Faith schools shouldn’t get special treatment

Mr Green

So are you saying that faith schools only admit pupils who pay for their school meals and are of a higher intelligence?
Faith school's admittance policy is based neither on ability nor the financial well-being of the child. Unsurprisingly it is based on the faith of the child and his/her parents.
I will admit that a number of parents with no religious leaning at all will try to get their children into these schools - and some succeed, but that does not mean that these schools are being somehow descriminatory.

So, instead of using statistics to suggest faith schools select their pupils simply to attain better placing in the league tables, perhaps you should consider the fact that children from religious parents simply make better pupils.

Liz Brown

if the choice is Faith Schools and a good education or equality of opportunity, give me Faith Schools any day of the week..............

dennis

Oh dear, where to start?

You have almost everything back to front.

If faith schools want to continue their elitist selection procedures, they should become private enterprises.

No, if secular state schools want to be any good, they should become more like faith schools.

They should serve really existing communities, not just ‘catchment areas’. They should have an ethos in which staff, parents and pupils share.

Faith schools are not ‘given taxpayers’ money’. Catholics, Anglicans and Jews are taxpayers themselves – often at the highest rate. If anyone has been subsidising anyone, it is the faith groups who have been subsidising the State – in the case of the Catholic Church, by paying one fifth of the capital costs of Catholic schools out of parish funds.

Don’t believe the drivel from the LSE. Free school meals are a poor measure of relative affluence among communities with high levels of self-respect.

Dig a little deeper, by measuring the number of pupils with a first language other than English, or match residential postcodes with the deprivation index – and the supposed difference will evaporate in most cases.

The centre-left speaks with forked tongue. It promised ‘personalised services’ one minute; then describes as ‘discrimination’ a community’s wish to educate its own children in its own way.

We must ensure that every child be given an equal opportunity to receive a good education – regardless of faith, class or affluence.

If you really believe that Sean, then bend every sinew to get the State to butt out of directly providing education altogether.

Cincinnatus

In the Deanery I worship in inner London, the Church Of England Schools have more children on free school meals than the local average. Several have a very large number of Muslim pupils. Ofsted reports are excellent, but, believe me, we have no middle class parents moving into our cachment areas.
So the Church of England is indeed helping to ensure that
every child be given an equal opportunity to receive a good education – regardless of faith, class or affluence.

Why is Coffee House jumping on the Balls/Toynbee Bandwagon to abolish Faith Schools?

This is a difficult battle to win in multicultural Britain.

Oh it's about "multiculturalism" is it?
Faith is a codeword for Islam, and happily embraces the Irsih and the Jews at the same time.
I have grown used to this hypocrisy from The Guardian but I really hoped the Tory Leopard was beginning to change its spots.

Marcus Cotswell

Faith schools just shouldn't get any state funding at all, period. And that includes taking away their charitable tax status. They can do what they like as long as they pay their way.

I'd prefer it if religion were kept out of schools altogether but that's a bit harder to achieve. We can sure as hell keep it out of state schools, though.

David Lindsay

We all know that the real objection to "faith schools" is that Catholic ones have been so good at, according to the old Christian Brothers' maxim, "taking the sons of dockers and turning them into doctors".

The professions, and thus the places where professional people live, now contain any number of people originally from Scotland, the North, the Midlands and the less salubrious parts of the South, with working-class grandparents or even parents, and with Irish great-grandparents.

Where will it all end, eh? Where will it all end?

Archbishop Cranmer

Mr Cotswell,

Keeping religion out of schools is not a neutral position.

As long as the state is content to finance Jewish, Church of England, and Roman Catholic education, it is impossible now, under anti-discrimination legislation, to argue against it doing the same for Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. And they are all British tax-payers. Just as atheists may object to their taxes being used to subsidise faith-based education, so might people of faith object to their taxes being used to subsidise an increasingly intolerant secularism.

Are you Conservative? Because it is foundational to its philosophy that parents are fully entitled to bring up their children as they wish as they are the primary educators. Whilst one may debate the concept of the common good, it would be electoral suicide, not to say immorral, to prevent parents from educating their children in an environment which manifestly works (in terms of examination results) for the vast majority of those who attend these establishments.

John Page

Agree with Marcus. Faith schools encourage parental hypocrisy and can increase separation of communities. Supporting them was yet another of shallow Blair's bad ideas.

Chris M

' parents are fully entitled to bring up their children as they wish as they are the primary educators'

No arguement there.

However I want wholly secular schools, a la France / USA. If parents want faith schools, let them pay for them entirely themselves. No tax breaks or charitable status - that's the tax payer footing a large proportion of the bill!

I don't want a bean from my taxation going to help fundamentalists or their apologists attempting to indoctrinate new generations.

