My Lords, I am honoured to be in a position to introduce this Bill to your Lordships’ House. I am indebted to all noble Lords who have taken the time to attend and speak today, and to Humanists UK for its help in drafting and briefing.
When I was 13—over half a century ago; time flies—it was mainly Catholic children who were excluded from religious worship at my secondary school. They were made to sit in the domestic science classroom with nothing to do apart from catch up on homework and gossip, while the rest of us traipsed into the main hall to be updated with all the news and events as well as doing the religious worship bit. At the time, I thought they were the lucky ones. I said to my dad that I did not really think I was a Christian. His response was, “Don’t be silly, Lorely, of course you are.” I had no say; like many children then and today, I just had to suck it up and endure it. To me it was an irritation among lots of other things in school that I disagreed with. Others had—and still have today—more traumatic experiences, which I am sure we will hear more of as noble Lords make their contributions. Negative experiences affecting pupils and parents are also reported on the National Secular Society website.
The world 50 or even 20 years ago looks very different from the one we inhabit today. We have become a diverse, multicultural society and we put more store on children and their rights—except in the UK, and in this matter of compulsory religious worship. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recently recommended the repeal of all collective worship in UK schools as a contravention of children’s human rights, but the UK remains the only sovereign state in the world to impose Christian worship as standard and, unfortunately, there is no sign that the UK Government are contemplating a change. On the contrary, only this March, Sir John Hayes MP asked what steps the Government were taking to ensure that daily acts of worship were conducted each school day. Education Minister Nick Gibb responded that any school reported not to be fulfilling its obligation to provide daily religious worship
“will be investigated. Where needed, the Department will remind schools of their duty on this matter and advise on how this can be met.”
On whose behalf was this Minister speaking? Certainly not that of the parents or even the schools themselves. Currently, parental choice on this matter is severely limited, with parents forced to choose between letting their children attend collective worship or withdrawing them and, in doing so, isolating them from their peers and taking a risk on whether they receive a meaningful educational alternative to worship, which almost never happens.
In April, a Times Education Supplement informal survey found that less than half of non-religiously affiliated primary schools were providing acts of religious worship. It seems the schools that are not complying with the current law have pretty much taken it upon themselves to respond in a more appropriate way to modern times and the diversity of their audience. Are they all going to be investigated? Will these head teachers be made to stand outside Nick Gibb’s office door? I am afraid that he and his Government are swimming against the tide. Every generation since the Education Act 1944 has been less religious than the one before. All this compulsory school worship seems to have borne little fruit. The British Social Attitudes survey shows that, in 2019, just 1% of 18 to 24 year-olds were affiliated to the Church of England. The same survey reveals that 62% of British adults are non-Christian and, more importantly, 72% of those in the age bracket most likely to have school-aged children are non-Christian.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on introducing the Bill. This is an important topic and one that tends to get discussed outside the Chamber in conversations over a cup of coffee rather than by us thinking about what we need to do legislatively. I find it a really difficult issue. If there were an abstention Lobby for us to vote in, that is probably where I would end up going. I will not support the Bill, but I want to contribute to it and listen to others as part of rehearsing the arguments, because there are too few opportunities to do that.
On the face of it, the Bill seems very sensible. It is reasonable and not aggressive, and it seems to make sense in modern 21st-century society. However, it is part of a far more complicated relationship between church and state, in a nation that has an established church, and between the state and the role that churches have always played in schools. They are a major provider of schools. They educated the poor children of this country way before the state educated them, and I have always found and continue to find the churches valuable and constructive partners in our joint endeavour to educate children for future generations.
So I am in favour of religious education. It is imperative that at some point during a child’s learning they understand about all faiths and have the skills to decide what role they want faith to play in their lives. The Bill does not touch on that, but I know, given the noble Baroness’s beliefs, that she may wish to make alterations there as well.
