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Quotations from MPs and members of the Lords | ||||||||||||||||||
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See also quotations from MPs and Lords elsewhere on this website - all indexed in Quotations Index |
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I believe that religious schools should be more inclusive, taking say 25% of their pupils form families of other faith or no faith. It is important that children of no faith should be treated fairly. After all, more than 40% of the population do not subscribe to an organised religion…everything we do now must reduce divisions between young people, not widen them…When the Education Bill is in the House of Lords, I hope the government will recognise that most Labour MPs share my concerns and change the law to promote inclusion. That would be both right and popular - the best possible combination in politics. [The Guardian, 8/2/02] ________________________________________ |
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Frank Dobson, a former secretary of state for health, said the events in the US had reinforced the need for the Government to think again about its policy for faith-based schools. He said: "I am not against Muslim schools. But as I believe in integration, I think we would be better off overall if we did not have denominational schools at all." He said tensions could be raised if parents did not secure a place for their child at a local school which became a faith school and selected its pupils. [The Independent, 26/9/01] ________________________________________ |
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Phil Willis MP (Liberal Democrat shadow secretary for education) I want to see schools throughout Britain, particularly in the case of faith schools, take in children of other faiths and indeed children of no faith. . . We can't have a situation where you find a school that's fully funded by the state, receives all its revenue and 90% of its capital, can say to other parts of the community "you are not allowed to go across our doorstep because you are not of our faith." [Sunday, BBC Radio 4, 3/2/02] ________________________________________ |
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If we drive pupils into racial ghettos we may see in England what has already happened in Northern Ireland. Education could become a breeding ground for faith division, religious division and also social and economic division. [Times Education Supplement 22/6/01] ________________________________________ |
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My concern about the White Paper is that in fact if we have an unbridled expansion of faith schools we're going to see the potential for two things, first of all, segregation of youngsters, and I think Bradford's a classic example, particularly after what we've seen in this summer, with the awful race riots there, what we've seen in Oldham, and of course what we have seen in Northern Ireland. But the other point is that there is a huge agenda of social exclusion, and children in Bradford, often poor Muslim children, are left at the bottom of the pile in terms of the education system, and I don't want to see selection by faith, I actually want to see inclusion, and there is a real danger at the moment that we are going to get both segregation and in fact exclusion… Bradford has been one of the most under-performing education systems for the last two decades. It has had a whole reorganisation of its schools and there is a real worry that what we are going to get are basically two types of schools in Bradford, one of which deals with poor Muslim children in parts of the city where a great number of Muslim families congregate. I don't actually want to see that. I actually don't believe that if you educate children separately you actually cross that huge divide that we need to create a global society and to make sure that all children work together and understand each other, value their faiths and their cultures in a multicultural society… … [O]ften Church of England or Roman Catholic schools…deliberately exclude Muslim children because of their faith, because they are not Christians. Now I know many Muslim parents who actually want to send their children to the local good school, because it's a good Church of England or Roman Catholic school, and I think it is very very important that we don't in an expansion of our education system start to see selection by faith. [BBC Radio 4 Today, 26/9/01] ________________________________________ |
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There is no question that most church schools, particularly Church of England ones, operate selection processes that deliberately seek to sift out problem families… There is strong evidence too that parents are prepared to put themselves through the "faith" test to secure places for their children in church schools with good academic records, How else to explain the sudden decline in church attendance once a place has been secured? How too can we explain the fact that few if any church schools with less than average GCSE scores are oversubscribed. Isn't faith something of a red herring - don't parents simply want their children to go to good schools. And if the churches do have a mission should they not be using it for the benefit of all children…By 2005 what will the community schools that are neither faith or specialist look like. Does the Church of England as the established church not have a duty and a responsibility to look at the bigger picture? If so, I as a committed Christian, await its views? [Liberal Democrat News, 19/10/01] ________________________________________ |
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The last thing our society need at the moment is more schools separated by religion. Before September 11 it looked like a bad idea; it now looks like a mad idea. [In the House of Commons on 22/11/01] ________________________________________ |
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This is a road to segregation. Ghettos will emerge. [Times Education Supplement, 30/11/01] ________________________________________ |
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Specialist schools created a hierarchy, he said, attracting the "more articulate, self-confident and motivated parents." Other schools would deteriorate. "Selection always divides students according to class. It will be the same with the Government's covert selection as with the more honest kind." [Times Education Supplement, 22/6/01] The people who push hardest for faith schools have the most fundamental view of their religion and the most, dare I say, extreme interpretation of what their religion demands. I say only that there are immense dangers in going down that path. [Education Bill 2nd reading in House of Lords, Hansard 11/3/02, col 626] ________________________________________ |
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I am also concerned at some of the suggestions about 'faith based' schools. I believe these could lead to a degree of segregation, which in some parts of the country at least would be very unhealthy. I am reinforced in this view by looking at what has happened recently in some northern towns, where communities have become divided and segregated…What I am certain about is that my views are shared by many other people in the Labour Party and by other Labour MPs. I think that there are signs that in this Parliament we will have more people prepared to raise these questions and not simply keep quiet for the sake of not wanting to appear disunited. Healthy debate can only do good. [Letter to a constituent] ________________________________________ |
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