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Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, will the noble Baroness admit that, in the first clause, schools are required to seek permission from the Secretary of State to innovate? Will it actually come from the bottom up, just like that?
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, the intention of the clause is that the schools should bring their new ideas to the Secretary of State for her consideration, so that she can judge what is required of the school to put it into effect. We will have to follow up that matter in Committee.
In respect of innovation, the Minister gave the example that the Bill might enable schools to make changes to the school day. That is an interesting example. The enemy of innovation, in many schools, is lack of time. Many schools already use hours outside the school day for wonderful programmes of extra-curricular activity, but there is a barrier to what they can do under the present structure. The Ofsted report makes it clear that schools that offer after-school activities bring tremendous opportunities to their young people to achieve more. Research bears that out. How much more effective it could be if the whole afternoon were available to the school to offer programmes of extra-curricular activities—covering everything from sport to citizenship to extra study support—available to everybody, including the families, and if schools could use their staff and their budgets more flexibly.
There are many challenges in making the Bill work as effectively as possible. Schools will need support, and I ask the Minister to say something in her summing-up about the work of the schools innovation unit and how much it will support the work of schools. There are issues relating to the time limits on innovation; the evaluation of innovative programmes and decisions on what happens afterwards; and, at various stages in the Bill, consultation with local authorities. As my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen said, there is a great opportunity to listen to the voice of the child, to make sure that that innate wisdom about what works in the classroom is fully taken into account.
There are often—not always—resource issues that cluster around attempts to innovate. There are also issues relating to sustainability. Above all, however, there is a need to ensure that schools which have the confidence to go for the extra opportunities share them effectively with others. The Ofsted report showed that the gap between the best and the worst-performing schools was widening. The Bill proposes greater
opportunities for partnerships. That is the antidote to diversity. Diversity need not mean disadvantage. I hope passionately that innovation will not run out at the point at which we are looking for ways to ensure that the stronger schools and the schools about which the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, spoke so passionately can genuinely get the extra help that they need from the schools that can lead. Sometimes, it is not easy for schools to ask for help, to borrow from each other or to know where to go. We must examine that part of the policy closely.There is also the question of which schools will get the status and advantage of earned autonomy. I am pleased to see that, in the policy statements document, the Government said that they would review the proposed criteria for earned autonomy and that consideration would be given to using value-added data alongside performance data to help to identify successful schools. I hope that that will happen as quickly as possible. I would argue strongly that some of the most effective lessons can be learnt from some of our most successful schools, which, day in and day out, are fighting a battle in hugely disadvantaged areas, where the added value comes from getting the child to turn up at school and stay there to acquire what it is necessary to learn. It is in such schools that the flexibility of the key stage 4 curriculum will be particularly useful, because they will be in a position to pioneer many of the things that schools in other circumstances want to do.
I have been pleased by the welcome that your Lordships have given to Clauses 25 and 26, which create a legal framework to make it possible for school governors, if they so choose, to set up new partnerships between schools, families and communities. What is proposed is not new. There is a fine tradition of schools working with communities and families, but there has never been a legal framework to allow governors to do that. The Bill provides that, and signals to schools that greater partnership with the community is welcome. It is not an extra burden on schools; it is not a distraction from the business of educating children. It is part of a coherent strategy for raising achievement that would bring extra support and extra capacity to schools and might even create more time for them to get on with their job. It has been widely welcomed, and it is worth saying that, every day, schools must deal with children whose ability to learn is completely impaired by their family and community circumstances. I am told by those who know that, every week in every primary school, 13 instances are referred to the head teacher that are not child-related but relate entirely to the adults who are looking after them.
A health centre on a school site would cut down on absences. Family learning centres on sites would help parents to know how to support their children. Skill centres would help adults to get jobs. The schools will win, because such integrated services will support their work. The community will win, because the schools will be playing such a powerful role in regeneration. As the Minister said, it could make a massive difference to childcare, freeing schools up in a way that has not been possible before to offer after-school childcare clubs to
working parents, for example. What a boon. In the past, governors had to go through the hoops of setting up voluntary management committees; now, they could do it more easily, and we could meet our national targets.Finally, I welcome the Welsh clauses. Among the clauses special to Wales are those providing for a separate curriculum for Wales, for special needs, for partnership agreements between local authorities and schools, and giving help to schools to work closely together across the transitional divide between primary and secondary schools. The clauses will be extremely welcome in schools across Wales because, as the Minister has said, they fit the needs of a distinctive small country. She described it in the paving document as "a learning country"; that is a very splendid title for the Welsh part of the Bill. It makes the Welsh commitment to lifelong learning transparently clear.