This is not about our personal faith. It is about what we together decide should be the knowledge, skills and values that we pass on to the next generation. That to me is important. I must admit that, of all the knotty relationships between church and state over education, I find collective worship the most bizarre and the most difficult to justify, and the one whose roots are the most difficult to find out. I tend to think of it as something we have not been bothered with for so long that we have learned to live with it. There are advantages and disadvantages to it, but I think we would lose something if we abolished it, and that is why I do not support the Bill.
My Lords, I very much support the Bill, mainly because of what I believe education is fundamentally for. We can also talk about whether assemblies are a good thing and what their function should be and, perhaps, point to two particular factors: the desirability of collective worship in schools and its feasibility.
There has been no Ofsted inspection of this provision for 17 years. The reality is that collective worship, certainly in non-religious schools, is on the wane and, more broadly and importantly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, pointed out, so is the desire for it. That is exemplified by the exemption schools have sought from the provision.
This is a good thing. I say that because a major part of the purpose of education should be to encourage the child to think for themselves as they discover the world around them. It has always seemed to me wrong and rather arrogant that we as a society should presuppose those beliefs for children who, through education, are in the very early process of finding out what they feel about the world and developing their own moral code and beliefs. It is education itself, in all its breadth and depth, that should play a significant part in that. For me, in part, it was the arts that helped me discover those things. I myself do not believe in
“reverence or veneration paid to a divine being or power”,
as the guidance defines worship. That is something that every child ought to think out for themselves, rather than having it imposed on them from the outset. Those are my views, but of course it would be immensely helpful if those of faith were also to be in support of the Bill.
I am not saying that religion should not be taught in schools. It is hugely important within the world, as are other beliefs, but it is time that we removed every aspect of religious instruction from schools, so that religion is understood as simply another topic of study, to sit within history or geography or alongside philosophy, including political philosophy—a subject that perhaps ought to be taught more in schools.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and to offer the Green group’s support for the Bill put before us today by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, who gave us such a powerful and clear introduction to it. I have four reasons to express why I support the Bill.
The first is time. We know from many other debates on education in your Lordships’ House how much pressure our schools are under and of the many ways in which they are forced to deal with the issues of today to prepare our young people for a difficult, fast-changing world. We need our schools to be preparing pupils for life, not just for exams, and while assemblies might not be focused on exams, this is a time in which we can do more of that education for life. Picking up the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, about taking away the current forced provision for assemblies, I point out to her that part of the Bill says that schools will be required to provide an inclusive assembly focused on
“spiritual, moral, social and cultural”
development. That element is not being taken away by the Bill.
I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, that when people expressed their first choice of what they would like to see in these assemblies, it was a focus on the environment and nature. We might think about how a local ecologist or nature group might be invited to come in and speak to the school, engaging with it and making contact with the community. That might also include a spiritual reflection on nature, with practical education about nature and our contact with it. Think about how wonderful an assembly like that could be for a school community.
As the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, just commented, there is also a need for more culture in schools. Let us imagine a local theatre group being invited into a school, perhaps to present a short play with a moral conundrum that could provide later discussion in class. That is the kind of thing that could be done with a whole-school or part-school assembly. Here is one of my pet favourite things: let us have some education in first aid, combined with a discussion on how everyone has an obligation to help others. Those are the kind of things we could be doing, without this straitjacket of the current law.
My Lords, humans are essentially religious animals, in the sense that we are the only creatures who face the essentially religious questions. Who or what created us, and why? Is there a purpose to our existence? Are there absolute moral values or just our own preferences? Whether we answer yes, no, “don’t know” or even “don’t care”, we are taking a religious position, because these questions cannot be answered by the approach of physical sciences, nor can answers be derived logically from self-evident axioms.
Ultimately, we answer on the basis of our own perceptions and personal spiritual experience, or we adopt the current fashion or rely on the accumulated wisdom of our forebears. But initially, the answers we present to the next generation—explicitly or implicitly, and whether Christian or secular—will be in that sense essentially religious. The pretence that there is a choice between an upbringing based on science or abstract reason and one based on faith is essentially false, and the answers we give to those questions have a profound impact.
