Religiously segregated schools ("Faith schools")

The Accord Coalition opposes all forms of state-funded religiously segregated schools - we believe that all children benefit from being educated together so that they can learn from one another rather then being separated from one another.

Separation in education sows the seed of separation in adulthood - and one look at the News shows what that leads to,

Would we accept this?

The answer is obvious - no! It would be morally indefensible, it would be racist and it would pander to the fascists in our midst (BNP etc.)

Would we accept this?

We do - and we pay for it!

"Apartheid" means "holding apart" and was adopted as a description of the system in South Africa where white, coloured and black people were segregated in everything. Many of us fought for a very long time to bring down the system of apartheid in South Africa so that all citizens should be treated as equal - regardless of the colour of their skin. We do not claim that what is going on today in South Africa is perfect, far from it - no state is perfect - but at least it is not based on skin colour!

The idea of "holding apart" or "separate development" remains within our society in the form of religiously segregated schools. We would not accept "whites only" or "blacks only" schools - yet we give billion of taxpayers' money to pay for schools segregated entirely on religious grounds: Church of England schools, Catholic schools, Muslim schools, Judaist schools etc.

How does a pupil know he/she is a Christian/Muslim/Judaist/Hindu/Sikh etc? Has he/she studied all religions, examined all gods, read all holy books, spoken to scholars from different traditions and made an intellectual choice? Or has he/she been pressured to follow the religion of parents, family, friends and community? Is this an informed choice or a bigoted one?

Do religions pay for their own schools? No! Such schools are funded 100% by taxpayers.

The harmful effect of this type of religious apartheid are evident all over the world - Northern Ireland being a classic example. How can we promote social cohesion when pupils are taught that "we are right", "they are wrong" and "they are evil and will burn in hell."

Some comments about religiously segregated schools

Summary of our position

• We are totally opposed to religiously segregated schools.
• We already pay 100% of the costs of religiously segregated schools.
• We want all religiously segregated schools returned to local authority control.
• We want children of all beliefs, and non-beliefs, educated together, in harmony.

Questions never answered

• How can anyone argue that religiously segregated schools help build a harmonious society?
• How did religiously segregated schools in Northern Ireland help with understanding between religious communities?
• How can a child educated at a religiously segregated school understand the views of other religions and beliefs - including non-belief?
• How do we stop religiously segregated schools become breeding grounds for religious prejudice and extremism?
• If pupils are taught that their religion is "right" and other religions are "wrong", how can we hope for a tolerant society?

The study,"Social Capital, Diversity and Education Policy", illustrates the problems associated with segregation on religious ground.

Religiously segregated schools are an attack on community cohesion.

Why do religions want their schools funded by taxpayers?

They want to indoctrinate children into their belief - see the 2001 Dearing Report for the Church of England which made this crystal clear.

Other reasons:

• Because education is not provided for free by the state. This may have been the case in the 19th century but is certainly not true now.
• So that children are properly educated. The assumption is that non-religious schools do not provide a "proper" education!
• So that children are brought up "in the light of god". (The "right" god - not just any god - after all, there are so many "wrong" gods.)
• Because parents want it. The assumption is that parents own their children and can do as they wish with them. They want them to have a narrow bigoted education with no true knowledge of other belief systems.
• Because segregated religious schools provide the best quality education.

  This is not true - there are some terrible religious schools. Anyway, if you select based on social class, if you select on the basis of religion, if you use taxpayers' money to build state-of-the-art schools and if you throw resources at it, you should be sacked if you do not achieve better results.

  The question is: is it the religiousness of the school that gets better results (sometimes) or is it all the other factors inherent in the way pupils are selected and the way the school is paid for and run?

• To promote their own religion. Many religions, particularly C of E Christianity, are dying on their feet so they need new recruits. So, get them young and put them into a school promoting a single religion.
• So that they don't mix with people of the wrong religion, or, even worse, with people who enjoy good and happy lives without gods, religions or superstitions.
• So they don't have to pay for their out-of-school-hours religious training schools - they want taxpayers' money.

Whichever answer you chose, they want to segregate children on religious grounds - and we can see the results of religious segregation in the religious sectarian violence that we see on our news every day.

