responsibility; that was very much implicit in what the school did anyway. I think we have become much more conscious of the need to look at issues like community involvement, political literacy, as time has gone on. Q697 Mr Marsden: I am sorry to interrupt. Is that something which has come specifically out of the original Crick Report and the Government's recommendations, or is it something which perhaps you would have done anyway? Mr Miller: It is difficult to answer that. The Crick Report and the recommendations in relation to citizenship education are themselves drawn from where society was going and the mood of the times, I think, in a way, as well, and a recognition of the kind of multicultural society in which we live. It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation perhaps there. In relation to charity, for instance, we look at what each year group should be working on, and again try to move students from perhaps a very specific issue in relation to charity, just raising money for something quite local and specific in the younger years, to ensuring that in the older years students are actually taking the lead in organising, devising and planning ways in which a charitable activity can be run and taking responsibility for it. Q698 Mr Marsden: It is moving from passive to active? Mr Miller: Yes; and a seven-year strategy across the year groups for how we want students to be exposed to different aspects of what broadly one would call citizenship at different stages of their education. As I say, at the end point, when they are in year 13 and going ahead to university, we want to try to reflect in our references the contributions they have made, and we see that as a very important element in selling the student, if you like, to the particular institutions to which they are applying. Q699 Mr Marsden: Rajinder, you said, a few moments ago, that one of the issues for you had been, when I think my colleague asked about Britishness, that you wanted to emphasise Sikhism because you felt that had become, for a number of reasons, somewhat diluted. Again, is there something which has come out of the Crick Report, the National Curriculum, which has made you say "We really must do that in our school that we weren't doing five or six years ago"? Mr Singh Sandhu: I think some of the points Rachel made, about formalising it and setting the structures in place, and the starting-point for us was having a very good member of staff to have leadership in that particular area. The areas which we left out, and which have now been formalised, are environmental issues, dialogue for the children and the local politicians, local neighbourhood issues, etc.; that has come in more, which probably would not have happened if the recent guidance had not come into place. Q700 Chairman: Is not there a bit of any of you which says "Why doesn't the Government get off our backs; we're educators, we know about this, we were doing a jolly good job before they started getting obsessed by citizenship"? Is not there a bit of you where you say, "Come on, we are pedagogues; leave us alone"? Is there any of that in you? Ms Allard: I think we were producing very good citizens. It is never a pity to stop and take stock and think and reflect on whether the things that you are so happy about actually are touching the lives of all the students in the school. I think that is probably what I would benefit from most. I do have reservations about making it into an exam subject, because I feel very strongly that what teaches the students most is action, what they remember is things they have done. It is habits of thinking and ways of organising, ways of working, which will make them into the citizens who will be active members of society in the future, confident that if they need to find things out they know how to do it and where to look and that they do have a role to play and will be welcome to play it. I think that is very important. I am not drawn strongly towards the idea of it as a subject, whereas I am drawn very strongly to the idea that we should make sure that all students are benefiting from what we offer them. Q701 Paul Holmes: When Ofsted looked at citizenship they were critical of schools who said, "Oh, we do that across the subjects," all the faith schools who said, "Well, we do that in RE." I take it, from what you have said already, that all three schools would not disagree with that; you would say, "Well, we do it across the curriculum, we do it in RE and we don't need to do it as a separate subject"? Ms Allard: What we do in RE at my school is hugely beneficial for the students, hugely challenging. They all will take a GCSE which makes them reflect that ethics and philosophy in a way which fits very well with a lot of what citizenship is teaching, and asks them to think about it in the way that citizenship is asking them to take responsibility for their own research, their own understanding, their own response to other people's views, their exploration of alternative views, all those approaches. I do think they are getting excellent teaching there. I do not think that a citizenship class set up, as such, would be doing anything different in that respect. We have to make sure that we are covering all the ground there. Q702 Paul Holmes: Is it generally the same response? Mr Singh Sandhu: I think citizenship has added to it. We were inspected in 2003 by an Ofsted team and they made extremely positive comments on the students as citizens, the ethos of the school, the aims of the school, which is why I come to the point now that government legislation has led to it being formalised. We even invited the Ofsted team to look at assemblies, although that is a separate category for the religious schools, but we were very open as to really that the message which comes from the assembly is actually filtered through to the whole school. Again, it adds to it and it does not devalue it. Rabbi Kampf: Ofsted just came to us and they endorsed our outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda, in which citizenship plays a large part. To answer your question, yes, I am cynical. When it first arrived, what did it want; again, it depends on what the agenda is. If it fits, if it can help students, help young people today become better people and does not proscribe the methodology for that then that is something seriously worth looking at and taking on board. It has not proved a contradiction to us. It is about analysing, what is it that we are supposed to do and does it meet our aims and objectives. Mr Miller: I think it is right and proper that it should be something that is inspected, but I think that schools, in knowing their own community and clientele, whether they are a faith school or not, do need to try to address issues of citizenship in a way which they feel, as professionals, is most successful, but that does need to have some validation in terms of the approaches, which is perhaps where Ofsted comes in. I think also there is a danger in terms of what it is all for, and I am a bit worried about the issue of the island story because so many people on this island are here not necessarily because they would have