CG

Whether you agree with the articles in Spectator or Coffee House is beside the point. The real point is that all sorts of views are expressed, something which you don't get in, say, the American Spectator.

Faceless Bureaucrat

Chris M [4.51]

“However I want wholly secular schools, a la France / USA. If parents want faith schools, let them pay for them entirely themselves. No tax breaks or charitable status - that's the tax payer footing a large proportion of the bill!”

And of course, I assume that you would also have no objection to any such Parent receiving an equivalent Tax Rebate on the secular State Education that they have already paid for up-front, but were now not benefitting from?

What utter B****cks!

C Powell

I agree with the previous comments. I long for the day when politicians and others stop attacking good schools and parents who care about their childrens' education and start focusing on improving those schools which are no good, preferably by not involving themselves at all, since state involvement over the last 40 years has been largely baleful, not least because of the obsession with trying to fix social outcomes via education. Education is a good per se irrespective of its effects on social mobility / income / class or any other idiotic NuLabour target. The Spectator should not be party to this nonsense of attacking people for being middle class and wanting the best for their children. Really! And please let's also end this nonsense about faith schools: there is no issue re CoE/Catholic/Jewish schools which have been happily providing a good education for years, in some cases for far longer than the state has. The problem is exclusively one associated with some Islamic schools peddling hatred, reactionary views, a limited education to girls and reinforcing the lack of integration of a group which has a dangerous minority within it. Let's be brave and say so and let's be even braver and say that there should be no more Islamic schools until we can be confident that they will provide a proper education to all their children and will not be used to propagate hatred and reinforce dangerous segregation.

Forlornehope

Some people, quite a lot, clearly want to send their children to faith schools. Some people, also quite a lot, don't. Both groups pay taxes, which entitles them to state education.

Some people don't want to allow other taxpayers their choice of education for their children.

In a free society the money should follow the child and the parents should have a choice. We seem to have an invasion of Guardianista illiberalism on this subject.

Personally I hold the view that creationism and intelligent design are both scientific and theological rubbish, but I'm not sure that giving the state control of the syllabus is not a greater evil.

William Norton

Sean Martin: "If faith schools want to continue their elitist selection procedures, they should become private enterprises. But whilst part of the state system, they should follow the same procedures as any other state school."

Quite right. In fact, I object to any form of state funding for brain-washing, and I would like to withdraw that part of my taxes which go towards the entire education sector.

Thinking about it further, I have also discovered strong moral objections to subsidising first time housebuyers, Scotland, fascist military-industrial complex warmongers, irresponsible people who keep falling ill, Wales, feckless people who keep having babies, rubbish collection services for people who generate more waste than I do, the BBC, policemen over the rank of sergeant (in fact, why do we need a Police Force at all when a few gentlemen detectives could do the job more efficiently for nothing?), wind-farms, foreign people, prisoners (why should I pay to clothe and feed them?), overpaid lawyers who dress up in daft wigs and frocks, postmen, job-destroying Health & Safety Executive staff, railways, farmers, the unemployed and traffic wardens.

By my reckoning, you all owe me £32.71 per week. I will not take a cheque.

The Happy Carbon Footprint

William Norton, v good!

Bruce Finch

Utter rubbish and certainly not what we hope to see in the Spectator. Faith schools are excellent and long may they continue!

Oscar

I disagree with just about every word in Sean's article - but of course defend his right to write this twaddle. But I do object to this post being represented by a picture of a Jewish school - that strikes me as malicious prejudice.

Augustus

There is one religious group missing from the platform of faith schools. A pity, because a lot could be learned from the religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, who educate about 4,000 pupils in total in Britain, and who are almost ignored in frantic debates over God's place in the classroom.

These are schools that help to create a community of individuals. They teach their flock to be open to the light from wherever it may come. If you have been educated in a Quaker school, as I have, you are taught to develop feelings of calm and openess towards others. A lack of conflict towards others always abounds, people are listened to, and the understanding of how people relate to each other in a spirit of internationalism and friendship is the creed taught to students in such schools.

The spiritual core of the the school is the Meeting, a period of silent worship and reflection, where pupils and teachers, and sometimes outsiders, come together, are quiet, but also discuss topics of interest. But nothing is drummed into students. No one tells you what to think. As George Fox said: "If you take God out of it, it's just about teaching you to live the right way."

Cis

Maybe the reason that (some) faith schools appear to get impressive results is that they are mainly measured against state schools which have been reduced to bog-stndard, lowest common denominator comprehensives which too often fail their own pupils, bright and not so bright alike.

Across much of the country, faith schools are beacons of what education can achieve. That is why, having destroyed the grammar schools - the powerhouse of social mobility during (roughly) 1945-65 - the trots who run education in this country have them next in their sights.