Why are they afraid of proper religious education?

Good religious education teaches pupils about all belief systems, religious and non-religious, in an open, honest and impartial way so that they can make up their own minds as to which, if any, they wish to follow.

Ask any supporter of segregated religious schools about why they do not want this and you will quickly find out their real reason for wanting their own schools - they want taxpayers' money to enable them to indoctrinate children into a single religion.

Ask them: "is this the best way to provide information for children, to encourage tolerance and understanding, to promote a harmonious society where everyone has sufficient information to make up their own minds about the important issues of life?"

A few initial questions for those who support faith schools

1. All good schools teach moral values and social responsibilities. All schools operate within a moral framework - an "ethos". How does the ethos if a religious school differ from that of a non-religious school? Is someone claiming that religion has a monopoly on moral values and social responsibilities or that those with no need of religion cannot lead good and moral lives?
2. If segregation by skin colour was wrong under apartheid why do we allow children to be segregated by their parents' religion?
3. Using the logic of faith schools ("rights of parents", "schools ethos" etc.) why do we not allow all-black schools or all-brown schools? Why do we not allow Fascist schools, Communist schools, Conservative schools or Labour schools?

The questions parents SHOULD be asked

1. "Would you like your children to be educated in schools where they mix with children from a wide variety of different backgrounds and where the school teaches them a strong set of moral values and social responsibilities or would you like them to be educated in schools controlled by religious organisation where they are taught only a single religion?"
2. "Would you like your schools to be accountable to you through the school governors and your local authority or would you like them to be responsible to a private financial sponsor and central government?"
3. "Do you understand that the private sponsor finds less than 10% of the cost of building the school and nothing towards its running costs while you, as a taxpayer, pay 90% of the building costs and 100% of the running costs - including the costs of all salaries for teachers and managers?"
4. "Do you also understand that by using certain accountancy methods the private sponsor may never pay a penny towards the 10% building costs they are supposed to fund?"
5. "Are you happy handing your children's education over to a private sponsor who can control the whole curriculum of the school?"
6. Do you think that the government should make money available so that local authorities can build new inclusive community schools or do you think they should keep the money for academies which are controlled by religious sponsors?"
7. Do you know that religious schools sometimes have the worst results in their area and sometimes the best? Do you know that local authority schools sometimes have the worst results in their area and sometimes the best? Which do you think is the best predictor of schools results: the type of school or the nature of its intake?"
8. Why do you think the government wants schools taken out of local authority control and handed to religious and other private organisations?"

One extra point: why is it that parents are consulted, but the wider community isn't?

All of us have an interest in getting the best possible education for children - we need them to become responsible members of society who make a positive contribution to our mutual benefit. As taxpayers, we also pay for these schools so we all have a right to be consulted - in terms of the "management speak" that the government and its Management Consultants are so fond of, we are all "stakeholders" in education.

Academic findings

• Long-term academic studies have consistently shown that those children educated in schools with the widest ethnic and religious mix become the most tolerant and are must likely to have friends of different colours, races and religions. Putting children together leads to tolerance of differences - separately them leads to intolerance and disharmony (look at Northern Ireland.)

  Every report issued in the last few years has concluded that faith schools are divisive and every public opinion poll shows that the overwhelming majority of people feel the same. Educating children in separate schools leads to a "them and us" mentality - exactly the opposite to what we want in an inclusive and harmonious society.

  The study,"Social Capital, Diversity and Education Policy", illustrates the problems associated with segregation on religious ground. We feel that this study is so important that it is worth including one page here:

  Key Findings Patterns of children’s friendships were researched in 12 English primary schools that varied greatly in ethnic and faith diversity. As many as 60 of the 600 children surveyed between 2003 and 2005 identified themselves as Muslims. The key findings were that: Friendship at primary schools can, and does, cross ethnic and faith divides wherever children have the opportunity to make friends from different backgrounds. At that age, in such schools, children are not highly conscious of racial differences and are largely unaware of the religion of their friends. The positive benefits of mixed primary schooling particularly for white children, extend into the early years of secondary school. There was some evidence that parents learned to respect people from other backgrounds as a result of their children’s experiences in mixed schools. The ethnic mix of primary schools can vary within local catchment areas and Parental prejudices, allied to a rhetoric of choice, reduce the chances of children from different backgrounds being in the same primary class In the areas we studied this was particularly true of Catholic schools. Muslim children separated school and home more than other children, but their Muslim school friends did not come home with them any more than their other friends. The process of secondary school transfer affects behaviour and inter-racial relations as children react to a sense of rejection (discussed in Weller forthcoming 2007) Secondary school transfer processes also tended to disrupt pre-existing inter-ethnic friendships more than others. Children in non-denominational secondary schools from all ethnic backgrounds were largely opposed to ‘faith’ schools. In the one case we studied, primary school twinning had little positive effect on white children’s attitudes, fuelling indeed their community’s sense of losing out on investment. We conclude by arguing that day-to-day contact between children has far more chance of breaking down barriers between communities, than school twinning and sporting encounters. This is in line with the thrust of social psychology research on prejudice which emphasises the importance of establishing contact between equals. We therefore think that if it is to address its remit effectively, the Commission on Cohesion and Integration should consider: How far policies of enhanced school choice and the retention of existing faith schools have hindered integration How policies and processes within schools help or hinder the respect and understanding pupils have for one another, with particular regard to the attitudes of white children How best to ensure that local examples of school twinning and informal contact are independently and systematically evaluated for their impact on attitudes and behaviour. How the educational outcomes for white children from traditionally poor achieving backgrounds might be enhanced by learning alongside children from high aspiring ethnic groups How any such positive benefits should be more broadly communicated

• Religious tourism (token visits to "schools of other faiths" as advocated by the government) only accentuates differences.

  "Now, boys and girls, look what the little Muslim children are doing as they sit on the floor bobbing their heads
  and mouthing the words of their holy book in a language they cannot understand"

  This certainly does nothing to teach children about the possibility of a good life based on strong moral values that require no religion.

• Why are religious people afraid of our proposal that all children in all schools should be taught about all belief systems (religious and non-religious) in an open-minded and unbiased way? (Please click here for our reasons for this proposal.) Such a proposal means that faith schools become unnecessary and they should return to local authority control - we pay the bills, we should control them.
• No taxation without education!

  We taxpayers pay 100% of the costs of running all faith schools.

  Despite what they would like us to believe, religions pay not one penny towards the running of faith schools. You are paying all the costs of your local CofE primary or Catholic secondary or Islamic school.

  All of us, believers and non-believers, are forced to subsidise religions indoctrinating children. They claim not to be indoctrinating children - but if they are not creating the next generation of "the faithful" why bother with faith schools at all? The answer is glaringly obvious to all of us (the CofE Dearing report, 2001, even wrote it down!) but they just lie about it.

  Faith schools are built with our money and we pay all the costs - they should be our schools.

• In theory, new faith schools may be partly funded by religious groups or rich individuals (a fundamentalist, evangelical, anti-evolution, Christian car salesman in the North East for example.) However, the Dearing Report made it very clear that the absolute maximum the government asks for is 10% of the building cost - and not one penny for the equipment, staff and running costs. The Dearing report makes it clear that this one-off 10% can be reduced to zero with a few cunning moves combining faith schools with PFI.
• Most, yes most, of those who have said they will cough up for faith schools have failed to do so - even after the schools are built (using taxpayer's money of course). The fact is, evangelical businessmen with money know more about writing contracts than those in government who have never run a business in their lives!
• There is no tolerance in these new faith schools. Just listen to the words of their "sponsors" and head teachers - you will have to listen hard and long to find any signs of tolerance for those of other faiths and certainly violent opposition (threats of hell-fire, damnation and even physical violence) towards those of us who do not need religion to lead good lives.
• We all know that better-off, middle class people move into areas with "the best schools" - and, in so doing, they force house prices up and reduce the social class mix in the area.

  Every CofE vicar can now tell stories about people suddenly joining the congregation when Little John or Little Jane comes close to school age. This had led to some very weird cases such as the atheist Jewish couple who, having abandoned Judaism years ago, now regularly attend a rural CofE church and sing along with the faithful to ensure places for their children at the local CofE primary. They play the system cynically, they are still atheists, but they manage to get their children into the local school.