In his book Dominion, the historian Tom Holland shows how profoundly our history has been dominated by Christian ideas: by the gradual explication of the life, death, resurrection and teaching of Jesus Christ. He shows that even the enemies of Christianity or those who believe themselves emancipated from it have actually been derivative of it, albeit in unorthodox or even heretical form. He describes the history of Christianity, warts and all, but ultimately shows that it has been beneficial to us as a people. I am a terribly inadequate Christian, but even I can see that at the core of the Christian faith is the belief that God is love; that the whole of religion can be boiled down, in Christ’s words, to “love God and love your neighbours as yourselves—there are no commandments greater than these” and that, although we fall short of these laws, God wants to forgive us.
I frankly do not understand why the most sceptical, let alone humanists, should be upset about us teaching that belief to our children, but a generation has largely been deprived of that vision of the world. To adapt a saying attributed to GK Chesterton, when mankind ceases to believe in a benign creator, it does not believe in nothing but comes to believe in a malign creator.
My Lords, I support the Bill both in my own person and as a member of the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, chaired by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. The commission’s Living with Difference report urged just such a change in the law as the Bill suggests.
I am not opposed to compulsory worship in schools in principle. It was entirely natural that, when our society was a predominantly unified one, the beliefs of the society as a whole should be expressed in state-funded institutions. However, as is obvious, this is no longer the case. As we know, worship has to be wholly or predominantly of a Christian character, but there are millions of people of other religions: Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Jews. Even more significant than that: we know that about half the population now say that they have no religion at all, and the percentage of young people who have no religion is even higher than that, so our present legal situation simply does not reflect the society in which we now live.
My second reason relates to our present situation, where the obligation to have compulsory worship in schools on a daily basis is either widely ignored or so widely interpreted that it is, in fact, evacuated of all significant religious content. As we have already heard, some 53% of primary school teachers indicated that there was no active religious worship in their schools. The Bill rightly insists that religiously designated schools continue to have compulsory religious worship, but, of course, with those schools, the parents sign up for it: it is where they choose to send their children. The situation is of course totally different with the whole range of those schools—the vast majority—that do not have a religious designation.
As we heard in our briefing, a spokesman from the Church of England said that the present situation gives a very valuable opportunity for pupils to pause and reflect. However, you do not have to have an obligation to have an act of worship in order to do that. The Bill makes very good provision for compulsory assemblies where children’s spiritual and moral development can be considered. My guess is that most heads, who are now pretty indifferent to what the law says, would gain new energy and imagination in order to make something of those assemblies, if it was something that they could wholeheartedly agree with.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and right reverend Lord, the former Bishop of Oxford. This is a short but very important Bill, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for introducing it so comprehensively. The arguments have been well set out, not only by her but also by others, and I will not repeat the detail.
I support the Bill. I am a humanist and a member of the National Secular Society. I do not have a faith. I have beliefs, and I think—I hope—I have spiritual and moral perspectives. I have been a senior teacher in schools, and I am a parent. I have been present at many school assemblies and have conducted several. The issue of school assemblies has been troubling for many years. Issues could easily be resolved, amicably and in a sensible manner, by the Government’s acceptance of the Bill.
The Bill is not anti-religious or anti-belief. It supports parental wishes and opens up opportunities for greater involvement for children on the issues that concern them, such as mental health, relationships, the environment and so on. I see from a survey that religious worship in assemblies was ranked last by parents in a list of possible topics. In addition, 62% of people in Britain do not identify as Christian, yet assemblies are supposed—indeed, obliged—to have a Christian character.
