Why education should not divide on faith -Apr 28, 2006

This is an edited version of a talk given by Andrew Copson to the Westminster Forum on 24 April 2006. The forum is co-sponsored by Ekklesia.

Faith-based schools have been widely criticised by people from both religious and non-religious backgrounds. Sometimes this is seen as an attack on particular life stances, which is not so. I want to address the problems posed by faith schools – but I want to start by giving a positive picture of the sort of schools that the British Humanist Association, for which I work, would like to see in the state sector.

We want every state school to be open to children of every background, no matter what their parents’ or their own beliefs – political, religious, or philosophical. We want children to mix in schools, parents to mix at the school gate, and the classroom to be as diverse a place as the local area from which it draws its pupils.

We want this because we believe that only through proximity, and communal life can mutual understanding grow, and because we view mutual understanding as the key to the future happiness of society.

We want the entitlement of every child to be an education that fits them for life in the society they will go out into.

We want them to have thorough sex and relationships education, because such an education reduces the risk of unwanted pregnancy and abortion, of sexually transmitted infections, and it helps children to grow into healthy, stable and complete adults.

In terms of education in and about beliefs and values, we want children to develop understanding of a broad range of views, religious and secular, and to have the chance to discuss and debate their own reactions to what these views imply. They should be able to make their own informed choices.

We think that jobs in schools should be open to all teachers who are qualified to do them, whatever their private beliefs may be.

This is what we want, and what we would want the law to ensure. But it doesn’t.

There are state funded schools that can discriminate in their admissions, discriminate in their employment policies. Schools that don’t have to teach about a broad range of beliefs and values but can teach that only a certain worldview is the true one, without ever exposing their pupils to alternative perspectives. Schools that don’t have to teach about contraception, or fulfilling and meaningful human relationships outside of heterosexual marriage.

I think education law should intervene in these schools, and that by doing so, the lives of our children and their education – not just in terms of grades and university places – will be improved; our future society will be in a more solid state to face the increased challenges of our increasingly diverse population.

That’s the school system I think it is appropriate for the state to fund. I’d like now to look at some of the defences of faith schools, and offer some constructive criticisms of them.

Assertion 1 – “Faith schools are successful because they are faith schools.”

Firstly, not all faith schools are particularly successful. Some of them struggle, can’t afford to be choosy about admissions, and end up at the bottom of league tables, or even in special measures. When schools struggle, we don’t blame their religious foundation and ethos – we look for and find other reasons. And it should be the same when they succeed.

I’m sure most people will admit that religious faith has little to do with academic success. So how have Church schools, in particular, become the favourite schools of ambitious parents?

There is good evidence that selecting on the grounds of faith skew a school’s social and ablility profile, boosting its academic results and its position in league tables. This does make some Church schools popular and over-subscribed, and so they become even more selective – and get even better results.

Church and some other faith-based schools take fewer than average numbers of children from deprived backgrounds, and fewer than average numbers of children with special educational needs. And more inclusive schools suffer when their neighbours adopt their own admissions policies.

We should compare like for like when we look at league tables and test results. Even schools next door to each other can have very different catchment areas and intakes. The Muslim girl schools that improved so much last year at GCSE had class sizes of 6.

Assertion 2 - “Only faith schools can teach spiritual and moral values and religion properly.”

It’s true that some ordinary state schools could do more to respect and accommodate the beliefs of some religious pupils. This needs be tackled – but it won’t be if too many of the religious withdraw their children into separate schools.

I’ll also concede that religious schools probably conduct their own worship and instruct in their own religion more effectively than do ordinary state schools. But I do seriously question whether this transmission of faith is a suitable object for public funds, and I suggest that the broader religious education and more balanced and inclusive assemblies found in good community schools are more genuinely educational and appropriate to a diverse society.

State funded schools should be fostering the values that we all share – and recognising that moral and spiritual values have many sources, not only religious ones.

Out of the many excellent schools of “no religious character” (to use the legal term) is Plashet school in East Ham, London. It offers girls from a very wide range of backgrounds an “outstanding ethos” which “values and respects everyone,” according to Ofsted. It gets excellent Ofsted reports for social, moral, spiritual and cultural education – often held to be the particular strength of faith schools.

Assertion 3 - “We are better off with faith schools in the states system, where they have to teach the National Curriculum.”

It’s true that faith schools have to teach the National Curriculum, but the subjects that should concern us most in faith schools – subjects like Sex and Relationships Education, or Religious Education, aren’t on the National Curriculum. So, whereas community schools have to teach RE that is generally broad and balanced, allowing for critical approaches and the growth of mutual understanding, faith schools can teach whatever they like in their RE lessons – there is no curriculum they are obliged to follow.

Ibrahim Lawson, headmaster of the independent Nottingham Islamia School said on radio that “the essential purpose of the Islamia school, as with all Islamic schools, is to inculcate profound religious belief in the children.” If his school entered the state system, there would be nothing to make him modify that approach.

Assertion 4 - “Everyone wants more faith schools.”