  Why do church schools do well on average? (It is worth remembering that there are many non-church schools that beat them hands down - and many faith schools that have terrible Ofsted reports.) The answer is simply: social class. Their explicit admissions policies, and the class of intake they attract, yield children of better initial ability. Not surprisingly, if you start with a better raw materials, you will get better results. This is not rocket science! Politicians don't like to talk about it (because it is not PC) but social class is the best predictor of exam results - and the church ruthlessly exploits it.

• Extremists target faith schools. There is no doubt that those at the extreme ends of their religions are the ones who shout most about the need for faith schools. One has only to look at those who have "sponsored" new Christian schools, or who have bludgeoned local authorities into accepting Muslim schools, to know that these people are far from being at the liberal, moderate and tolerant end of their religion. However, the "moderates" must shoulder the blame for allowing these things to be done in the name of their religion.

  Their very motives are extreme - to bring up children in one faith only and to deny the validity of other faiths or a life based on no faith. In many cases they go even further, new extremist Christian schools not only deny the validity of other belief systems, they deny the validity of science - instead they teach about dinosaurs roaming the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve!

  This is the 21st century and this is madness disguised as intolerant, violent and abusive religion.

integration by segregation

This cartoon appeared in The Freethinker, April 2007

An article by Fiona Millar in The Guardian, 12th April, 2007

Her points about "integration by segregation" and the permitted discrimination based on religious faith are well made.

Belief in the system

The school lottery furore ignores discrimination that is still directed at children on faith grounds

The Brighton school lottery saga continues, with the endorsement by the education secretary, Alan Johnson, of the controversial catchment area system introduced to control admissions to secondary schools. The raw anger of aspirant middle-class parents denied their desired school does not fade swiftly. But that rage also masks some unavoidable political issues.

The most perplexing is how to reconcile choice, fairness and social cohesion. Research into the effects of choice in education all point to the same conclusion: choice may help to raise standards, but it can also segregate, rather than unite, children of different backgrounds.

Even more baffling, given the furore caused by the idea of random allocation of school places, is the fact that so little attention is given to the issue of selection by faith. Who would disagree that discrimination on the grounds of faith, race, gender, sexual orientation, social background or other status is unacceptable in most walks of life?

It is unthinkable that a school would overtly bar a black child, for example (even though there may be other subtle proxies for selection by race), and the new code of practice on school admissions states that schools must not discriminate against children on the basis of their parents' social or professional backgrounds. In fact, it bans all personal information about family status.

Yet schools can routinely refuse entry to children on the grounds of membership of a religious groin. Admission to faith schools on such grounds are exempt from the equalities legislation, and the new admissions code allows supplementary application forms that ask parents or children about their relationship with a religious denomination.

Until now it has been possible for faith schools to select pupils using elaborate criteria that allocate points based on highly subjective judgments about whether they will support or benefit from the school's ethos, whether they are recommended by their primary school heads, are good bell-ringers, run coffee mornings, or, as in the case of one North Yorkshire C of E secondary school, do "work on the church site".

In one recent parental challenge to a London faith school's admissions practices, the local government ombudsman discovered that the child in question had been refused points because her parents had failed to sell enough raffle tickets at her primary school.

Banning these sorts of questionable able practices leaves the simple test of membership of the "right" faith standing alone for admission to sought-after schools that parents of other faiths or no faith may want to choose.

The European Convention on Human Rights has been interpreted in some contexts to allow discrimination on the grounds of faith if it is "justified" and the effect "proportionate". But what is the public justification for giving schools that are funded by the taxpayer the right to bar children who are Muslims, Christians, Jews or indeed atheists. It doesn't appear anywhere in the new admissions code, nor has it been spelled out explicitly by ministers.

Moreover, can the effects on parent choice and social cohesion really be described as proportionate in an area where the only local school is one with faith-based criteria, or where faith schools outnumber non-denominational schools to such an extent that some children are forced to travel miles out of their neighbourhoods?

For every parent outside Brighton town hall there may be one more who could legitimately challenge a decision to exclude their child from a faith school on the grounds that it is neither justifiable or proportionate. The only mystery is why it is taking so long.