I will talk about school assemblies that could make a real contribution to children’s lives. The time for collective gathering in schools and other organisations can be productive. The best and most relevant assemblies that I have ever been involved in were ones that actually involved children who were presenting interesting work that they were doing or things like volunteering, fundraising, being involved in a youth centre or Girl Guides and Scouts or working for a charity, such as reading to elderly people in homes. Visits by inspiring individuals, who came in to talk about their work—with adults or children—or their philosophy about life, were also popular in assemblies. The success stories of former pupils were also well received. I remember hearing in assemblies from pupils who had overcome hardship or disability and who were leading productive lives. This is relevant to children. This approach does not have its basis in any one faith or, indeed, any faith at all—although learning about different faiths can be interesting and inspiring. Anyone can enjoy singing Christmas carols.
My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the Bill. I am sad no longer to be following the noble Lord, Lord Taverne—this is for procedural reasons, as I understand it. I applaud the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, for his profoundly wise speech.
We live in a predominantly secular society: 62% of people do not identify as Christian, according to the most recent British Social Attitudes survey. Of course, some of these people belong to other religions, but many do not belong to any religion at all. I emphasise that this is a really important Bill; this is by no means trivial. It is of the utmost importance that children are encouraged to respect good values: kindness, generosity, tolerance of difference and more. They need very regular opportunities to explore these vital moral and ethical issues. You could say that the single most important part of our education as a whole is learning, as children, about the important values of our society.
Assembly seems to be the main context for the consideration of these incredibly important values. If these important values are conveyed within a religious narrative with which the children simply do not identify at all, there is an extremely high risk, in my view, that children will therefore somehow disregard the values themselves that are being conveyed within that religious narrative. It is not a small matter. If we are to have a good society in future, we have to ensure that good moral values dominate across our population, and that depends on this Bill finding its way on to the statute book.
The extent to which religious narrative is regarded as unhelpful is quite strange to me—it is quite extraordinary and phenomenal. As the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, mentioned, in a 2019 YouGov poll, religious worship was ranked last in a list of 13 possible activities that might take place in a school assembly. I am quite surprised by that; it is staggering, actually. Other noble Lords have referred to the percentages of people who support discussion of environmental and other issues. For me, it is values, values, values that need to dominate in those assemblies.
20 of 39 shown
At this point, it is worth emphasising that a third of our state-funded schools are Christian, and this Bill does not propose to remove the requirement for Christian worship at those schools—although, regardless of whether they are from Christian or non-Christian families, are not all children entitled to assemblies that include them and do not make them feel like outsiders?
In 2019, YouGov asked parents what activities they thought should take place in school assemblies. The environment and nature came top, followed by equality and non-discrimination, and physical and mental health came third. Collective worship came 13th out of 13 options. Why do the Government persist in insisting on a practice that the vast majority of the people they purport to serve do not want? I hope that the Minister will explain this to us in her remarks.
Meanwhile, let me tell your Lordships about the Bill. It covers schools without a religious character that are state-funded in England and Wales. Faith schools are not affected by the Bill except that, for any children withdrawn from collective worship, they will be required to provide an equally meaningful school assembly in line with those available to other children. It repeals the requirement for schools of no religious character to carry out a daily act of collective worship.
Pupils and teachers at these schools may organise voluntary acts of collective worship for children who want to attend, as long as their parents permit them to do so, but the school may not insist that children attend and neither may parents—so children who do not want to attend an act of worship cannot be forced to do so, even if their parents want them to. This would have been great for 13 year-old me. What is the point of forcing any child to pray? We have already seen how well that has worked with the census on 18 to 24 year-olds.
However, the Bill would take away the right of pupils not to participate in school assemblies—no more being withdrawn, isolated or ostracised. It would be inclusive, bringing all children together in a community to reflect on matters that affect them and us all. It would address the spiritual, moral, social and cultural education of all children. When you have children coming together from many religious backgrounds and none, this spiritual dimension must take a different form for it to be meaningful to all.
