Religious Education in Schools (Hansard, 19 July 1995)

§ The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Lord Henley)
My Lords, the Office for Standards in Education, which is responsible for reporting on religious education and collective worship in schools, has found standards in these areas to be uneven. The Government would like all schools to aspire to the high standards achieved by the best and we have put in place a range of measures to encourage them to do so.

§ Baroness Cox
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his encouraging reply. Does he also agree that it is encouraging that so many schools have responded positively to the provisions of the Education Reform Act 1988? That is to the extent that in 1994 Ofsted inspectors could not find a single primary school failing
287 to comply with the law with regard to worship. However, will he also agree that there is still cause for concern? For example, a recent Gallup poll found that 49 per cent. of 16 to 24 year-olds had no idea what Good Friday commemorates, and 79 per cent. did not know what happened on Palm Sunday. Does my noble friend agree that without some knowledge of our basic Judaeo-Christian heritage, not only will our young people not understand our spiritual heritage but also they will not understand our cultural heritage of art, literature, music and architecture, or indeed the history of our political and social institutions?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, my noble friend is right to express that particular message. It is important to remember that the purpose behind religious education is not to spread the faith, desirable though that might be in other circumstances. It is to educate, as is right, our children in what my noble friend describes broadly as our Judaeo-Christian tradition, of which we in Western Europe have been a part for many, many centuries. Like my noble friend, perhaps I may give one example: it is pretty difficult to understand Renaissance art without a suitable grounding in the Bible.

§ Lord Dormand of Easington
My Lords, when are the Government going to include the fact that some 20 per cent. to 25 per cent. of the people in this country do not hold any religious beliefs of any kind? Surely the proper teaching of religious education would include at least the basis of humanism, agnosticism, atheism and related views. If the Minister is about to tell me yet again that these views are not religions, will he say in which curriculum they should be included?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, as I believe I made clear, we are a broadly Christian country and our traditions are broadly Christian. For that reason we feel it is important that children are educated in that tradition.
As regards humanism, I am sure that the noble Lord will recognise that it is not a religion and should not be taught as if it were. I can, however, say that a syllabus might, in the context of religious education, were it to be necessary, deal with non-theistic ways of life such as humanism.

§ Lord Ashbourne
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the law as it stands on schools worship is extremely flexible, and that, in spite of the fact that it is often said that we are a multi-faith society, the fact is that less than 4 per cent. of the population adhere to non-Christian faiths?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, I can neither confirm nor deny the figure that my noble friend gave. I can, however, confirm, as I said earlier, that we are a broadly Christian country and our traditions are broadly in the Judaeo-Christian mould. For that reason we believe it important that the children in our schools are taught about that Christian background.

§ Lord Stallard
My Lords, is the Minister satisfied that the SCAA's current syllabus for GCSE excludes thematic multi-faith teaching and encourages teaching that respects the coherence and integrity of each faith?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, I can give the noble Lord an assurance that I am satisfied that that is the case. Obviously, this is a matter that staff can keep under permanent review. If the noble Lord wished to write to them and make any suggestions, I am sure that they would be grateful to receive his responses.

The Lord Bishop of St. Albans
My Lords, I feel that a question from these Benches might be appropriate. Will the Minister accept that on these Benches we are very grateful for the way in which a move was achieved through the Education Reform Act for the improvement of religious education in schools and the encouragement of worship? Will he also agree with me that the best way in which this can be achieved and furthered is not so much by heavy-handedness in applying the regulations, but by using carrots rather than sticks; and that one of the best carrots would be the provision of more, and better trained, religious education teachers?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, I believe that I express the feeling of the House in saying that it is quite appropriate that we should have an intervention from the Benches of the right reverend Prelate. As regards the question as to whether there should be more RE teachers, statistics show that at the moment there is no shortage of such teachers. The problem is that only about half the teachers who have an RE specialism are teaching the subject. We believe that steps to raise the status of the subject are therefore very important. I assure the right reverend Prelate that the Teacher Training Agency has taken this on board. It envisages that secondary target intakes for RE students will increase by nearly 10 per cent. between 1995–96 and 1996–97, and by a further 15 per cent. in 1997–98.

