How so-called "faith schools" are proliferating - paid for by us

If you wish to fill your child's head with unsubstantiated nonsense about supernatural beings, that's fine by me; but I'm damned if I see why the taxpayer should fund it.

I was shocked to read in a British Humanist Association newsletter this report about ‘faith’ schools; those schools run by the tenets of religious groups, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or whatever - including those fundamentalists who believe that our origin occurred just as Genesis supposedly records - and funded by the taxpayer.

Although as a child I was sent to a Church of England primary school - as, briefly, was my elder son, because it was in a five-year-old’s walking distance - I hadn’t lately considered how extensive was the influence of believers in the supernatural in the schools of England and Wales.

Making further mockery of the term ‘state schooling’, when primary and secondary education was previously provided principally by local education authorities, i.e., county and borough councils (which is why the comprehensive secondary school system was never fully implemented in the 1960s) the burgeoning of faith schools under New Labour has, I believe, been a disgraceful example of social retro-engineering.

A prime mover in this was, of course, ex-PM Tony Blair, who, Alastair Campbell once said, did not ‘do God’, but has now converted to Roman Catholicism. It was Blair’s choice in 1994 of the Roman Catholic Brompton Oratory School – the flagship of the ridiculous and divisive Tory ‘opt out’ system - for his son, Euan, that led me to quit the Labour Party, in which I was at that time a double constituency chair, returning only last year to help oppose the growth of support for the Brutish National Party.

As long as people can buy into the so-called public school system, I have no objection to them choosing to do so in the Roman Catholic establishments, Ampleforth and Stoneyhurst, but I believe that the system which the majority of parents are forced to put their children through should be entirely secular.

This is what the report – by Paul Pettinger, Campaigns Officer for Faith Schools and Education at the British Humanist Association - said:

‘Why do humanists oppose faith schools? There are many reasons. Here are just three:

1. Faith schools discriminate on the basis of religion against children and parents during the admissions process, and against teachers in their employment and recruitment.
2. Faith schools don’t have to teach a broad range of beliefs and values. Instead they may teach that only their religious world view is the true one, without ever exposing their pupils to alternatives. Faith schools also don’t yet have to teach about contraception, or that people can have a fulfilling and meaningful relationship outside of a heterosexual marriage.
3. Numerous studies have shown that the presence of faith schools does not improve educational standards, but that they can be hugely divisive, undermine social cohesion and help to create an environment where inter-community mistrust and tension can breed.

Amazingly, faith schools are almost entirely (as in 90-100%!) state-funded. They make up about a third of all the state-funded schools in England and Wales. By ensuring that they are brought into a system of community schools, we will not only improve the lives and education of our children today, but also of children for generations to come.

You might have thought that the argument over faith schools had been won. Opinion polls certainly suggest that it has. As far back as 2005 an ICM poll found that 64% of people agreed that “the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind” and figures like this have been repeated again and again. So why is the number of faith schools actually rising?

The truth is simple: an entrenched, vocal and very well-resourced religious minority impede reform at every turn, and politicians give way to them. As humanists we need to oppose this skewed representation.

The BHA’s work on faith schools not only affects local change, not only makes national headlines (the Times, the Guardian, the BBC and others all carried our comments on last week’s proposed exemptions from SRE), but penetrates right into government. As I demonstrate below, the support from our members is absolutely crucial at all levels.

Our members' support means that MPs, Peers, and others in the media and public bodies listen to us because they know we represent such a large and growing number of people.

Last year we successfully lobbied the Government to ensure that evolution would be taught in primary school science lessons througout England for the first time. The letters and emails that members sent to their MPs and the Government on this issue were a vital to that campaign. In 2009 we also managed to support successful local campaigns against expansion in the provision of faith schools, such as in Swanage and Oxford. Again, the support and efforts of local humanists played an important role in creating enough pressure to force politicians to abandon their plans.’

I recently joined the Cumbria Humanist group and recommend that anyone who finds the teaching of religious mythology to their children abhorrent should do the same.