Like other noble Lords, I look forward, in a conditional sort of way, to the next stages of the Bill. In Committee we shall tangle with the definitions relating to scope and powers. I agree with the Minister that this is reform with a purpose. I hope that we shall all be able to support that.
5.10 p.m.
Baroness Perry of Southwark: My Lords, it is, indeed, a pleasure to welcome the parts of the Bill on which there is obviously a great deal of consensus in the House. I know that the Government are working hard to raise standards in education and there is no question that their motives are laudable. Many aspects in the Bill command approval. I welcome the increased powers and functions of the General Teaching Council which takes the GTC beyond its advisory role and brings it closer to what we hoped for when it was first introduced.
I also welcome the encouragement of federations of schools—I believe that that will be a good thing—and, like the previous speaker, I welcome the extended services that schools will be able to offer. I welcome the commitment of the Government to increased autonomy for schools and the freedom to innovate. It is therefore profoundly disappointing to find that the Bill seeks instead to impose enormously wide-ranging new powers on the Secretary of State, with increased centralisation.
The past 20 years of experience of managing people in the education, and mainly the higher education, service have convinced me of one truth which I learnt in a very humbling way. It is that decisions get progressively worse the further they are away from the people who actually have to implement them. The people who are implementing the decisions are the ones who should take them and make them. I thought that the Government also believed in devolving decisions to schools.
Therefore, why is the Secretary of State taking powers, for example, to intervene even more extensively than at the present time, over the heads of school governors, and over the heads of Local Education Authorities? She will impose on schools
which, in the Secretary of State's opinion, are considered to be weak interim executive governing bodies to replace the properly constituted governing body of a school or impose a minimum schools budget on LEAs.The Secretary of State is taking the direct power to approve an innovation in those schools which, in her view, are successful schools. We find in the Bill that she will do that by modifying existing legislation. Clause 2, as other noble Lords have said, gives the Secretary of State extraordinary powers. In my long time on the Delegated Powers Select Committee, I do not believe we ever saw a Henry VIII clause which actually allowed the Secretary of State to grant to institutions exemption from any requirement imposed by education legislation. That drives a coach and horses through all previous legislation in the field of education. Why is she taking those powers? If schools cannot innovate within existing legislation, then amend that legislation for all schools, not just for ones which are considered successful in the view of the Secretary of State.
It is wrong to parade as giving greater freedom to schools the granting of freedom on this very limited and centrally controlled basis. It is the Secretary of State taking to herself the power to decide which schools can break the law, if I may put it that way. She will exempt some from the requirement to meet the law and other schools will still be required to battle on.
I beg her to think again. If there is something wrong with the existing law—whether it is about teachers' pay or the national curriculum—which is making it impossible for schools to innovate, please change that law. The Secretary of State should not be allowed the power to change it for certain schools only. The failing schools, or the weak schools, will be the subject of the draconian powers to which I have just referred.
My second concern is about the separation of key stage 4 from the other three key stages. Clause 82 gives the Secretary of State new powers to alter or remove the requirements for the fourth key stage; that is, the 14 to 16 year-old phase. We now have the Green Paper on 14 to 19 year-olds, which was promised at Second Reading in the other place, so we have a clearer view of what the Government intend by Clause 82 in taking that power.
I hate to disagree with my noble friend Lord Baker who felt that this was a wholly good thing. It could be a wholly good thing, but I have a very great fear that it will simply be replacing selection at 11, which we all long ago decided was a wholly wrong and foolish thing to do for our country. It will be replacing selection at 11 with selection at 14. When children reach the age of 14, schools will effectively be required to sit down with them and classify them. Let us just reflect for a moment. The brightest will be able—just as the boys at Eton are able—to bypass GCSE and pass straight on to A-level. If they are very bright, they can take special extra questions at A-level and achieve distinction. That abolishes the AEA qualification which will be offered to some pupils for the first—and incidentally, now the last—time presumably this year.
That is fine. The bright kids are well catered for and I am always happy to see bright kids catered for. We need the bright kids and their needs are very real. Meanwhile, we are told, the less motivated, the less academic are going to be put, at 14, into a vocational stream. They will be the ones now who take the GCSE, which apparently is such an inferior examination that the bright kids can skip it.