The Church of England certainly does, and it’s hardly surprising that this has led to demands from some members of some minority groups, and some so-called “community leaders” for more of their own schools – as a simple matter of equity. This slippery slope is leading towards a seriously fragmented education system, which is not what most people want.

Survey after survey shows that parents just want good neighbourhood schools – and that anything from 64% to 96% of the general population does not want the expansion or even the continuance of faith schools. And it’s not just humanists. There are many religious people too who do not want faith schools, or their expansion.

In a democracy, policies on state education should not be based on what vocal minorities, sometimes minorities within minorities, want.

Assertion 5 - “Faith schools serve everyone.”

Actually they really serve only those who belong to faith groups that are well organised, geographically concentrated, and that want to separate themselves from, or convert, the rest of us.

They discriminate against everyone not of their particular shade of religion – in their employment and admissions policies, in their religious assumptions and ethos, and in their practices. Minority faith schools do not serve a very diverse population, and neither do all Christian schools.

And I believe that the report of the Archbishops’ Council (chaired by Lord Dearing) published in 2001, signalled a new, more evangelical approach in Church schools, and was critical of those that were not sufficiently and distinctively Christian.

It saw Church schools as being on a mission aimed at securing “the long-term well-being of the Church of England..., with a duty to “Nourish those of the faith; Encourage those of other faiths; Challenge those who have no faith...”

I have two comments on that. First, why should my beliefs in particular be challenged? And, second, is it the business of state-funded schools to do that, or to secure the future of the C of E?

If, as their supporters sometimes claim, faith schools do not discriminate, then why did faith organisations lobbied so actively for exemptions in the Equality Bill, specifically so that they can continue to discriminate as long as it is “necessary to the purpose of the establishment’ .

State education should not be based on any kind of religious discrimination.

Assertion 6 - “Faith schools increase choice.”

Schools are not like jelly beans, where my choice has no effect on yours because there are always plenty more jelly beans. As every head teacher and parent knows, choice in a finite context like education doesn’t work like choice in a sweetshop – and the most popular schools (whether faith-based or not) end up doing the choosing (again, not like jelly beans).

Assertion 7 - “Faith groups put substantial amounts of money into their schools.”

They used to, but nowadays the state funds 100% of the running costs of faith schools and 90% of capital costs. During the Building Schools for the Future programme, the state will be funding 100% of their capital, or building, costs. We all, through the state, fund these schools; in return they retain considerable control – and the right to refuse entry to our children.

Assertion 8 – “Church schools have a long and noble history of education; we should let them get on with it.”

It puzzles me that this argument is increasingly being offered as a reason to retain or expand the number of faith schools; surely we should make today’s decisions on the basis of today’s facts. Nonetheless, I don’t like to let the assertion go unchallenged. The introduction of a system of publicly funded education in 1870 was bitterly contested by the churches, who secured an interval to create new schools before the local school boards were allowed to start their own.

In 1876 Joseph Chamberlain said that the Church party were trying everywhere ‘to stunt the programme of the board school system, to prevent the erection of new schools and the provision of sufficient accommodation, to prevent the reduction of the cost of education [ie school fees] to the parents and to prevent the expenditure necessary to secure the efficiency of the schools.’

Assertion 9 – “Parents have the human right to have their children educated in a faith school.”

In a sense this is true, since an obligation does exist on the state to ‘respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.’ But the state is under no obligation to provide or fund any particular sort of school to provide what parents want – the obligation on the state is merely not to interfere.

Amnesty International have pointed out that this right ‘guarantees people the right to access to existing educational institutions; it does not require the government to establish or fund a particular type of education. The requirement to respect parents’ convictions is intended to prevent indoctrination by the state.’

And, besides, children have rights too – the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children in education have the right to ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds…’ and be prepared for ‘responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups…’ This is not best accomplished in faith schools that aren’t required, like community schools, to teach a more balanced form of Religious Education.

Assertion 10 - “Faith schools are good for social cohesion.”

This unproven assertion is often made by minority faith leaders promoting their own state-funded schools. Experience in Scotland and Northern Ireland have not proved it true.

I’m not claiming that faith schools are responsible for all segregation and intercultural tension – the roots of segregation are often economic accidental and residential. But it does seem unwise for the state to be actively encouraging religious divisions by funding single faith schools.

And the argument that is often made for faith schools as a tool of social cohesion is that they can have exchanges with other faith schools – a rather roundabout way of achieving what could be achieved in a shared school.

Instead, I would like state schools to include children of all faiths and none, enabling them to learn with and from each. The state should not be funding divisive, unnecessary and discriminatory faith schools. We will regret this counterproductive use of public money in decades to come. Our society is increasingly diverse and the population as a whole is increasingly secular – a progressive change, generation on generation.

Our education system had to adapt itself to this fact, and the privilege for religion, and Christianity in particular, that faith schools represent, cannot be a part of that future.

Andrew Copson is Education and Public Affairs Officer at the British Humanist Association.