Clause 44 - Admission forums
Education Bill
10:30 am
Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The issue may go even wider than that to the ethos of the school, what we have a right to expect a maintained school to teach and how we would expect such a school to educate pupils in the broadest sense. Apart from the national curriculum requirements, which might be suspended for some schools, according to earlier discussions in the Committee it is legitimate to impose equality of treatment for boys and girls and other requirements and expectations. It is proper that faith schools should
be able to instruct in their faith and maintain the religious ethos of the school.
We each have the perspective of our own experience. There are Church of England and Roman Catholic primary schools and three Roman Catholic secondary schools in my constituency. The environment in which they operate gives the lie to anyone who makes the superficial argument that faith schools per se cause social or religious divisions within a community. Clearly, they do not. The Blessed Thomas Holford school, an extremely good Roman Catholic high school in Altrincham, has been in the maintained sector for a long time. My constituency also has two Roman Catholic grammar schools, St. Ambrose college and Loreto convent school. As a brief aside, that school was an independent school maintained by charitable trusts. It was so attracted by grant-maintained status that it opted in to the maintained sector. That is a good illustration of the attractiveness of the former grant-maintained regime.
The diversity of provision works well in the interests of local parents who can make a choice about the schooling of their children on the basis of religion, as well as other aspects.