It would be thoughtful, encouraging children to reflect on our world, the moral choices that we face, our responsibilities to each other and to the planet, and so on. Indeed, from the YouGov survey we know that these are all things that their parents want them to learn about in assembly and to consider. At best, it would teach them to think for themselves.
I have no bone to pick with the Church of England, and I know that many people of faith agree with my position. Some 60% of parents, many of whom are Christian themselves, think the law on collective worship should not be enforced. In fact, only half of Anglicans agree that worship should be enforced, showing that there is a diversity of views among Christians.
With this Bill we have an opportunity to help all children, regardless of their background, to feel included and welcomed in the community of their school. It could mark an important turning point for inclusive education. I beg to move.
I want to rehearse some of the arguments. We all know that it is good to assemble children together and I am not sure that, without the need for collective worship, schools would do that on a regular basis. I think it has been a peg on which to assemble children together, and that is a good thing.
Cultural heritage and the ceremonies that pepper our lives are important. Although many of us do not have a faith, most of us choose to go through a ceremony at key points. I do not know the figures but, in terms of baptism, marriage, funerals or whatever, we turn to faith institutions. If we never had any experience of worship, service and ceremony based on faith, I do not know how we would cope with turning to those institutions at key points in our life and in the decisions that we make.
We have cultural experiences and occasions in common. Most children would not know about Christmas carols if they did not sing them at school. As harvest approaches, one of the reasons why we probably all know the hymns of harvest is that we sang them in school. I would not want a society where children did not know about Christmas carols because, although Christmas is often not celebrated as a faith occasion in many homes, that is its origin and that is what it means. That is what it stands for, and children need to learn and understand that so that they can make their own decisions. Faith gives the solid knowledge that underpins some of the ceremonies that are very important to us, and quite honestly it gives a framework for talking about values. Some teachers find that difficult, but I think faith helps them to do it.
In terms of disadvantage, the noble Baroness put her finger on it: it is the only time in our state system when we are legally allowed to separate children according to their faith. If we put children of one faith in one room and children of another faith in another room, we would get hauled over the coals and taken to court, and rightly so, yet that is what we do when we allow children not to attend assemblies. It can also become a focal point of disagreement in some schools between the leadership of the school and parents in the community of a different faith.
So there are advantages and disadvantages. The current situation is one of those things that, for me, sort of works. I am not saying it does not damage anybody, but it is certainly not a priority for me in changing law; I can think of other things in school that do greater damage to individuals. For that reason, I will not support the Bill for the moment, but I could very well change my mind by the end of the debate.
There are of course wider implications. There are too many faith schools in the country. In England in 2017, they were 37% of primary schools and 19% of secondary schools, percentages which have been creeping up. A new study by the National Secular Society has found that three out of 10 families in England have little choice but a faith school, meaning that children are pushed into these schools against their parents’ wishes, which is certainly unacceptable. It is right of course that students should be able to opt out of religious observance, but one cannot help the feeling that excluding a child from a part of the school’s corporate activity is not satisfactory either, in the long run. No child really wants to be exceptional in this way; better, surely, to have an assembly that every child can participate in fully throughout.
Assemblies are a good thing, which do not need collective worship to be meaningful. It is very healthy in itself that students and teachers who would not necessarily see one another during the week can meet up in a whole-school setting, if that is logistically possible. Apart from anything else, there can be very good practical reasons for doing so. A school I know well, which happens to be a private school not affected by the legislation, holds its assemblies—which contain no religious content—twice a week, under normal non-Covid conditions. It seems to me that there is no necessity for assemblies to be held daily, which the collective worship provision theoretically holds them to. Assemblies would be more special, and I am sure more enjoyable for students and teachers, if, as a matter of course, they could be held less frequently. Hopefully, in some state schools that is already the case.
My second argument is an issue of rights and freedom. Others have already noted how the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has pointed out that the imposition of worship undermines children’s rights under Article 9 of the human rights convention and Article 14 of the UNCRC. It is really worth focusing on how important it is that we as a nation stand up for children’s rights. When we fail to comply with our own obligations on the international stage, that weakens our position as an advocate of children’s rights around the world.
