Education Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest: as an honorary associate of the National Secular Society; as a Buddhist, which I have been since the middle of the 1970s; and as founder and first chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group from 1976 to 1997 and as vice-chair ever since. The group has always been very active in the defence of freedom of religion or belief, which includes the freedom not to believe, a right that is impaired by the compulsory participation in acts of collective worship in our schools. Under the School Standards and Framework Act, a school can apply for a determination that the requirement for Christian collective worship is not to apply but then it has to conduct an act of collective worship in accordance with the tenets of some other faith. That would be decided by the SACRE, as I understand it, under the provisions of paragraph 4(1) of Schedule 20 to the Schools Standards and Framework Act, presumably at the behest of the governors. Here I would like to ask my noble friend whether the SACREs were considered for abolition under the bonfire of the quangos and why it is considered necessary to retain them rather than leaving schools free to get their own advice on matters of religious worship and education. Whatever the decision may be, it is almost certain to be contrary to the beliefs and practices of the majority of the population served by the school in today’s multicultural society. If the line of least resistance is taken, and the Christian act of collective worship is retained, the arithmetic is clear. Only 17 per cent of men and 26 per cent of women believe in a God who created the world and hears their prayers and then left us to get on with it. Atheists and agnostics account for 28 per cent of men and 17 per cent of women, while over one in five say they believe in something but they are not sure what. Fifty-seven per cent of the population practically never go to church, and another 5 per cent attend less than once a year. The further 17 per cent who attend at least once or twice a year probably include mostly people who attend weddings, christenings or funerals, not because they believe but as acts of conformity or out of courtesy to friends or relations. I imagine that if people were asked the same question about mosques, temples or gurdwaras there would be many occasional attendees at those establishments, for much the same reasons. These statistics make it clear that the compulsory act of predominantly Christian worship in schools is grossly out of step with the attitudes of the majority of the population and probably the majority of the people in the areas served by most schools. Those people have no opportunity to express their opinion under the provisions for local referendums in the Localism Bill, since even if a petition to end compulsory worship complied with the conditions prescribed, the local authority would have to determine that it was inappropriate under Clause 47(2) of the Bill as contrary to an enactment—the Schools Standards and Framework Act already cited. Nor could the head teacher or governors lawfully decide not to have any act of daily collective worship, though some try very hard to avoid the duty. In its last report on the work of the SACREs, Ofsted wrote plaintively: "““SACREs monitor levels of non-compliance by reading Ofsted’s school inspection reports but have limited success in persuading LEAs to make compliance a priority””—" that is, compliance with the collective worship duty. Amendment 92 recognises the reality of the situation by allowing governors to decide whether or not to hold acts of collective worship and obliges them in doing so to consider representations made to them on the question by pupils and parents. This would be in the true spirit of localism, unlike the top-down statutory obligations imposed on schools by the compulsion to hold daily worship since the Education Act 1944. The obligation to consider such representations is applied to academies as well as to community, foundation or voluntary schools. As I understand it, academies are free to decide for themselves whether to indulge in collective worship, how frequently and how the term ““worship”” is to be defined. I applaud that comparative freedom, but the academies are not consulting their pupils or parents and seem to be uncertain where to draw the line. For example, Birkenhead High School Academy, for girls aged three to 19, holds an assembly on Mondays and Fridays at which they, "““raise pupils’ awareness of particular festivals and celebrations””." I would call this religious education rather than worship. This same academy hopes that, "““parents of all faiths and beliefs, and none, will want their children to take part, but they are, of course, free to withdraw if they wish to do so””." There may be less reason for parents to exercise this right, which is already part of the law, when the assembly is only called an act of collective worship but does not in fact require subjection to a supernatural being. In Amendment 93, the pupil, not her parents, is the one to make the decision. In its 28th report in 2005-06, the Joint Committee on Human Rights said: "““Children enjoy the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion under both Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 14(1) of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child””." I would add that paragraph 2 of Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides: "““No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice””." It may be argued that parents have the right to withdraw their child from an act of collective worship, which is Birkenhead academy policy, and some do, but as the JCHR points out, under English law the child has an independent right of his or her own to make the decision if she is of sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding. In the Gillick case, the House of Lords decided that a girl under the age of 16 has the legal capacity to consent to medical examination and treatment, including contraceptive treatment, if she has the intelligence and maturity to understand the nature and implications of that treatment. A child who is compelled to attend an act of collective worship must be considered to have the same capacity to understand the nature and purpose of worship, and thus to make up her mind whether to attend it, whatever her age. The JCHR recommended that schools should grant the right to withdraw from collective worship to any child found by them to be ““Gillick competent””. Amendment 93 eliminates the bureaucracy and controversiality of the decision that would have to be made by the school about ““Gillick competence”” in every individual case because it is left entirely to the discretion of the child. With respect to the JCHR, if the child says that she wants to opt out, it is better to take her at her word rather than force the child to undergo tests of ““Gillick competence””, a concept that even adults may find difficult to grasp perfectly considering that it had to be decided by the highest court in the land. As a less satisfactory alternative, Amendment 94 lowers the age at which pupils are allowed to make the decision to withdraw from collective worship from the sixth form, as it is now, to 15, which is an approximation of the advice of the JCHR. The noble Lord the Leader of the House told me that this House is the only legislature in the world which includes ex officio representation of clerics, and that may be one reason why Britain is the only democracy in the western world to prescribe a mandatory act of worship in non-religious publicly funded schools, and a daily one at that. I certainly hope that we can put that right in this Bill, and that where such an act is retained by a school, after consultation with parents and pupils, attendance should be a voluntary option. I beg to move.