My Lords, I wish to address two aspects of this Bill, both of which concern the role of religion in the education of children. I draw the attention of the House to the fact that I am the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group—although the comments I will make are my own.
Since 2014, Humanists UK has been campaigning to close down unregistered, illegal schools. In December of last year, it heard the personal testimony of pupils from such schools. They came from extremist fundamentalists sects of certain religious communities and told us how they were taught. There was very little secular education and much prayer and study of religious texts. Their writing and reading skills were poor, there was no mixing of the sexes and discipline often involved beatings. Ofsted estimates that there are at least 6,000 pupils in such schools. Local authorities—I understand this from research, as it is totally informal—have been loath to intervene, for fear of being accused of harassing minority groups.
So it is with this first-hand evidence on the record that I welcome the Bill’s intention to expand registration requirements for independent educational institutions and to work with Ofsted to expand investigatory powers. I cannot emphasise too much the need to rescue children from such institutions that are outside the scrutiny that ensures their safety and well-being, and a wide-ranging secular education.
The second matter I wish to raise concerns a community in our society currently not provided for in the school religious curriculum. Families who are humanists find that, for geographical reasons, they have no option but to choose faith schools for their children to attend—schools where the curriculum includes faith teaching and collective worship. There is indeed provision for such children, but it is less than satisfactory. This needs to be challenged. Such children are given the right to withdraw from all faith observances if their parents request it. In practice, this is demeaning and discriminatory, and often results in children languishing aimlessly in empty classrooms with no indication of how to use their time profitably. I ask the Government to confront this dilemma for the increasing number of humanist families in our society.
I will just say something about humanism in general. All the world’s religious faiths hold certain tenets in common: a belief in some kind of deity who created the world, the prospect of life after death and some implied divine judgment for people’s behaviour. In defining their own faith and creed, people who follow a religious faith often speak of humanists as “people of no faith”. Such dismissal does not do justice to the broad moral landscape that informs humanism. Humanists are people with a convinced belief in human values, who cherish both the human spirit in each one of us and the sharing of our life here on earth—they are not any kind of spiritual void.
I appreciate that most of the intentions of this Bill concern structure and the administration of educational provision, but there is also a great segment about religious provision. I ask the Government to take on board this heavy, important and significant part of children’s education, and to look to be more inclusive and positive in the treatment of those who have been wrongly defined as “people of no faith”. I look forward to the contribution of the arm’s-length curriculum authority and hope that we will see it modify the existing regulations.
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