Remember our commitment to "evidence based" policy? We in the Labour Party are opposed to discrimination and privilege, particularly in education and opportunities for the young. So what happens when the evidence piles up that one education policy - more faith schools with more independence than community schools - is responsible for widespread social selection, discrimination and community segregation. We drop the policy...right? Yeah, some hope, no wonder voters get disenchanted with politics.
More news today of what sounds like a shocking report coming out of the London School of Economics. The Telegraph reports:
"Faith schools were accused of social selection last night after it emerged parents have been told to submit marriage certificates when attempting to enrol their children...Some parents were also asked to reveal their occupation and which other schools they had applied to, according to a new study.
Academics at the London School of Economics said many church schools used "complex" and often intrusive application forms to weed out working class children and families who failed to follow a strict Christian way of life...The report also accused faith schools of overstating the number of pupils from other faiths who are admitted."
There is also another report published this week, this time by Institute of Education that found some faith schools to be religiously exclusive. In Roman Catholic schools, more than 90 per cent of children were found to be Christian and in Jewish schools all pupils subscribed the faith.
Today's press also sees one a strong condemnation of David Cameron's support for faith schools. Alice Miles writing in The Times who applauds the move away from grammars but points out Cameron hasn't got the character needed to take on our education systems' issues:
"Now let’s see them turn their attention to the rotten selection processes of faith schools. Then again, a Tory leader who is assiduously trying to secure his own daughter a place at a C of E school, two miles and 46 alternative schools away from his home, probably isn’t the man to do it."
Miles also blasts faith schools for their "sneaky" and divisive approach to school admissions:
"Their admission criteria are opaque, manipulated and blatantly unfair, ranging from church attendance (twice a week for five years; every week for two years; whatever the governors fancy imposing) to academic record, parental committee work or, in one case, how many raffle tickets a child’s parents had sold at the primary school.
When schools are officially banned from selection on the grounds of race, colour, ability or parental background, the system sanctions selection on the entirely random basis of whether a child was born to a practising Christian family. And because faith schools set their own admissions criteria, and run their own admissions, in practice they can discriminate against anyone they choose. Many use their nurseries as a filter, so that a family effectively has to apply to the school when the child is as young as 2, and before any admissions code applies.
Questions about a child’s background were supposed to have been banned under the new school admissions code, with faith schools no longer allowed to seek supplementary information except about religion, or to interview applicants. One London school I know, a heavily oversubscribed Church of England primary, while technically sticking to the new rules, also asked this year for parents to send in copies of the child’s birth certificate with their application, ostensibly to prove their age – not something it is necessary for the school to check at that point. What the birth certificate also provides, of course, are details of the child’s parents’ professions. Parents with children at the school tell me it is overwhelmingly professional class – and pupils are drawn from surprisingly far away. Yet the school is surrounded by pockets of deep deprivation."
Faith schools are perverting and corrupting our education system, any leaders out there with the guts to do something about it?
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