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Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Taverne for instigating this debate. He put his case about as effectively as it could be put and I am not at all deaf to many of the points that he made. However, I must describe myself as a low ecumenical Anglican—Anglican educated. My grandson goes to the same Anglican primary school as I did. The arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, are too theoretical for my liking. We start from where we are and we have 4,500 Anglican primary schools—let alone other faiths—and 200 secondary schools. The Anglican Church committed itself in 2001 in the report referred to by the right reverend Prelate, The Way Ahead, to creating 100 more secondary schools within five years and 120 are already created or en route, so the Church is extremely active.

Then there is the question of pragmatism. Why do so many of our fellow citizens want to send their children to faith schools? It is not because they are doctrinaire or because they teach creationism and it is certainly not because they are divisive as the noble Lord said they were. It is because they are good schools. To adapt Cromwell's ringing phrase, they know why they exist and they love what they know. They are spiritual, have a strong ethos and are caring, gentle and effective educationally. How on earth it would be in the interest of this nation to sweep that aside, as you effectively would if you pursued the suggestion of noble Lord, Lord Taverne, I do not know.
 
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Having said that, I accept many of the points already made by my noble friend and by the noble Lords, Lord Baker and Lord Lucas, and other speakers. I accept that there is a degree of potential divisiveness, particularly in relation to Muslim schools, because of the circumstances in which they exist. In saying that, I do not for a second wish to imply that that is the intent or design of those who set up and run those schools; it is not. But I did rather warm to the notion advanced by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, that we might experiment with some interfaith schools—why not? I had a part in establishing integrated education in Northern Ireland, but those schools were Catholic and Protestant and did not involve other faiths. Wonderfully successful though those schools are—and may there be more of them—why not have some interfaith schools?

I also call upon the Church of England to do much more to ensure that its schools follow the precepts in The Way Ahead by having a higher proportion of non-Christian and non-belief pupils, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggested. It should plot the achievements of those schools in terms of their mixed entry. I also urge the Church of England to encourage public and independent schools to practise the second commandment, which is to love their neighbours as themselves. Too few of them engage actively with their neighbouring state schools. That would be of great assistance to us all. With those few remarks, I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, for this debate.

8.05 pm

Lord Dubs: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important matter. Some years ago, I visited a project in Northern Ireland where children of both denominations were sent to the United States for some weeks. They came back and I attended a reunion of the parents and the children who had taken part in the project. As I wandered round this hall in Dungannon, I was dismayed at the number of parents of one faith who had never had a cup of tea with parents of the other faith. What we have in Northern Ireland is a divided society. I am not saying that integrated schools in Northern Ireland would solve all the problems of that society, but, goodness me, they would certainly help.

We know that children who are in a school of one faith are all too prone to demonise children of the other faith. I remember those dreadful incidents in north Belfast, when children were trying to get to Holy Cross School. The television news teams went to Lagan College, which is integrated, and interviewed some of its students, who said, "We can't understand this. We sit together in the same classrooms and we have no problem. How can they have a problem over there?". So it is not surprising that in Northern Ireland, in June 2003, 82 per cent of parents supported integrated education, 81 per cent said that integrated schools were important in building peace and reconciliation and 52 per cent said that the only reason
 
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they did not send their children to an integrated school was that there was not one in their locality. They just want a choice and the option of being able to do that.

Although the situation in Britain is very different from that in Northern Ireland, I fear that there are lessons from Northern Ireland that we ought to learn. We have seen some of that where, willy-nilly, the schools in some of our northern towns are segregated. That may be because of housing and the accident of geography, but the fact is that when children are divided and do not sit in the same classrooms as children of another faith, we are beginning to have a divided society. The noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, referred to that very clearly in his report on Bradford, to which reference has already been made.

We cannot turn the clock back. All we can do is go on in this direction. I hope that the Government will put a halt to further faith schools. Let us consider where we are and see if we can move backwards a little. We are a multicultural society; let us treat our children as people who will become responsible members of that society.

8.08 pm

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Taverne for initiating this timely and interesting debate, but speaking from the Front Bench, I also need to disassociate myself very firmly from the views that he expressed. Liberal Democrats recognise the popularity and success of many faith schools. They are oversubscribed and achieve on straight points higher than average GCSE and A-level scores. We have argued for changes in admissions procedures similar to those now being advocated in the White Paper debate, but at no time have we argued for or advocated the removal of state funding from these schools.

Historically, our state school system in this country owes much to the early provision of Anglican, Non-Conformist and Roman Catholic schools and the partnership that they formed in the late 19th century with the state sector—a partnership that was renewed in the Butler Education Act 1944, which has generally speaking stood the test of time and proved very successful. We also recognise the logic of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 that if we offered partnership to the Anglican and Roman Catholic schools, this country could not reasonably withhold partnership from schools of other faiths. Equally, when the Government passed the 1998 Act, we had not expected that this Government would start promoting a policy which explicitly encouraged the takeover of existing community schools by faith communities and other faith-based sponsors.

We have reservations about this policy, based on issues of social integration. We accept that the social mix of church schools is more diverse than of the foundation schools; the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made the point that of the 200 top-performing schools identified by the Good Schools Guide, 70 per cent are foundation or Church schools—and they are
 
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disproportionate in their make-up. Only 5 per cent of their intake have free school meals, as distinct from an average of 15 per cent of the country as a whole. Within the White Paper debate, there has been increasing evidence from research at the University of Bristol, at the LSE and from the Sutton Trust that when schools are their own admissions authority, a far smaller proportion of children come from low-income families than in the general run of schools.

We also have reservations on community integration. That dates back to the Cantle and Ouseley reports mentioned by other noble Lords in this debate, after the riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. Those reports noted the important role of schools as integrating institutions in the community and warned against a proliferation of faith-based schools, which could serve to fragment the community on ethnic lines. As the right reverend Prelate mentioned, it is essential that these schools adopt the national curriculum. Those reservations were echoed recently by David Bell in his recent speech to the Hansard Society. He said:

"This growth in faith schools needs to be carefully . . . monitored by government to ensure that pupils at all schools, receive an understanding of not only their own faith but of other faiths and the wider tenets of British society".

We agree with that. It is why there needs to be careful reflection on whether England really needs to establish many more faith schools. But in the multi-racial society in which we now live, we think that there are times when our community schools need perhaps to be more sensitive to their multi-faith responsibilities.

8.12 pm

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