chosen, in their lives, or their families would have chosen to be here, they are here for other reasons. Q703 Chairman: They were washed up here? Mr Miller: Absolutely; back to the Huguenots. I think there is also that element, which comes in at times, as to whether teaching citizenship is going to have an effect upon behaviour in society and create better behaved youth in society. That is also a dangerous presumption and an excessive responsibility placed on schools, I think, in that particular respect; we will teach your children Shakespeare, we do not necessarily expect them all to become avid theatre-goers. We would like them to be but it is not always going to work out like that. Q704 Paul Holmes: Given that citizenship is a new subject, it has been around for only four years officially, but most schools would say they had done a ton of reforms anyway, there are only 200 places for training citizenship teachers every year and there are about 20,000 secondary schools, do you think that matters, that they are not training very many citizenship teachers, or would you say that it is dealt with anyway in other ways in the school? Rabbi Kampf: As a faith school, and I can talk only for my school, we are meeting the agendas. If you are perhaps not in a faith school, that may cause some problems, as the previous witnesses, before us, outlined. In our faith school everything dovetails, they strengthen each other. Mr Singh Sandhu: I would agree with that. Q705 Paul Holmes: Rachel, I remember you were saying, "Well, we've got a very crowded curriculum; where would you make the time to teach citizenship separately, and we do it in RE." Would you employ a citizenship teacher if you had the money and somebody who was qualified was applying for the job? Ms Allard: We do think about it. If somebody came in though to teach citizenship they would be meeting a huge number of students and for very short periods of time. Whereas if you are teaching through RE and other subjects the people who are doing the teaching know the students better because they meet them more often per week. In our particular case though, the big issue is not so much would you employ the teacher and get the specialism, because quite often in secondary schools students appreciate a specialist, it is what you will give up to insert this new item into a very crowded curriculum. Q706 Paul Holmes: The Government has produced a continuing professional development handbook, with some best practice ideas on citizenship. Have your schools made use of this at all? Ms Allard: The answer is, yes, from my technical expert. Mr Singh Sandhu: I would say that, although we are talking of the closeness between citizenship and religion, and I have talked about that as well, our member of staff for citizenship is a non-Sikh and the fact is that the vast majority of our staff are non-Sikhs, actually it is a huge strength to the school because it is a matter of bringing everybody's strengths to show to the children, it really is. Going to the point about best practice, because of these issues the training is important to us, particularly where there is best practice that is even more important to us. Donna, who does our citizenship, is a non-Sikh and she does a brilliant job and she is very well informed. Rabbi Kampf: We are not using the terms that you are referring to, and I do not know what you want me to say after that. Q707 Paul Holmes: Is it fair to say that in general the citizen curriculum, the government training materials, and so forth, have not actually impacted very much on your three schools, except that they have made you look at what you teach and say, "Yes, we're doing that already"? Ms Allard: Can I add a slight note, in relation to the materials you referred to. We use the case studies by circulating them round the different areas, to the different heads of department, so that they are getting that input to help them. Mr Miller: I think it is also fair to say that the related development of the Every Child Matters material is something that we have seen as a very good and clear and helpful series of guidelines, and the five aspects within that are areas that we do seek to ensure that we have amply and appropriately covered across the curriculum. Q708 Mr Carswell: You have been producing citizens successfully since 1732, you have been producing them successfully since 1993, and you have been producing them successfully for 300 years. Is there not a real danger, given there is a knee-jerk reaction now amongst 'here today, gone tomorrow' politicians, that they are going to create a set of expectations on what the schools can do? There are bigger public policy issues which perhaps need to be addressed, but in response to a broader set of public policy failures there is a citizenship agenda which will impose on you not only a series of statist, top-down constraints but will quote a series of unrealistic expectations as to what schools can do. Instead of creating these statist expectations, if we are really serious about citizenship, we should be allowing it to evolve organically actually by letting schools do their own thing, rather than being prescriptive and telling schools what to do? Mr Miller: I think, as I was saying before, it is right that the state, through Ofsted, or whatever organ the state wishes to set up, examines and interrogates schools about what they do and requires schools to meet certain standard which conform to what society has decided, through its elected representatives. There is certainly a great danger that society at large will expect too much of schools, but I think there are many, many other organisations and elements within society which contribute towards the creation of good citizens. I think MPs, local councillors, also have their role, in terms of how they help to create the active citizens of the future. It is a worrying sign, is it not, and I am not blaming anyone here, the number of people actively participating in our democracy, that is a worrying sign for the future, and it is something that schools, society at large, the media, I think all have to adjust to in some way. Schools do not have the only answer to it and I think we are asked to do lots of other things, in terms of numeracy, literacy, exam results, and so on. Citizenship, I think, is absolutely rooted in the kind of young people we want emerging from our schools; it is a much bigger issue. I think that society needs to look at how we are creating the active citizens of the future so that in 50 or 100 years' time there can still be situations like this, which I think is wonderful, that MPs question schools and go back and make whatever decisions you make and recommendations you make in relation to consultation across us, other people who come to this Committee, and so on. Chairman: Thank you very much for that, Tim. That was a very kind word. Can I thank you all very much for your attendance and the quality of the answers you have given to our questions. If you do think, as I say, at a subsequent time, tonight, tomorrow, or whenever, there was something you should have said to the Committee, we are very open to hearing from you. Thank you. |