| THE GOVERNMENT is to back the establishment of more minority-faith schools and make it easier for about 150 low-cost private religious schools to come into the maintained education sector. They include 115 Muslim schools and 37 schools that serve ultra-orthodox Jewish communities.
But the Government is not offering a blank cheque. The new schools would have to conform to the duty placed on schools from this month actively to promote community cohesion, teach the National Curriculum, give girls the same opportunities as boys, and teach religious education in accordance with the national framework for RE.
Hindu and Sikh groups, and a handful of Greek Orthodox and Seventh-Day Adventist groups, are also likely to ask for their own aided schools. The option would, in principle, be open to the large number of conservative Christian schools.
The Government’s welcoming gesture to minority faiths was included in Faith in the System, new guidance from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), launched on Monday. This reaffirms its commitment to the Church-state partnership in school provision, which is unique in Europe.
Prepared with the co-operation of church educationists over several months, the document sets out unbreakable boundaries for faith schools: transparent admissions policies without interviews, for example, and the rule that at least half of all places in faith-sponsored academies should be open to the community without a religious test. But it sets out to dispel what the Secretary of State, Ed Balls, described in his speech as “myths and misunderstandings”.
Secularist opponents of church schools often assert that Church of England and Roman Catholic schools are white, middle-class ghettoes designed to indoctrinate. Faith in the System argues that this is demonstrably not so; and Ed Balls reiterated the point on Tuesday.
The Church of England, he said, had established a national network of free schools for the poor half a century before the state stepped in. Moreover, his determination to make admissions fair and provide the best education for the least privileged was helped rather than hindered, he said, by his Department’s dealings with the Churches.
In a statement on the document, the Archbishop of Canterbury also rebutted allegations of indoctrination in church schools: “They offer not a programme of indoctrination, but the possibility of developing a greater level of community cohesion through the understanding of how faith shapes common life. This matters for the lives of individuals, whether they are believers or not — because the failure to understand how faith operates leaves us at sea in engaging with our neighbours at local and global level.”
Within the statement, there is a clear statement of continuing government support for other targets of secularists — religious education and collective worship. It was clear, however, from Tuesday’s launch that the historic Church-state partnership that emerged in the 19th century and was set in stone by the 1944 Education Act is morphing into a rainbow system that the Government sees as a fair response to human-rights legislation and a commitment to parental choice.
Tuesday’s launch was the broadest education coalition assembled to date. Sitting with the Roman Catholic archbishops and a Church of England bishop were representatives from the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh faiths. |
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