Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, has said he meant no offence to nuns after appearing to question their ability to teach.
The Labour frontbencher faced criticism from Tories and Catholics after engaging in an argument on BBC1’s Question Time on Thursday about the role of teachers from a religious order in faith schools.
Cristina Odone, commentator and former editor of the Catholic Herald, said on the programme that some of her most inspiring teachers had not been through teacher training colleges. Hunt intervened and replied: “These were all nuns, weren’t they?”
Hunt, who opposes the use of unqualified teachers in classrooms, continued: “I know about your religious schooling and there’s a difference, I think, between a state education system having qualified teachers in the classroom.”
Odone said she had been to a Catholic school, a state school and a private school, and “the best [teachers] did not come out of teacher training college”.
The coalition introduced the right for free schools and academies to use unqualified teachers in 2012. Labour has said it would ban unqualified teachers from free schools, academies and state schools, unless they are working towards a teaching qualification.
Odone told the Catholic Herald on Friday: “Tristram Hunt’s comments on nuns last night were arrogant and ignorant. Why is it acceptable to denigrate anything Catholic but bleat tolerance about every other religion? To know he and Labour stand a chance at the next election makes me fear for the 7,000 brilliant faith schools in this country.”
Hunt tweeted: “On BBC QT I was trying to make a generalised point about the use of unqualified teachers in schools. I obviously meant no offence to nuns.”
On BBC QT I was trying to make a generalised point about the use of unqualified teachers in schools. I obviously meant no offence to nuns.
— Tristram Hunt (@TristramHuntMP) February 6, 2015
Tory MPs seized on the row. Nadine Dorries said Hunt’s comments were “arrogant, sneering [and] intolerant” and predicted they would damage Labour’s electoral chances. “If Labour had any chance of holding on to its Catholic Glasgow seats, it lost it last night with Tristram Hunt’s remarks,” she said.
Asked whether David Cameron believed nuns could make good teachers, a Downing Street spokeswoman told a regular Westminster media briefing: “The prime minister thinks that there are a range of people who are well-qualified to be excellent teachers and it is obviously for headteachers to make those decisions on the ground.”
