Rt Rt Hon Ed Balls MP
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
Sanctuary Buildings
Great
Faith Schools
Thank you very much for your cheery e-mail entitled Time To Talk, inviting my views as a party member on the government’s education policy. I am sorry to make such a long and perhaps curmudgeonly response, but I want to set out my deep objections to the government’s proposals to expand faith schools.
First of all, I am concerned that the government launched a major education initiative on the basis of private discussions with a small selected group of religious leaders. It did not consult the much wider group of people and organizations representing parents, teachers, local communities and indeed children who are opposed to faith schools. Does the government regard their views as of lesser account? Does the government accept that belief in the separation of faith and state is a deeply held conviction, and one held by many people of faith?
Second, I believe that the government may have struck a very weak bargain with the faith groups concerned. They will be given control or influence over more schools built and funded by the taxpayer, with a wide degree of latitude over admissions, staffing and other policies. What have they given in exchange? In the document Faith In The System they “confirm our commitment to continue to work together and with schools with and without a religious character to improve the life chances of children, to build bridges to greater mutual trust and understanding and to contribute to a just and cohesive society”. Frankly, this statement reads like a bucketful of bromides. Its objectives represent the minimal duties of any provider of education and cannot be a basis for the award of additional money and privilege. If schools do not improve children’s life chances, do not create greater mutual trust and understanding, do not contribute to a just and cohesive society they should be shut down.
In the document the government protests too much in its repeated denials that faith schools are not divisive. The claim flies in the face of common sense and historic experience, notably in
Faith schools exist to give expression to religious faith. Their controllers believe that some people – including children – are different from others because of their beliefs and their relationships with divine beings and their prophets and interpreters. They believe that adherence to the faith concerned makes children better people and all other children are in some way inferior or unfortunate, perhaps even pitiable. Such children may need to be converted, saved, or redeemed: at best they can be tolerated but never regarded as equal. That is the central premise of every faith school, even if it is unspoken, and no school with such an outlook can ever be a force for social cohesion.
Perhaps recognizing the force of this argument the government hopes to introduce multi-faith schools, governed by two or more faith groups.
I think that this idea is unworkable and shows scant respect for faith groups themselves. It suggests that differences in belief do not matter. All faiths believe ultimately in “the same thing” and you can just sprinkle “faith” like fairy dust into the education system to improve standards.
But differences in belief matter intensely to faith groups. That is why they remain fiercely divided, after hundreds of years, both against each other and within themselves, and why all religions continue to bifurcate and multiply and new religious movements are continually created. Faith groups are competitors for people’s souls, especially children’s. A multi-faith school will always be divided at its heart. Say it is shared between Christians and Muslims: each group will always be seeking to extend its influence and its governors will be judged by their success in doing so. The Christians will want the school to become more Christian in character and output, the Muslims will want it to become more Muslim. The children of non-believers at such a school may fare even worse than at a mono-faith school: they will be regarded as inferior by two religions instead of one.
Even if one sets aside the arguments over faith schools being divisive, they raise other important questions of principle.
All religious faiths, without exception, are self-selecting minorities. They constitute groups of people who have chosen to adopt certain beliefs. Why should any minority group enjoy special funding, influence or control in an essential public service just because of its beliefs? (Imagine a Church of England fire service which gave priority to 999 calls from Anglicans). What gives religion a superior claim to recognition and public funding over other convictions? If we have faith-based schools should we also have schools based on politics or ideology? The government quails at modest state funding of political parties but seems prepared to give a blank cheque to faith groups in the education system.
The government claims that faith schools enlarge parental choice. But the government does not attempt to meet the choice of every single parent for a child’s education. Some parents believe passionately that their children are future sports champions or entertainment superstars and demand that the state trains them accordingly. The state does not meet their wishes. Some parents are racist, homophobic or treat women as inferior, sometimes supported by their religious views. The state certainly does not meet their outlook in their children’s education. This is an extreme case, but it illustrates a general point. The state is constantly making judgments about the merits of parental views and choices: why should it give priority to religious choices above others?
Almost every day one can read in the media a report of some battle by parents of disabled children or those with learning difficulties when they are denied the educational choice that they seek for their children. When resources are inevitably limited, why should the state choose to fund provision for religious parents in preference to those with disabled children?
Faith schools also raise the question of children’s rights. Does the government have any evidence that children want religious instruction? Should children be compelled to receive it at their parents’ behest, particularly if this happens outside normal school hours when children might otherwise choose to play or socialize? Should such compulsion be funded by the state? In support of its proposals, the government has referred to the under-provision of state schools for “Muslim children”, along with Hindu and Sikh children. Are there “Muslim children” or Hindu, Sikh or indeed Christian children? Or do we mean “children of Muslim etc parents”? Children should not be identified by their parents’ religion. They can make that choice for themselves when they are mature enough and it is no role of the state to promote it.
Finally, and most seriously, faith schools entail religious politics for our country. Throughout history, no country has benefited from religious politics and our country, at least the British mainland, has been singularly lucky to avoid them. But faith schools, like all faith-based policies, turn every faith into clients of government and vice versa. They make every faith group a lobbyist; whatever public money and power is given to one group is automatically demanded by another. Within every faith group, faith schools encourage factions to compete for the control of the public funding and even more important, for the power within the community that accompanies control over a school. Such competition automatically favours more fundamental factions in every faith.
For a start, the most moderate and socially-integrated members of any faith group are precisely those who do not want to identified by their faith. They do not want to be chosen as school governors, or other public positions, as representatives of their faith but on their merits as people. And they generally have no taste for factional politics within their faith.
In any decision involving faith schools fundamentalist factions are always free to denounce more moderate or “establishment” factions of betraying their faith. They will always have a natural clientele of malcontented parents or children to exploit.
All of these problems are staring us in the face. And does the government really believe that faith schools are popular among voters at large? Attendances for all faiths are falling not rising, and even among their adherents there is deep suspicion about the power and influence of all religious organizations. Opinion polls produce regular majorities against the extension of faith schools. I suggest that their popularity among parents is based primarily on their perceived standards and results rather than on their religious character. I hope that the government does not regard religion is a necessary condition of faith schools’ achievements. That would be a counsel of despair and would imply that the two thirds of state schools which have remained outside religious influence should be immediately handed over to some faith group or other.
I have taken up too much of your time. But perhaps this letter will give you and your officials some insight into the motives and arguments of the many opponents of the government’s policy towards faith schools. May I offer one positive suggestion: submit the entire issue to a citizen’s jury?
Richard Heller