My third point is on inclusion. Parents or children who choose to step away from the current forced worship are separated out and divided. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said, that splits children apart when we want to bring them together.
Finally, on a point of practicality, in the best survey we seem to have on the law—an imperfect survey—the Times Educational Supplement found that 53% of primary schools are not doing what they are apparently legally forced to do, and Ofsted is not enforcing that. We have an anachronism here which means that the law and practice do not coincide. As a sovereign state in the world, we have many curious anachronisms left in our constitutional and legal framework. This is one that we can tidy up while bringing in something better, with the kind of possibilities I outlined at the start of my speech.
I am struck by how children are taught, not universally but often in assemblies I have attended, a bizarre animist creed: that their maker—the planet—is the enemy of mankind. “The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man” were the opening words of the letter from the Club of Rome, which has been repeated again and again. We are told that Gaia threatens us with extinction if we do not obey her commands. I remember going to a school where a boy said to me, “Mr Lilley, when are we all going to be burned to death?”. I thought that he had been exposed to a hellfire preacher, but he had been exposed to a modern ecologist at assemblies. Surely, we should be more worried by the propagation of such doctrines rather than those of our historic religion.
Machiavelli does not get a very good press in this place, or from Christians generally. However, he said that when a people become effete and decayed, they can only restore their vigour and purpose by returning to the principles on which they are founded. It would be very unwise for us to deprive our children of access to those principles.
I support the Bill because Christianity is fundamentally committed to free choice. The only good reason for believing in a religion is because you believe and personally recognise it to be true. The pioneers of religious freedom in this country, like John Locke, were Christians, and they passionately believed that Christianity ought to be able to shine in its own light. I support the Bill on Christian grounds because I believe that the Christian faith is such a wonderful thing. It could shine in its own light, if people could only do away with all the distortions with which it is usually presented in order to see it as such.
So I support the Bill for three reasons: the present situation simply does not reflect where we are as a society, it brings the present law into disrepute and it does a disservice to the Christian faith itself, which ought to be able to shine in its own light, as I believe it does.
If a survey of children were to be carried out on the useful nature of assemblies, I think that this kind of thing would come to the fore. I must say that, as a teacher, I found that smaller gatherings, such as year assemblies, were more intimate and allowed for some interaction with children—but there is certainly a place for larger gatherings.
Children’s rights are important. The UNCRC specifies that children and young people are free to be of any or no religion. Without invoking charters, the Bill makes sense in relation to what education is about. Good education ensures a broad exposure to ideas and experiences, and assemblies should be a part of that. Children are more open to experiences and ideas when they are able to discuss and express opinions. A good assembly will present thoughts that can be taken up by teachers, as appropriate, during lessons of the day. I remember having a discussion, many years ago, with pupils of around 14 about the rights of women, after an assembly on the suffragette movement and the relevance of their struggles.
Head teachers and teachers are committed to the learning and development of pupils, and assemblies that free them up to be so should be encouraged. This is what parents and children want and deserve.
I was not aware that the UK is the only sovereign state where Christian worship is compulsory in state schools, including those without a religious character. I confess that I was also unaware that, under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, younger children have the right to freedom of religion or belief, which is not being respected here. Some argue that parents can remove their children from assemblies, but that is not an answer; as others have said, parents do not want to single out their children. Some argue that these determinations are the answer, whereby a school can gain an exemption from the broadly Christian requirement. Those determinations are so bureaucratic that only 42 schools have actually gone through that process. These things are not the answer; this is far too important for that sort of get-out.
The Bill seeks to implement the UN children’s rights committee recommendation. I very much respect the Minister who will respond to this debate. Can she please either agree that this Bill should be incorporated into statute by government or, perhaps, explain to us why it should not? I look forward to her answer.