Religious Education

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to speak, Mr Brady. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on arranging this important debate.

I welcome the Department’s dialogue with universities to ascertain which GCSEs will give young people the best chance to get into the best universities. I have supported the E-bac for many years, so I am greatly encouraged that the coalition Government are moving forward with it. However, I have obvious concerns about the fact that the humanities exclude RE, so let me say a little about the importance of RE, which all my colleagues have dealt with very well.

In simple terms, there are so many different messages for our young people in the modern world that the very idea of their not receiving education from experienced RE teachers fills me with horror. There are so many dysfunctional messages out there that if young people do not have the opportunity to hear about religion in the round from experienced teachers, they will, as sure as night follows day, be more prone to taking up some of the more dangerous, outrageous and cruel messages about aspects of religion, which would do them a disservice. I therefore urge the Minister to think carefully about this.

On some more specific points, I was privileged to sponsor early-day motion 1375, and I am absolutely delighted that more than 100 Members from all parties in the House have supported it and signed it, just as many tens of thousands of members of the public have signed petitions. Indeed, if I could wave a magic wand and explain the importance of RE in schools to all 60 million-plus people in this country, No. 10 Downing street would have a petition with about 30 million signatures.

The Minister and the Department recognise that this is an issue of serious and profound concern for many people. Given that the Minister is with us today, however, I want to ask for a number of commitments. First, there is no getting away from the fact that not making RE an option in the humanities section of the E-bac will lead to reductions in RE-trained and experienced staff; in fact, I am already receiving anecdotal evidence that that is happening. What is the Minister doing to ensure that that possible trend is halted? I fear that the redundancies that will inevitably come from the Department’s proposed changes will lead to a fall in standards, less focus on RE as part of a compulsory key stage 4 curriculum and, importantly, a lack of trained resource for the future, which our children and schools will ultimately regret deeply—I certainly would, and all my colleagues in the Chamber would, too.

Secondly, when the Minister speaks at the end—I am not trying to read his mind, but I have been in constant discussion with his Department, so I am pretty sure that this is accurate—he will state that RE does not need to be included as an option in the E-bac because it is a compulsory part of the key stage 4 curriculum, but that is not the case for academies. Will he therefore clarify the situation on academies and tell us what he will do about the fact that take-up in academies is—I have heard this anecdotally—beginning to decline? That is even more relevant when we consider that academies are far more prevalent in areas where there is more deprivation and where children grow up in a range of different religions. In a way, that makes it even more important that academies have the trained, experienced RE teachers to teach children in a balanced way.

Thirdly, I suspect that the Minister will state that the number of students studying RE has risen from 16% in 1995 to 28% in 2010 and that the take-up of history and geography has declined over that period. I agree with him and accept that that is an issue. I welcome the E-Bac, but does the Minister accept not only that the increased take-up of RE is a good thing, but that excluding it from the E-bac will perhaps lead to an even more dramatic decline in take-up than geography has experienced over the past 16 years—from 45% to 26%? What will he do to address that? I would like him to commit to revisiting and reviewing the role of RE, should take-up decline.

[Dr William McCrae in the Chair]

Essentially, I and many of my colleagues—on both sides of the House, and of all beliefs and none—along with hundreds of thousands of members of the public, profoundly believe that the changes could lead to a diminution for our children of RE teaching by trained and experienced teachers. I urge the Minister to reconsider the Department’s direction of travel, to listen to us and to the public, and to not do a U-turn but change his mind as the facts change.