What sort of message does that convey? Can anyone seriously believe that it will achieve the parity of esteem that the Government say they want for vocational and academic education, and which I most sincerely want? We need parity of esteem between vocational and academic education. We need it for the sake of the country; we need it for the sake of the economy; and we need it for the sake of the kids themselves. However, we are saying to the less motivated kids, to the less bright kids, and to the ones who are failing that they can become the vocational stream and that the academic bright kids can go into the other stream.
I once taught high school in the United States and experienced exactly that same system in the state of Massachusetts where the kids were classified at the age of 15. I can remember little 15 year-old lads in tears saying to me, "Please, Miss, do not send me into the commercial stream. Please do not send me into the vocational stream". They were in tears because they knew that that would classify them forever as second class.
Someone referred passionately to the virtues of Sweden recently, where they have 32 lines or streams. One has only to visit a Swedish high school to see the gradations. In the vocational streams the teachers look down at heel and second class and the kids look down at heel and second class. Sweden has not achieved the goal of parity of esteem either. It is a desirable goal but one can reach it only if the vocational subjects are spread right across the curriculum.
Having disagreed with my noble friend Lord Baker I should like to pay him fulsome tribute for establishing not only the national curriculum in the 1988 Act but also for the reform of examinations which turned the GCE and the CSE into one common examination.
As an HMI in the 1970s and 1980s, I can tell noble Lords that there was nothing more depressing than a head teacher showing one around and saying, "This is the GCE stream". There sat the bright kids, smart and knowing that their futures were assured. Then, "This is the CSE stream". Those classes comprised poor little kids who wondered why they were there and what they were doing. What would a CSE offer them in future years? Lastly, "This is the non-examination stream. They drop out, of course". Why should they not?
Keith Joseph used to agonise about the bottom 40 per cent. That bottom 40 per cent were those who left school with no qualifications and who very often had long been truanting. The introduction of a national curriculum meant that all children had access—access which I passionately believe is so important—to the same curriculum for as long as was
reasonably possible. Thus every child had an opportunity to do well, even if he or she only developed later on. Indeed, some pupils blossom at 15 or 16 years old.We can attribute the extraordinary leap ahead in the rate of staying on after the statutory leaving age of 16 to the common GCSE examination. The percentage rose from 60 per cent to over 80 per cent. The GCSE gave far more children a realistic chance of achieving something which would have real coinage in the world outside. Furthermore, the huge expansion of higher education during the early 1990s, over which my noble friend and others presided, was built on the foundation of more young people staying on post-16 and more, therefore, being motivated to take their A-levels and move on into higher education. Please, please do not unscramble that and take us back to a two-tier system between 14 and 16 years old.
My second concern is over who is to teach these vocational subjects to the 14 to 16 year-olds. Over my years of inspecting schools and institutions of further education, I saw some wonderful and inspired teaching of vocational subjects—usually, I have to say, in further education. I also saw some appalling teaching of those subjects—teaching that was boring, repetitive and enough to switch anyone off. Why is it assumed that putting a label on a course and calling it "plumbing" or "engineering" (I should add that only a few days ago the Engineering Council bent my ear on this subject; it is deeply, deeply insulted at the suggestion that the subject is to be something for only the non-motivated and not very bright) is the way to address lack of motivation among kids, in particular if they are then taught in a very boring way?
Alternatively, teachers may have no experience of the application and reality of the subject and thus they may fail to inspire. In post-16 teaching, joint arrangements can be agreed with local further education colleges. The regulations are different and it is possible to bring in people who are excited about teaching vocational courses and use their resources well to teach 16 to 18 year-olds. From the existing pool of school teachers, where are we to find people who can inspire and demonstrate with enthusiasm the wonder of some vocational subjects to 14 to 16 year-olds?
The test of the Bill is whether it will provide genuinely equal access to a broad curriculum for all children, thus maximising the opportunity for all children to achieve and to get to where they want to go. I believe that it will fail in that. It will create a dangerous, two-tier system for the post-14 year-olds. In other aspects of the Bill, which I have not touched on in my remarks, it will create a two-tier structure for schools, with academies and specialist schools acting as magnets and drawing to themselves the brightest of kids and the best of teachers, while the rest are left with what we have been told is the "bog standard".
I hope that I am wrong in my concerns and that the Bill will succeed. However, I ask the Minister to think again very carefully about what is being done with post-14 education.
