Education Bill

The right reverend Prelate who laid this challenge was sitting next to me until a little while ago, and he got into serious trouble in some quarters for saying what he did. We take very seriously the possible ghettoisation of our country’s schooling, and we are constantly thinking about it. Perhaps we all skirt around the fact that we live in one of the most educationally divided countries in the world, and the fault lines run deepest between rich and poor rather than between one religion and another. We ought not to forget that. We in the church are not new to this. It has to be remembered that for two generations, the Church of England provided thousands and thousands of schools for the poor, while our successive Governments were still saying that the poor did not need educating. Then to accuse us of ghettoisation is a misremembering of history. As noble Lords have pointed out, the trouble is that many of our schools have prospered and some of them have then forgotten the challenge of being there for the poor and for everyone, and have enjoyed the prosperity that has come through the beliefs that we propagate. The National Society research shows that a predominantly strong ethos and overall high achievement go together. That, of course, leads to a challenge: what do you do with that prosperity and success? In my diocese in the West Midlands, which contains some of the poorest wards in the land, the church schools are in the most deprived areas. London is an exception—we must keep remembering that. If you go to West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Stoke or other such places, who are the professionals working still in the centre in education? It is the churches. I resist these amendments simply because to get from A to B—I think we are all agreed about A—needs a certain flexibility and a bit of freedom locally on which these amendments are too restrictive. Perhaps noble Lords would not mind if I read out the figures to counteract some of the impressions that have been given. The vast majority of church schools admit pupils from the local neighbourhood, regardless of faith background. The largest group of Anglican church schools is the 2,500 voluntary controlled schools, and they are entirely open. On neighbourhood admissions, the 42 academies, bar the six in London, are open on a neighbourhood basis; and the 77 new schools of the past seven or eight years are also mostly based on neighbourhood admissions. In the next smaller category, voluntary aided schools are allowed to prioritise faith criteria. Out of the 2,100 voluntary aided schools, 1,950—roughly 90 per cent—are overwhelmingly neighbourhood schools, including those with up to 100 per cent Muslim pupils. As to voluntary aided secondary schools, 100 out of 160 are oversubscribed, and the question is what we do about that. I agree with those who disagree with me on much of these matters that that is a real problem. However, only a tiny number of schools in this category admit pupils only on foundation places; I think that there are 11 such schools in the whole country. Just over one-third of voluntary aided schools admit more than half of the intake on foundation places. Therefore, we are overwhelmingly a neighbourhood school enterprise and I hope that we will be given the challenge that noble Lords rightly want to give. However, we should be given the flexibility to continue to say that neighbourhoods differ and that strategies that may work in one place may not work in another.