Courtney McGrailRuth Kelly shared Britain’s experience of faith schools
Ruth Kelly
The political debate around faith schools in the UK has long been a contentious topic, it has gained significant attention again in recent weeks with Theresa May’s announcement that she is set to allow faith schools to expand again, by lifting the constraint on admissions which was placed on faith schools by the coalition government in 2010.
The prime minister’s announcement was warmly welcomed by the Catholic Church, which had been particularly affected by the requirement which had been brought in to require new religious schools to keep 50% of their places for pupils from other faiths.
But the announcement ignited harsh criticism from opponents of faith-based education, including some MPs in the governing party, who believe the move is a retrograde step.
According to the MP, Sarah Wollaston, who made clear her opposition to Theresa May’s lifting of the cap on faith-based admissions, “100% faith schools can have nothing to contribute to a more integrated and cohesive society”.
The British Humanist Association made a similar claim, saying: “Religiously selective schools have been shown time and time again to have a large impact on segregation on religious, ethnic, on socio-economic lines, so allowing more schools to open that are fully religiously selective will only exacerbate those problems”.
Influence
Under the Blair government until the end of my time as Education Secretary in 2006, there was little truck with these arguments however. Blair was known to be an advocate of faith schools, nearly all of which were Church of England or Catholic – and a succession of Education Secretaries – Blunkett, Morris, Clarke and myself – continued the policy of seeing their influence expand.
The Government not only actively promoted their expansion but cut the capital contribution for voluntary-aided and voluntary-controlled schools, that is faith schools, from 15% to 10%, and announced that religious schools would be encouraged to work with the private sector in running weak or failing schools. In addition, a new programme of creating City Academies in deprived areas of Britain was established.
These were to be state-of-the-art, brand new state schools accountable directly to the Department and outside local authority control. They were granted significantly more freedom over the curriculum as well as pay and conditions of staff; and businesses, churches and voluntary groups would design and manage them in return for a contribution to capital costs of the building project.
It was my successor, Alan Johnson, an avowed secularist, who broke with the tradition of allowing a much freer rein to faith schools to expand their influence. In 2006, he was the first to attempt to impose a requirement that faith schools should be forced to take at least part of their admissions from candidates from other faiths or none – he suggested 25%.
He was stunned by the reaction. Catholic MPs – and other MPs with Catholic schools in their constituencies – convened an emergency meeting, where they threatened to vote down his bill. The Roman Catholic Church and the Board of British Jews also vigorously opposed the proposal on admissions. Within a week there had been a U-turn.
So why after this backlash in the face of stark opposition from MPs did the mood change later sufficiently to allow Michael Gove, the first Education Secretary of the Coalition government, successfully to impose a cap on faith admissions to faith schools, and this time not 25% but 50% (on new faith schools at least)?
In fact it was an event of 2001 that turned out to be a defining moment for faith schools – the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers.
It prompted an ongoing reassessment of Britain’s relationship to Islam and intense scrutiny of the type of Muslim bodies being consulted by the Government – or in some cases funded by it. After the London bombings which followed, Michael Gove, at that time a Times journalist, in 2006 authored an influential book Celsius 7/7 espousing his neo-conservative views, warning that the West was engaged in an existential battle with Islam and arguing that many of the bodies the Government was engaging with were undemocratic and dangerous.
The result was a new degree of caution from many about the role of Muslim schools in society and a concern about the potential for Muslim schools to become insular breeding-grounds for home-grown terrorism. Indeed the term ‘faith schools’, rather than referring to Church of England or Catholic schools, became appropriated as an expression by those who opposed the expansion of Muslim schools, Michael Gove being one of them.
Religious character
One of his first acts as Education Secretary was successfully to bring into legislation the requirement that all new schools of a religious character should be open to admitting 50% of pupils from outside their faith.
It was a measure aimed at Muslim schools, but paradoxically one which had almost no impact upon them (as very few non-Muslim parents applied for places for their children at one). It did however sound the death-knell for the expansion of Catholic schools, largely on the basis that the Church could not fund schools and then turn away Catholic children seeking a faith education in favour of a non-Catholic child.
And then in 2014 there was another outbreak of concern about the potential spread of Muslim schools in response to the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal regarding alleged Islamic radicalisation in Birmingham schools.
A leaked document claimed dirty tricks were being used to oust non-Muslim staff in state schools in which Muslim children were the majority in an operation called Trojan Horse. Four separate inquiries were launched into the allegations and other claims, including a Birmingham City Council and a Department of Education probe. Ofsted also conducted inspections at 15 city schools.
Responding to the scandal last year, Crispin Blunt, MP, who chairs the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, argued that faith-based schools were “not in the public interest”.
So faith schools have been controversial politically, but opposition has stemmed from different perceived issues. In my view, the central political arguments against faith schools however may be boiled down to three related charges:
- First, that they are socially divisive and create inequality;
- Second, that they undermine community cohesion;
- And third, that they are potentially dangerous giving rise to extremism.
