Why I have faith in faith schools
by Chris McGovern, The Conservative Woman:
THE award-winning Times journalist Rachel Sylvester does not like faith schools. They upset her. They seem to make her quite angry. In particular she would like us to know how thoroughly brassed-off she is about a new wave of voluntary-aided faith schools that are in the pipeline thanks to Theresa May. Currently faith school are, in most cases, allowed to select only half of their intake on religious grounds, but the new ones would select all of their pupils on faith criteria.
Sylvester would also like us to know that Mrs May once stated a desire to ‘confidently promote’ religious institutions. She is keen to remind us, furthermore, that the former Prime Minister was a vicar’s daughter. To what perfidy has this led us, I wonder? The promotion of religious institutions and a vicar’s daughter! Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more. It will be the Spanish Inquisition turning up in our schools next!
It also happens, as she admits, that faith schools are very popular with parents and that, on the whole, they get better exam results than non-faith schools, while explaining this away with a bit of educational sophistry based on a claim that faith schools do not take a sufficient number of the poorest children. Much the same argument is used against grammar schools. They are condemned for taking too many middle-class children. Rarely is it pointed out that grammar schools mostly survive only in middle-class areas.
She also cites ahandful of rogue schools to support her condemnation of faith schools: A ‘tenth of Britain’s convicted Islamist terrorists came from just five heavily Muslim council wards in Birmingham’.
The only trouble with this is that none of the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ schools was a faith school.
See also: No faith in education, by Alexander Boot:
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