It’s time to phase out faith schools

By Tom Copley

At their annual conference, which draws to a close today, the NUT debated motions calling for faith schools to be phased out and Christian assemblies to be scrapped. Although the result of the vote on this motion has not yet been announced, it was backed by the union’s leadership and is expected to be carried. If it is, the NUT will join the NASUWT in opposing segregation and selection on grounds of faith in Britain’s schools. The NUT’s move comes around the same time as Cardinal-to-be and chairman of the Catholic Education Service (CES), Vincent Nichols, launched an attack on proposals for new abortion and contraception adverts. Yet again, a new leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales is pitting the Church against the forces of progress, and in doing so is putting the health, and in some cases lives, of sexually active people at risk.

Archbishop Nichols’ comments once again demonstrate why organised religion should be kept well away from running state schools. Television adverts for contraception could prove to be an important weapon in reducing Britain’s stubbornly high rates of sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy (which, despite falling every year since 2002, registered a small rise in 2007). But it is in schools where the battle against STDs and teenage pregnancy will really be fought. High quality, factual sex education in schools is going to be the key. The Government has slowly begun to recognise this, and it is to the credit of ministers that sex and relationships education is now going to be provided to children as young as ten years old.

The CES has publicly backed this move, but its apparent support has been qualified. As chairman of the CES, Archbishop Nichols has stated that “in Catholic schools sex and relationship education must always be designed and delivered according to the teaching of the Church.” In other words, sex education would not be presented in a factual and balanced way but according to Church dogma. There is already ample evidence of what this would entail – The Independent reported last year that the Bishop of Lancaster, Patrick O’Donoghue, sent a 66 page circular to all Catholic schools in the North West “instructing them to stop ‘safe sex’ education and place crucifixes in every classroom.” In the circular, the Bishop decreed that “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.”

Such attitudes could have serious emotional and social consequences for some pupils, particularly those that are gay or lesbian. Sex education “delivered according to the teaching of the Church” may well involve teaching that homosexuality is sinful and morally wrong. Is this really acceptable in schools funded by the taxpayer?

The issue of religious attitudes to sex education touches on a much wider problem with faith schools. No matter how much ministers and religious leaders profess their commitment to religious equality and cohesion within faith schools, these institutions by their very nature seek to promote their own particular faith above the others (and especially above non-believers). At the end of the day, the particular “faith” attached to the school will always be taught, whether explicitly or implicitly, as the “right” one. I remember religious education lessons at my own Church of England state secondary school – most of the year was devoted to studying Christianity, with just a couple of weeks allocated to the “other religions”. The head of RE also displayed anti-abortion literature on the walls of the classrooms.

Backing the motion to phase out faith schools, NUT acting general secretary, Christine Blower, pointed to the negative impact faith schools can have on community cohesion: “Faith schools can’t be fully promoting social and community cohesion if their prime responsibility is only to select pupils of a particular faith.” The motion itself argues that “access to education segregated on the basis of faith, ethnicity or social class undermines community cohesion”. Faith schools automatically discriminate on grounds of ethnicity and class: Muslim faith schools will be majority Asian; Church of England schools tend to attract far more middle class pupils because of their supposed “ethos”. In 2006 the then Cardinal, Cormac Murphy O’Connor, forced the Government into an embarrassing U-turn when then Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, scrapped his proposal that all faith schools should take 25% of their pupils from a different or non-faith background. The state should be doing everything it can to actively break down barriers between different faiths, ethnicities and classes, not conspiring with religious leaders to build them up.

The attitudes of religious leaders like Vincent Nichols are always going to permeate the faith schools attached to them. Church schools certainly played their part in the development of Britain’s education system, providing schools for poorer children before the state guaranteed education for all children. But in the twenty-first century we should be building a secular school system where pupils can hear about all religions (and none), where teaching is based on fact not faith and where schools can choose to celebrate different faith events as they see appropriate. Do we really need a compulsory act of Christian worship every day, in every state school when only 7% of the population attend church on a Sunday? Most fundamental of all, we should enshrine the right of children to choose their own faith, or reject faith altogether.