WEB EXCLUSIVE: Review of Spectator Faith Schools Debate

‘Taxpayers’ money should not fund faith schools’

Ninja Turtles were the first witnesses at the Spectator debate. The motion ‘Taxpayers’ Money Should Not Fund Faith Schools’ was proposed by Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin. She evoked the green cartoon reptiles as proof that faith schools are discriminatory and irrational. The child of a friend had been denounced as ‘satanic’ at his Christian school for wearing Ninja-branded pyjamas. Religious schools, she went on, are not only divisive, they lead to ghettoisation and contempt for the host culture. Three Islamic schools in the UK require girls to wear the full veil, and they boast openly that they ‘oppose the lifestyle of the West’.

Christina Odone, former editor of the Catholic Herald, trumpeted the soaraway success of faith schools. A newspaper survey confirmed that 66 percent of all top primaries had a strong religious element. ‘Don’t mess with excellence,’ she warned. In a pre-emptive strike against the ‘selection argument’, she pointed out that state schools also select, but on the grounds of wealth, not faith: house prices soar in the catchment area of any decent state secondary. She imagined that, if the secularists triumphed, a rash of grisly humanist lycees would spring up. Assembly would start with a reading of Polly Toynbee’s column from that morning’s Guardian followed by recitals of books by Richard Dawkins. She politely begged her opponents to ‘spend more time fixing your schools, not wrecking ours’.

Dr Jonathan Romain, a progressive rabbi from the Maidenhead Synagogue, accused faith schools of ‘pulling Jews and Christians out of the rest of society’. He said religious schools are guilty of selecting on the sly. Department of Education figures indicate that faith schools are ‘the most likely not to comply with the admissions code’.