Why do faith schools excite such passions? Obviously people care a lot about religion, and education, but there’s something else at work too. Schools are microcultures, bubbles, little versions of society, in which the secularism of our culture can be shut out, defied. It sounds like a strange exaggeration, but if a religion has its own schools, it has a small but vital link to the old era of its cultural dominance.
The shake-up overturns the current rule, that a new faith school can only select half of its pupils on religious grounds
Is this why Roman Catholics like Melanie McDonagh are so happy with the government’s decision to allow new faith schools to have a fully religious selection process? The shake-up overturns the current rule, that a new faith school can only select half of its pupils on religious grounds, meaning that a lot of agnostic locals will be admitted, whose parents’ attitudes will weaken the school’s religious character.
You might suppose that the Church of England is equally happy. But in fact the Anglican approach to education is subtly different. It sees its own schools as microcosms of the nation, or an idealised version of the nation, with the established Church quietly in the background. It doesn’t want strongly Christian schools, it wants schools in which Christianity gently blends with mainstream culture. For this keeps the Anglican idea alive, of a Church inspiring a sort-of Christian culture. Accordingly, the Church’s chief education officer, the Revd. Nigel Genders, said that a change in the rules would not affect CofE schools: ‘We provide schools for the whole community and have a vision for education which is for the flourishing of all children. We have always sought to open new schools to promote this vision for education which is deeply Christian, serving the common good.’
The Church of England should make it even clearer that it rejects the idea of confessional schools. It should do so by rejecting any admissions policy in its own schools that prioritises churchgoing parents. For such policies encourage disingenuous churchgoing, and make the average agnostic suspicious of the Church; it seems more interested in clinging on to the remnants of its cultural power than in serving the common good. I was glad to see that Rowan Williams opposed the change of policy. I hope that more Anglicans speak up, and clarify their different vision of religion’s role in state education.
Comments