Harriet Harman opposes "more faith schools"

Nice to see Harriet Harman declaring her opposition to "more faith schools" in a debate at the Institute of Education this week.

Meanwhile is Alan Johnson doing enough to block the Church of England's plan to take over another 100 of our community schools so they can preach and violate the freedom of belief of local school kids. From this report in today's Guardian the answer seems to be no.

We all know the majority of labour activists are opposed to the rapid expansion of faith schools, often replacing community schools which are a more popular option for parents who want new schools, we can only hope that the deputy leadership campaign will help senior figures in the party to speak out more now that the chief proponents of sectarian schools - Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis - are soon to depart to the scene.

Comments

[Adele]

As someone who went to a comprehensive faith school and whose parents wanted me brought up within the christian faith but couldn't have sent me to a private school I have to say I think Jon Cruddas takes a much more sensible take on the matter.

''I'm a product of comprehensive Catholic education as is every one of my family. I think in my borough we have them interlinked into a robust partnership with the local authority, with all of the other primary and secondary schools, which actually has achieved the largest increase in A to Cs of any borough since 97. it's a model that works and I think if we just focus in on attacking faith schools, politically that's disadvantageous to us and also I think it's focusing on the wrong issue which is raising the long tail of underachievement, especially amongst white working class males…''

[The Labour Humanist]

Hello Adele

So a quick translation of Cruddas is that it's ok for tax payers to subsidise religious indoctrination as long as exam results improve, and anyway some voters wouldn't like faith schools being made to follow the same rules as other schools, so best leave alone?

As faith schools take middle class families away from other state schools the helping the white working classes argument is also weak.

As for bringing up children in "the faith" that is the job of parents and their religious institutions, not the job of the state subsidised by familes who don't share this faith.

Furthermore as there are fewer and fewer religious families these days, and the non-religious are the fastest growing "belief" demographic, why do we need MORE faith schools now than in the past when over 90% of the population were christian?

[Danivon]

I'm afraid that despite this I am still likely to vote for Cruddas. In the hope that it leads to a situation where Party members can really get their voice heard.

Who knows, we might get to influence policy on religious schools...