That said, some proposed faith schools need to be carefully vetted for fundamentalism. The one new Academy I have some knowledge of is sponsored by the kind of 'Christian' organisation which I wouldn't rely on to teach evolution, not even as a lunatic theory to be ridiculed. I'd have almost as many qualms about a school in these hands as about one which had extremist Islamic literature in the library.

(PS - As for Bruce Finch's comment - "not what we hope to see in the Spectator" - if he'd read Toby Young's column this week, he'd know that this organ is as riddled with institutional bigotry as most of the British establishment. I bet neither Mr Young nor his editor can think which of his smart remarks could possibly have given offence.)

HJ

The solution is for the state to stop directly funding any schools - just give the money to the parents and then let them choose.

My wife worked for many years in an independent school. It was based immediately next to a cathedral on C oF E owned land and run as a charity. Unsurprisingly, it had a C of E ethos. It accepted children of every faith and of none. There was never a problem. It's only when the state gets involved that there is a problem - everybody wants to impose their view of education on everybody else.

Fergus Pickering

'We must ensure that every child is given an equal opportunity to receive a good education'. This is claptrap, Mr Martin. However would you manage that, eh? It's pious drivel like this that has a lot to do with the general crappiness of our schools. So every time a school improves what are you going to do? Make sure it gets its share of - what shall we call them - underachieving pupils? Of course every child won't have an equal opportunity. Some are born stupid. Some have useless parents. Some have criminal genes. Are you in training to be a politician or something?

Eagle

This type of post is more suitable for the Guardian. The Spectator deserves better.

Hereford

"but that does not mean that these schools are being somehow descriminatory"

Duh! the whole thing is discriminatory. It discriminates based on faith. Which in all other aspects of life is illegal.

Marcus Cotswell

@Archbishop Cranmer

I should have thought it was obvious from my post that I do not favour the state funding of C of E or any other religious school. I favour the disestablishment of the Church of England, removal of religious representation from the House of Lords, you name it.

I agree that people should be free to raise their children in a certain religion but they shouldn't expect me to pay for it. So religious schools should be private and self-funded businesses with no state subsidy or charitable status.

If you regard that as 'intolerant secularism', that's just tough, I'm afraid! I regard it as a way to stop people thieving my money to pay for their own weird sects.

Mr Green

Hereford
Your comment of "Duh! the whole thing is discriminatory. It discriminates based on faith" is, in my opinion, wrong.
A club can refuse access to people who are not dressed accordingly. That is not descrimination, that is a dress code. Similarly a school can refuse to accept children who live outside a catchment area or a University can refuse to accept a student who has not attained the correct grades.
Neither are descriminatory - unless you're a Guardian reader.

A faith based school simply gives priority to the children of parents from a specific faith. If you join the church you can join the school.
That's not descrimination, that's common sense.

Hereford

That's as maybe Mr Green, but the fact remains that none of the other methods of dicrimination you have mentioned are barred by law.

In all other matters, job selection, provision of public services, access to commercial services etc., discrimination on the basis of Faith is illegal.

I merely seek to point out the fact that, on this basis it is totally inconsistent to allow such discrimination for the purposes of selection for a place in a state funded education establishment.

It is either discriminatory under the law or it isn't. It can't be in some circumstances but not in others.

Would you allow a school to select on the basis of skin colour? No, of course you wouldn't.

Would you allow a school to select on the basis of gender? No, of course you wouldn't.

Your citing of private clubs and dress codes etc is fatuous.

dennis

Marcus Cotswell

I agree that people should be free to raise their children in a certain religion but they shouldn't expect me to pay for it.

But they don't expect you to pay for it.

They expect to pay for it themselves - out of their own taxes.

Your taxes can notionally go to one of the secular schools, if that makes you feel better.

Nothing personal - and you may well be a 40% taxpayer yourself, but, in my experience, a large number of those who go round shouting 'no Popery on the rates' and such tend not to be paying much tax themselves anyway.

dennis

Hereford

Would you allow a school to select on the basis of gender? No, of course you wouldn't.

Of course I would. Plenty do and always have done.

Mr Green

Hereford

In my opinion you have to consider shools in the plural. Collectively schools cannot and do not descriminate (ie we're not a situation where only Catholic boys can be educated). Individually they have their own policies which include dress, gender, faith, ability, age etc, but collectively education is for all.
My point is that whereas some schools priorities their limited places based on the distance between the pupil's home and the school' gates, others priorities based on the child's faith.
The original article suggested that faith schools somehow conspired to exclude pupils who are from poor families or have lower abilities where in fact the only consideration they have is whether you are a member of the church.
My local comprehensive is more descriminatory then my local Catholic boys school as the comp only gives places to pupils who live in the expensive properties which line the surrounding streets (catchment area).