Faith schools are beacons of intellectual rigour
by Marc Sidwell, Telegraph:
Another year’s GCSE and A-level results, another bumper crop for… grammars? academies? Yes, absolutely. But there’s a third group of state schools that outperform the average that gets far less positive attention: the nation’s faith schools.
For this year’s results, the Telegraph’s ranking of top-performing comprehensives shows a strong showing from faith schools of many kinds: among the top few dozen entries are two King David Highs, a St John the Baptist RC Comp, Ursuline High Wimbledon, Blue Coat C of E, Bishop Luffa C of E.
And this is no one-off. A 2015 league table gave the top four spots for the high-performing comprehensives to Jewish faith schools. Figures from 2013 found Catholic schools outperforming the national average at GCSE and Maths and English SATs at 11 by 5 per cent in both cases, despite 17.3 per cent of Catholic maintained secondary schools being in the most deprived areas, compared to 12.2 per cent per cent of all maintained secondary schools . The same year, 81 per cent of Church of England schools were judged good or outstanding by Ofsted compared with 77 per cent of all non-faith schools.
That last statistic is all the more impressive when you consider that the established church is the biggest education provider in England. One in three state funded schools in England has a religious character, according to a Theos report from 2013.
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