5.24 p.m.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, sitting as I was like a greyhound straining in his slip, I was so moved by the final words of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, that I rose to my feet. I must apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark. As a former HMI she knows so much more about this topic than I do. Her speech, which we have just heard, was most interesting and full of detail.
My noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford referred to the "hierarchic" class system in England. I am glad that that comment came from an English lady, not from myself. Living as I do not too far from the border with England, I have always been intrigued and slightly amused by the hierarchical and stratified nature of English society. If one attended a social function of some kind in England, the first question one would be asked—so that one could be placed in the proper position within the strata—was, "Where do your children go to school?". Because I would reply, "They go to the local comprehensives in Wales, of course", I would notice a certain degree of switching off.
I regard this Bill from a Welsh angle and it is the Welsh provisions within it that are my main concern. However, perhaps I may comment first on some of its general provisions. A theme running through the legislation seeks to fulfil a certain desire to stratify the English education system. I refer to "earned autonomy", so that only one in 10 schools can achieve the imprimatur from the Secretary of State to become more flexible and to experiment a little. Then we shall have "specialist schools" which will divide one kind of student from another—and all the prizes are to go to the "good schools", as my noble friend put it. The divisions between such schools and the "bog standard" comprehensives will only increase. Thus this Bill, rather surprisingly for a Labour Government, seems to move us closer to a stratified society in England.
As my noble friend pointed out, that has not been the experience in Scotland; and, looking back over my own life in Wales, it certainly was not the situation there. I went to the local grammar school. In my day, some 45 per cent of young people attended grammar school. The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, with whom I spoke only a short while ago, told me that the level was 50 per cent in Denbigh. I am sure that it was even higher for Rhyl Grammar School, which my father and my wife attended, as well as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn. Wales had a great tradition of grammar schools, which an awful lot of people attended.
The system had its limitations. We were brought up to believe that our first role was to become teachers. However, girls might become nurses. One way of escaping that kind of career was to become a lawyer, which is why noble Lords will find on these Benches and on the Benches opposite Welsh lawyers in far too great a number. The law provided an escape route from our upbringing. However, it is funny to note that the businessmen, the successful entrepreneurs in my home area today, are those who failed the 11-plus.
My four children went through the local comprehensive system which followed on from the kind of school I attended. I have to say that, within the system—comprising various comprehensive schools for 11 to 16 education, and then on to colleges of further education for 16 to 18 year-olds—all of my children received an excellent education. They also maintained their roots. They know where their home is: home is where people do not speak with a funny accent and it is where they return to see their friends. They are part of the community—and those community values underpin so much of the strength of Welsh society.
It is for those reasons that I welcome the work being undertaken by the National Assembly for Wales—I should remind noble Lords that the Liberal Democrats are in coalition with the Labour Party in the Welsh Assembly—in the production of The Learning Country, a White Paper which sets out the Assembly's total commitment to comprehensive education—and nothing else. In this party we have always fought for that and it is what the party opposite used to fight for before it started to introduce divisions, as is being done in this Bill.
In its report, Children and Young People: Framework for Partnership, the National Assembly for Wales has proposed that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child should underpin all service provision for children and young people in Wales. It is further proposed that all primary and secondary schools should establish school councils because it is believed that children should be listened to. I hope that that is something which will be further developed.
We are developing in our own way in Wales. We do have specific problems. We need to increase the skills base. Certain areas of our economy require skilled workers who, traditionally, we have not previously produced. However, by various means, the National Assembly for Wales has taken the matter forward—for example, by the introduction of the baccalaureate; the provision of a Welsh curriculum, a matter referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews; and the development of student support. Just as in Scotland, the coalition government in Wales are introducing learning and maintenance allowances for 16 to 18 year-olds, and learning and maintenance bursaries for students. We believe that it is very important that no one should be prevented continuing in education because of a lack of funds.
I welcome the Bill because it puts these matters into legislative form and gives the Welsh Assembly the tools to put its policies into effect. It is much more effective that these policies are being put into effect not by a Secretary of State with a political adviser and a group of civil servants behind him, but by a democratically elected body which will discuss what it is going to do. It will come together to consider the issues and the solutions, and put them into effect.
