Education. A fair start for all not special privileges for the religious
A talk by Richard Church at the January meeting of Northants Secular Humanist Society
Tomorrow is the 9th Sunday before Easter, designated by Christian Groups as 'Education Sunday', so I formally announce that today is Free and Fair Education Saturday.
Tomorrow at churches up and down the land they will be saying the following little prayer.
Dear Lord, Christians around the world celebrate your greatness and love for the entire human race. You provide for all, care for all, and treat all with justice and truth Help the message of your eternal plan be spread around the whole earth. Amen.
No need for prayer, I and you are 'helping' in that task already with our money as taxpayers we are funding the spread of their god's 'eternal plan'.
6,292 or 35.6% of primary schools have a religious character. 593 or 17.5% of secondary schools. And the number is growing with government encouragement. C of E plans for 100 new church schools in 2001 was welcomed by the government and is now largely implemented.
And yet only 7.4% of adults in England go to church on an average Sunday.
Attendance at church is falling. Churches closing down, while religious schools paid for by you and me are opening. Look at it from their point of view, they have a problem, they need to recruit, and are getting your help and my help as taxpayers to do it.
You might say I am exaggerating. Let's have a look at some of the common assumptions about faith schools and put them to the test.
(1) Church schools serve the whole community- they do not discriminate or proselytise.
For some church schools this may be true until quite recently. The nominal C of E school where the local vicar is the chair of governors and nobody bothers too much about the god thing. I have some experience of that from my own education. I went to a Chouch of England school, it was also a private boarding school but that is another matter. I was made to go to chapel every day, with a longer service on Sunday. I never did view myself as a Christian, and they knew that, but never challenged it. They asked me to read lessons in chapel, not because I had any inner faith to project, but because I had a loud voice. I didn't particularly mind doing it. One of my favourite teachers was the school chaplain, and we had good discussions on morality in the weekly and tokenistic religious knowledge lessons.
But things are changing. The Archbishops Council report The Way ahead: Church of England schools in the new millemmium (2001) "confirmed the crucial importance of the Church schools to the whole mission of the church to children and young people, and indeed to the long term well being of the Church of England". It recommended reserving places for Christians and that church schools should become more "distinctively Christian", with a mission to "nourish those of the faith; encourage those of other faiths; challenge those who have no faith". Is that fair to a child without a religious faith to be picked out and challenged?
There is worse. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Lancaster Bishop O'Donoghue said just recently. "I have come to the conclusion that our hopes to strengthen and deepen the missionary and sacramental life of the church in this diocese depend largely on the engagement and commitment of our schools and colleges".
"For many pupils and parents, the local catholic school is their only experience of Church - our schools are at the cutting edge of the new evangelisation, called to make Christ known and loved in our communities." All this has been supported and endorsed by the Vatican.
It is not that church schools don't proselytise, concerting and retaining young people in their faith is now their very raison d'etre, and your and my expense.
(2) Faith schools are 'good' schools that get good results.
Well, they are schools that generally (but certainly not always) get good results. Any selective schools can achieve better results. They take less than their share of children from deprived backgrounds and more for children with ambitious and choosy parents. Not just me saying that. quot;Selection, even on religious grounds, is likely to attract well-behaved children from stable backgroundsquot; OFSTED spokesman in the Times Educational Supplement.
The reality is that church schools are a haven for better off parents. In 2005 only 11.3% of children at C of E primary schools got free school meals compared to 20.1% in non faith schools. Despite opening more C of E schools this figure is actually down from 2001 when it was 12.2%, so the new church schools are providing even more for the middle classes. Church schools also have a worse level of provision for children with special educational needs 16% in primary schools as compared to 18% in non religious schools.
They admit it themselves, a Cof E headteacher said to the independent newspaper: "There is no magic ingredient in faith schools, the fact that we select those who are supported by parents is the key defining factor in the kind of pupils we send out in the world.quot;
But are faith schools good schools? Well it depends what you mean by good.
Back to bishop of Lancaster. He has some ideas on what is a good school. He has instructed catholic schools across his diocese to stop safe sex education. He also says "Schools and colleges must not support charities or groups that promote or fund anti-life policies, such as Red Nose Day and Amnesty International, which now advocates abortion." He calls on teachers to use science to teach about the "truths of the faith", only mention sex within the sacrament of marriage, insist that contraception is wrong and emphasise natural family planning.
He went on to write "The secular view on sex outside marriage, artificial contraception, sexually transmitted disease, including HIV and Aids and abortion may not be presented as neutral information... parents schools and colleges must also reject the promotion of so called 'safe sex' or 'safer sex', a dangerous and immoral policy based on the deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against aids." Who is really deluded?
It gets even worse. "Under no circumstances should any outside authority or agency that is not fully qualified to speak on behalf of the Catholic church ever be allowed to speak to pupils or individuals on sexual or any other matter involving faith and morals" and he goes on to talk about the kind of books that should be stocked in the library.
Then we have the academies, particularly the Vardy academies in the North East of England. Sir Peter Vardy is a millionaire car dealer and evangelist. Vardy's Christian beliefs are shared by John Burn, sometime head of Emmanuel College and now education adviser to the Vardy Foundation, and Nigel McQuoid, principal at the King's Academy. Papers they have co-authored give a flavour of their stance: "If relativist philosophy is acceptable, then sadomasochism, bestiality and self-abuse are to be considered as wholesome activities," runs one. "It is very important that young people begin to realise that activities which are 'private and personal' often degrade oneself and are not necessarily good and acceptable." McQuoid recently told the Observer that "the Bible says clearly that homosexual activity is against God's design. I would indicate that to young folk."