Let us look at these charges in turn.
The British Humanist Association says that the existence of faith schools exacerbates socio-economic inequality. Their argument relies on data which shows that faith-based schools admit fewer children on Free School Meals than non-faith schools, and that faith-based schools are unrepresentative of their local areas compared to other schools.
These claims are misleading. As the think tank Theos noted in its report More than anEducated Guess, the Free School Meals indicator is a “blunt instrument”.
Let us take a look at Catholic schools as an example. The Catholic Education Service points out that the catchment areas for faith schools are typically wider than postcode areas or local authority boundaries and so cannot be mapped accurately against them.
Moreover, researchers at St Mary’s University have produced evidence – soon to be published – which suggests the distinctive ethnic profile of Catholic schools contributes to low uptake of free meals, despite their disproportionate numbers of underprivileged pupils.
There are today over 845,000 pupils who are educated in 2,245 Catholic schools in England and Wales. Of these:
- 18.7% of pupils at Catholic state primary schools live in the most deprived areas, compared to a national average for state primary schools of 13.9%
- 17.4% of pupils at Catholic secondary schools live in the most deprived areas, compared with a national average of 11.8%.
The suggestion that Catholic schools do not cater for those from disadvantaged backgrounds is clearly challenged by these statistics. And it is a similar story with ethnic minorities:
- 37% of pupils in Catholic primary schools are from ethnic minority backgrounds compared with 30% across the country
- 30.2% of pupils in Catholic secondary schools are from ethnic minority backgrounds compared with 24.2% across the country
Far from promoting social division, the evidence suggests that Catholic schools are a force for social inclusion, a force for community cohesion.
What’s more, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference states that Religious Education must provide students with an awareness of the faith and traditions of other religions, with the specific purpose of equipping children with an attitude based on respect and understanding of other faiths.
Requirements
Catholic schools are also subject to the same requirements as other schools, such as teaching the National Curriculum.
If Theresa May’s new rules on admissions come to pass there will be specific requirements on faith schools to make sure their focus is not too narrow. Some of these include:
- Ensuring that parents from other faiths would be happy sending a child to the school
- Establishing ‘twinning arrangements’ with schools of different faiths
- Considering setting up mixed-faith multi-academy trusts
- Considering a member of a different faith or none to sit on the governing body
These requirements sit comfortably with the Catholic approach to education, which is focused on developing a well-rounded and inquisitive student who is able to contribute to the wider community in which they live.
This ethos is central to the argument about faith schools and the contribution they make to community cohesion.
Radicalism
So let us take a look at the third argument against faith schools, that faith schools can, in another context, serve to undermine the principles of democracy and freedom which underpin modern Britain.
The fear of course is that Muslim schools could become a breeding ground for extremist ideology. But those making this argument often ignore the fact that there are already de facto Muslim schools simply because of geography and demography.
One of the most noteworthy aspects of the ‘Trojan Horse’ episode in Birmingham was that none the 21 schools inspected were faith schools. Rather, they were secular state schools located in predominantly Muslim areas in which religiously motivated governors had sought to gain control. I was always struck too as Education Secretary that none of the terrorists picked up by the security services or identified after an attack had attended a faith school; all were products of a secular education, and had seemingly been ‘integrated’ into Western culture before being radicalised.
That points to a fundamental misunderstanding made by the humanist movement about the reality of school selection and the character of faith schools. It also illustrates how the eradication of faith schools would not deal with the problem of extremist views being promoted in the classroom.
Indeed, rather than being the problem, faith schools might be part of the solution in terms of promoting integration and countering extremism. State-funded faith schools for Muslims organised on the same basis as for other faith groups would be subject to better control against extremism than private Muslim schools.
In conclusion, the freedom to practise faith and to educate children in a faith – or not – of our choosing is one of the cornerstones of the free and diverse society that we cherish. Our society benefits from the influences brought in from all over the world and from all different belief systems.
As Pope Benedict said when he addressed parliamentarians in Westminster Hall, “I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilisation”.
This ability to co-exist, and to make debate stronger and more rigorous, is why we should celebrate and defend faith-based education and faith schools.
Far from being an anathema to those who support a diverse society, they should be considered as part of its fabric. But they are a fragile part of it. And I would end by saying that we should not forget the limits of schools and educators.
The most fundamental aspect of Pope Paul’s famous declaration on Catholic education applied to parents. He said:
“Since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most serious obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educators”.
In the school environment, teachers of course bear an important responsibility for ensuring that our institutions do as much as they can to realise the vision and mission of faith schools.
But in the end the critical responsibility lies with parents and pupils.
Yet they, too, are subject to the external cultural pressures that work against organised religion in the modern world.
And that, more than political opposition, is the greatest challenge for faith schools in 21st-Century Britain.