The only problem is that we have to come to Westminster to get the primary legislation to be able to do so, but we have put forward the proposals in the Bill
with consent across the board. Not even Plaid Cymru dissents from the way in which we are developing education in Wales.I have only one further comment on the Bill. An increase of faith schools in Wales would be unthinkable. I recall a colleague of mine who was educated in Belfast in a well-known Protestant school. He told me that he met his first Catholic at the age of six and his second Catholic at the age of 15. If we are to have a multiracial society, are we seeking the development of different cultures as separate streams, or are we seeking some kind of integration? We can accept faith schools as they are at the moment but, if we are seeking integration into a truly multiracial society, the development of faith schools must be entirely contrary to what we wish to achieve.
I confine myself to the Welsh provisions in the Bill. I welcome them and I shall support them as they pass through the House.
5.33 p.m.
Lord Moser: My Lords, the recent Ofsted report—an excellent document—paid tribute to the considerable progress made in our educational arrangements during the past two years. However, it also stated that we were still failing a great number of children. It is to that aspect that I wish to devote my remarks.
Before turning to the two issues I want to talk about, I should say that, in reading the Bill, I share the sense of puzzlement. On the one hand is the most welcome stress placed on more autonomy and flexibility and a greater emphasis on innovation and so on but, on the other, how we translate those worthy principles into something that is good for all schools and not only the successful ones remains a puzzle. How we give the local communities, where schools belong and thrive, their due involvement is another puzzle. But perhaps the Committee stage is the right time to talk about those issues.
The two matters I shall refer to relate to the unsuccessful part of the system. I declare an interest in basic skills in that for another week or two I shall be the chairman of the Basic Skills Agency, which has been prominent in the field. It is at the lower end of schooling—primary schools—and not least in tackling the problems of literacy and numeracy, that the Government deserve every possible credit. Enormous progress has been made and it looks as though the Government's key target for literacy—which is that 80 per cent of 11 year-olds will achieve level 4 or above at key stage 2—will be achieved, with a similar target for numeracy.
Eighty per cent is a very big number, but so is 20 per cent. I am more worried about the 20 per cent who will not achieve those targets. This remains a serious problem because it means that 20 per cent of children are unfit to go into secondary education—the toughest transition of all—because they lack the basic skills of literacy and numeracy to cope with the enormous problems of the secondary curriculum. Moreover, just
when one may have been hoping that the problem of adult literacy and numeracy was on its way to solution, further inflows into that pool look inevitable.The recent report which bears my name shows that some 7 million adults in this rich country have poor basic skills, which is shocking. It has shocked the nation and has led the Government, I am happy to say, to a promising strategy for a solution. The hope was that by stemming the flow of more illiterate and innumerate children from primary schools into secondary schools, that number would not grow—but we are not yet anywhere near that point, with 20 per cent still a problem.
That is the first point I wish to stress, simply to illustrate that, in spite of the enormous improvements made at primary level, there is still quite a long way to go, which will cost a great deal of money. There is no doubt that the greatest problems are at secondary level and I very much welcome the Government's decision to focus most attention on that sector.
The second point on which I wish to comment is the structural change foreshadowed in the Bill. The underlying principle is diversity and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said, diversity is one thing but hierarchy is another. What are we facing? We have specialist schools; a new layer of advanced specialist schools is promised; there are academies replacing earlier city technology colleges and city colleges for the technology of the arts; and we have faith schools. I will not speak at length on those. Other noble Lords have mentioned them and no doubt there will be further opportunities to do so. But I share the view of those who stress the overriding importance of strengthening social cohesion in every possible way within our increasingly multi-cultural society and who see, certainly in single faith schools, a move in the other direction.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said, there is too much hierarchical emphasis to these structural changes. We are rather obsessed with categories and hierarchies, a kind of infection of the league table virus from which we all suffer. The problems are obvious. Let me take specialist schools as an example. By the end of this year there will be 1,000 such schools out of a total of 3,500 secondary schools. Those selected will have considerable additional resources, so it will not be surprising if they do better than the others. They will be able to employ better teachers and have better facilities and they will probably have more motivated children and parents. However one phrases it, that means a two-tier system. As we are on this route, I can only express the hope that in due course all schools will have the advantages of this top tier.
The proposals for specialist schools give rise to another issue. They are rightly required to take poorer, weaker, struggling local schools under their wing. However, as Ofsted states in its report, that approach has yet to bear fruit. Moreover, is it not a mistake that, although the specialist schools have to link to five local schools, only one has to be a secondary school. Will the Minister comment on that? Would it not be better, given that primary schools are on the whole in better
shape than secondary schools, for the arrangements to be changed so that specialist secondary schools have to link to perhaps four local secondary schools rather than primary ones?The new academies are another privileged category, although they replace the previous schools of that type. I believe that they owe their origins in part to the American system of charter schools and private ownership and management developments. I have some links with the American education system. I remind your Lordships that in the United States neither experiment—neither the charter schools nor the financially managed school—has been claimed to be a total success educationally, which is what ultimately matters.