Most notoriously, Vardy academy schools, funded by the state but independent of local democratic control, accord equal importance to both creationism and theories of evolution. According to McQuoid, though state schools are required to teach evolutionary theory, "also, schools should teach the creation theory as literally depicted in Genesis". in his view, creation and evolution are both "faith positions". Tony Blair, it should be noted, has claimed to have no problem with such a stance. In 2002, when asked if he was happy about creationism being taught alongside evolution in state schools, he replied, "I am very happy... It would be very unfortunate if concerns about that issue were seen to remove the very strong incentive to ensure that we get as diverse a school system as we properly can."
How diverse a school system do you want? How many secular schools will you allow where there is no compulsory religious worship?
We have an academy school here in Northampton. It is, like the Vardy schools, run by a faith based organisation. It was set up to serve a relatively disadvantaged area of Northampton. Like Vardy schools it has the worst record of any school in our area for excluding pupils. It is responsible for more exclusions than all the other secondary schools put together. Some of the most challenging, difficult and disruptive young people who it discards have to be picked up by the police and the rest of education service, who then have to pick up the bill to fund the education they need. Are such practices the hallmark of a good school? I think not.
(3) Parental choice. We should all have the right to chose where we send or children to school.
Many people live in small communities. There is only one choice of school, the local village school.
Popular schools chose their pupils. Not the other way round. More faith schools would actually decrease choice for most parents, unless they join, or pretend to join, a religion.
More astonishing is the dishonesty of parents which is openly acknowledged, even endorsed, by the church. The head teacher of an Oldham C of E school said he was "happy to admit that many church of England parents actually attend services with the express purpose of winning a place at his school". Well that's one way of filling up the pews, but it has nothing to do with faith.
Though religious leaders want more faith schools, poll after poll shows that parents want good all round neighbourhood schools. In June 2000 79% of people in a survey said separating children according to religious belief is as wrong as separating them by their colour or their accent. 72% said that children should never be excluded just because they are of a different faith or no faith at all. 55% said that single faith schools created a divided society.
Half of parents want places for over-subscribed schools decided on how near the child lives ahead of other criteria, a survey last year suggests.
When they did express a preference, allocation of places by distance to a school appeared most popular - with 52% saying this was fair, compared to 9% who said it was not and 39% saying it was neither one nor the other.
The next method judged to be most fair among those polled was giving priority to those with brothers or sisters at the school - 42% said this was fair, compared to 7% who said it was not and 51% who could not say. The use of random allocation of places - a ballot or a lottery - was near the bottom, with 9% saying this was fair, 28% saying it was unfair and 63% not sure.
The use of religion or faith to allocate places was ranked lowest of all, with only 8% saying this was fair, 40% saying it was unfair and 52% undecided.
More recently, a Guardian survey in 2005 showed that 64% of people opposed government funding for faith schools, fearing their impact on social cohesion. If we are to have Christian schools, why not other faith schools? Moslem, Hindu, Sikh schools. How far should we take it? The lessons of Northern Ireland or Bradford in people on the basis of faith is a salutary one.
A Quote from a Rabbi:
Faith schools divide the parents and cut a large swath through society. If, as most faiths profess, we should love our neighbour as ourselves, then we have to know our neighbour properly in order to fulfil that command, not shy away from him.
Precisely because I take my faith seriously I sent my children to a school where they could sit next to a Muslim, play football with an Anglican and walk home with an atheist. My children benefit from seeing them as fellow human beings and from understanding their perspectives. Hopefully, those children also gain insights as to what it means to be Jewish.
As Britain is becoming more multifaith and multicultural, it is essential that we strive to maintain contact with each other. Schools should ensure that they handle all faiths in a comfortable way, while religious identity should come from the home and after-school activities.
I admit that there are many advantages to faith schools, but social cohesion and the long-term good of society should be a higher priority.
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, Maidenhead Synagogue, Maidenhead, Berks
So what should we do?
Proposing the abolition of faith schools is deemed to be unpopular and no political party, including mine, dare do it. Even though opinion polls show that people do not want selection by religion and an expansion of faith schools, the power of the church lobby is driving the expansion through. Even if we can't get rid of them, surely we can appeal to people's instinct for fairness and justice.
Article 13 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says: "The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds." Let's implement that.
Anti-discrimination legislation should be applied fairly and without religious privilege.
There should be no discrimination based on faith in schools admissions policies or employment practices. We wouldn't do it for race, why faith?
Impartially teach young people about the world's main belief systems and philosophies so that they can make an informed choice as to which, if any, to follow.
Follow the National Curriculum, national guidelines on personal, social and health education and sex and relationships education, using a local or national religious education syllabus in all state funded schools. Seek to promote an understanding of different groups in our diverse society and seek to build social cohesion. Make proper distinctions between religious education, religious instruction, and other curriculum subjects such as science, and do not mix them up with pseudo sciences such as creationism.
For me, the presence of religion in state funded education is a matter of human rights:
- My rights as a taxpayer that my taxes are not used to promote any religion or irrational belief.
- A parent's right to expect that their child should have the same opportunities as any other child, regardless of faith.
- Most of all a child's right to have equal access to a good quality education, free from indoctrination in which they can learn about and explore religion without one particular religion being presented as an eternal truth.
Education is being used as a last bastion of religious control in our society. They have failed to keep us in their churches and places of worship, so they are trying to get us when we are young. We should not be expected to pay for it any longer.
