Education Bill

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment. I want to tell you of my own two experiences of collective assemblies—not collective worship. When I was a child in India, the school that I went to held an assembly every morning. It was not for worship but for learning. We learnt much more, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has said, about how to be good people, good citizens and good human beings than we would have done with one faith. My second experience was later in life when I went to a Methodist college, where we were made to go to chapel every day. It took place in the middle of the day, so that one could not arrive late. The teachers would go round the classrooms making sure that none of us girls were skiving. I am not saying that this happens now in schools, but quite often in those assemblies anti-Hindu and anti-Muslim sentiments were expressed. That left us with a very bitter taste. Frankly, I never understood what Methodism was about until I came here and worked with Methodists in my area—they do much good work. However, we did not know that and we did not learn about the good things. We were told only about the belief system. The time has come to widen the remit and allow schools to focus on the needs of all the children in the school, because I do not believe in children withdrawing from a morning assembly. If you start to do that and the parents start to withdraw their children, you do not have a group spirit. The attitude is, ““These people are there and those people are there. These children will not be coming””, and so on. That is a very retrograde step. It should be compulsory for all children to attend an assembly in the morning, and that assembly should be such that it is meaningful to everyone. I do not understand why the principles of various faiths or religions cannot be used in that assembly instead of just the dogma, the doctrine, or whatever, that people feel that there should be. If we had other faith preachers come now and again to speak at an assembly, it would bring everybody together much more. That is even more important now than it has ever been, because we have separate faith schools. We are allowing different faiths to have their own schools. At one time, we had just Church of England schools, because they were the first to provide education for poor children. That is an historic and wonderful thing. People do not even know that that is why they came about. Catholic schools came about because so many schools did not accept Catholics. Jewish schools came about because so many schools did not accept Jews. Times have changed. Everyone accepts everybody, and we should be furthering that, not denting it.