§ Lord Morris of Castle Morris
My Lords, may I return for a moment to the figures quoted by the noble Baroness who asked the initial Question? Forty-nine per cent. of the age range 16 to 24 do not know what Good Friday commemorates; 71 per cent. in my estimation do not know what happened on Palm Sunday; and 48 per cent. do not know what Lent is. Does that not indicate the total failure of this Government's policy for religious education over the past 15 years? Does the Minister believe that the pathetic proposal of a new half-course at GCSE level will do anything to redeem the disaster?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, I think the noble Lord takes a rather heavy hand to these matters. Obviously, I accept that those figures are somewhat depressing. As regards the new exam that the noble Lord mentioned, it has been something of a success and has encouraged a great many of the 14 to 16 year-olds in Key Stage 4 to take up RE because they see the chance of getting a qualification at the end, and children of that age are very minded along the line of getting qualifications. It has been a success. We shall continue to pursue the various initiatives that we have introduced. I hope that even the noble Lord will moderate his tone in future when he recognises just how successful we are being.

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, cannot the very substantial drain of RE teachers to which my noble friend the Minister referred be countered urgently? Is not one way 289 to declare religious education a shortage subject? Have any conversations taken place between the Government and the Teacher Training Agency in this respect?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, as I made clear to the right reverend Prelate, and make clear again to my noble friend, the Teacher Training Agency is very well aware of the particular problem. As I said earlier, there is overall no shortage of trained RE teachers: I believe that the recent survey showed that there were only 16 vacancies in the entire country. The real problem is that over half the teachers with an RE specialism are not teaching the subject. We shall certainly continue to press the TTA to do what it can in this field. I thought that the targets I mentioned to the right reverend Prelate were really quite challenging: increases of 10 per cent. and a further 15 per cent. in 1997–98. They should go a considerable way towards meeting this problem.

§ Lord Addington
My Lords, will the Minister agree that, when discussing religion the most important thing is not the remembering of certain events but the basic message behind them. Will he assure the House that when teaching religion it should be borne in mind what happens when doctrine is too strongly adhered to—as instanced in Ulster and Bosnia? Does the Minister accept that we should not simply rely on learning facts, since facts taken out of context are totally useless?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, I do not think that the noble Lord quite understood the message that I was trying to get over. I was seeking to make the important point that religious education is not a matter of "spreading the faith" as he seemed to imply, but rather to educate our children in the broadly Judaeo-Christian tradition in which they live.

§ Lord Orr-Ewing
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that 70 per cent. of the population are anxious that teaching on religious subjects should take place in schools? Is he also aware that there is no room for complacency, since 80 per cent. of schools with sixth forms teach absolutely no religion whatsoever? Does he agree that it really is time that something was done about this decay in our moral background?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, I hope that my noble friend will recognise that neither I, nor the department, is complacent. I hope that I have spelt out in some detail some of the various initiatives that the department is pursuing, although I can certainly write to my noble friend in greater detail. There is no room for complacency. Some of the figures quoted in relation to ignorance about religion and our background are very depressing indeed.

§ Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I agree that young people in this country are growing up in a broadly Christian tradition, but will the Minister agree that any revision of the religious education curriculum or the way in which religious education is taught ought to have regard to the growing scourge of xenophobia and racism; one example being anti-Semitism? Does he accept the importance of teaching all young people in this country to respect the values of those who hold other faiths, in whatever part of the United Kingdom they may live?

§ Lord Henley
My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right to stress that we need a knowledge of other faiths. My point is that we are a largely Christian country. It is the Christian faith that, in the main, we feel should be taught in schools and should predominate in the acts of collective worship in which, under the 1944 Act, all schools are required to take part each day.