I am particularly worried about the potential influences of private ownership, which has yet to be tested. It is one thing for the PFI or PPP to spoil our London Underground system, but let us at least ring fence education from the negative effects of private involvement.
There is one common thread to the structural changes. Schools are graded as successful or not. If successful, they receive more money and so will become more successful; and that will perhaps means more freedom and flexibility.
My concern is with the other schools. The hope must be that in these hierarchies more resources and attention will gradually be directed towards the struggling and weaker schools. It is no good merely hoping that the poor schools will learn by some kind of osmosis from the success of the better schools. The evidence is against that. It does not work that way. In introducing the Bill in the other place, the Secretary of State stressed,
- "the responsibility to raise standards in our weakest schools".
Finally, I want to focus on two issues of disadvantage—those who remain short of basic skills and the schools that remain short of being favoured. Time is too short to talk about the things that matter most. I refer, for example, to the curricula—I am rather cheered by the new 14 to 19 consultative document—and above all to the teaching profession.
Nothing is more important in any education debate on any educational agenda than the future of our teaching profession. It is full of devoted, committed people. But there are still enormous problems of recruitment, retention and morale. These have recently been discussed in this House. I hope that there will be further opportunities for debate. The problems are vast. Of those who joined the teaching profession, in five years' time only half will be still be in it. That says everything and is not acceptable.
On a general point, everything that has been mentioned in the debate depends on resources. Fortunately, we are climbing up the resources ladder from the days when this country spent less than 5 per
cent of GDP on education. I believe that the figure is now closer to 5½ per cent. That is still far short of the 7 to 8 per cent that is spent by some countries.I was delighted, as was everyone involved in education, when the Prime Minister famously announced the three priorities for his government. The Government have been true to those priorities. I have no doubt that education belongs at the top of the political agenda—not only because it is basic to the quality of life of every one of us but because it actually helps to determine our future economic health. In that, it differs from other key priorities. Of course health and transport deserve every possibly priority and what can be spent on them must depend on our economic health. The same is true of education. But education is different because it actually determines our economic health. That difference needs always to be remembered.
5.46 p.m.
Lord Sheppard of Liverpool: My Lords, the first serious political opinion I ever held emerged from living and working in the East End of London in the 1950s and 1960s. It was that the segregation that divides cities into vast one-class quarters is very damaging and needs to be tackled. When I moved to south London as Bishop of Woolwich, I saw the beginning of another segregation—by race. When I came to Liverpool, I saw both class and race segregating people—but, thank God, I saw determined efforts beginning to remove the bitter divisions between Protestant and Catholic that had marred the city.
Segregation is a serious issue. In my years in Liverpool, it was a high priority to me to seek to break down divisions of whatever kind—Protestant-Catholic, black-white, Christian, Jewish, Muslim. So I understand the anxiety expressed by some noble Lords about an increase in the number of faith-based schools. But I welcome that increase, and the variety that it can bring to our schools.
The accusation is being made that an increase in the number of faith-based schools will add to segregation. But are those critics suggesting that segregation has not already happened? The segregation that I met in east London had nothing to do with faith-based schools, and in so many cities the origins lie in completely different places. Housing, jobs and fear have created segregation. In some areas, 90 per cent of the children in county schools are Muslim. That is reality. So is the fact that Muslim communities have founded, and would continue to found, their own independent schools.
To say that segregation would be removed by a thoroughgoing secularism would be nonsense. Perhaps I may quote from the Runnymede Trust report on The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, chaired by my noble friend Lord Parekh. The report states:
- "There is a tendency in western democracies to believe that secular society provides the best public space for equality and tolerance ... but secular society tends to push religion to the margins of public space and into the private sphere. Islamophobia
- and antisemitism merge with a more widespread rejection of religion, which runs through a significant part of 'tolerant' society, including the educated middle class and the progressive media".
Tolerance and respect for other faiths grows from confidence and security in one's own identity and faith. Bringing schools in from the private sector means that some requirements can be made. One of the words of the moment in education is "clusters"—the idea of schools making links with other schools. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, said that setting up faith-based schools would set school against school. She made no mention of what the Secretary of State has been saying about a "family of schools".
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