Secular schools are failing to provide children with a system of values to prevent them being led into extremism, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.

Schools have an unduly individualistic outlook which does not make children feel they are part of a community, leaving them vulnerable to radicalisation, he said in a House of Lords debate on education.

Justin Welby said: "We live in a country where an overarching story, which is the framework for explaining life, has more or less disappeared.

"We have a world of unguided and competing narratives, where the only common factor is the inviolability of personal choice, which means that for schools that are not of a religious character, confidence in any personal sense of ultimate values has diminished.

"Utilitarianism rules, and skills move from being talents held for the common good, which we are entrusted with as benefits for all, to being personal possessions for our advantage."

The Archbishop argued that the secular education system prepares children for a career or to earn money, but does not teach them how to be effective members of society.

He later added: "The challenge is the weak, secular and functional narrative that successive governments have sought to insert in the place of our historic, Christian-based understanding, whether explicitly or implicitly.