The Labour Humanist

Do demographics mean church schools are inevitably more middle class?

Is new research telling us that churchgoing is a middle class pursuit, and therefore church schools will inevitably be more middle class...and how does this fit with aims and goals of the Labour Party?  The new research by Tearfund concludes that Britain has a "secular majority", but further reading of the full report sheds some interesting light on the class structure of Christian belief in Britain today.

One section of the report is headlined: "churchgoing a middle class pursuit" and concludes:

"The research confirms the belief that churchgoing is associated with those of higher social grade. Adults in social grades AB (professionals, senior and middle management) have above average prevalence of regular churchgoers (22% and 21% respectively), as well above average proportions of fringe or occasional churchgoers.

Adults of social grade C2, D (skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled manual) have the lowest
proportion of regular churchgoers (12%)"

What are we who share the Labour Party's historic goals to make of this in the light of the current policy to expand the number of church schools? Our current education secretary Alan Johnson is totally without the, ahem, evangelical desires of increasing church control of schools held by his predecessor Ruth Kelly, or Tony Blair's permanent envoy for meddling in education policy  - Lord Adonis.

We must careful in our conclusions as this is only one piece of research, some parts of the country have very different social mixes, and other reports may contradict its findings in some way. But it would appear to be logical to conclude that, in general, if you let church schools freely operate in almost every community in the country and those church schools determine who attends by the church attendance and religious adherence of the parents - then the church schools will be mostly taking from a pool of mostly more affluent middle class parents. If churchgoing is a middle class pursuit then church schools are also going to be a middle class pursuit - particularly if admissions are based on churchgoing.

This is a difficult one for Labour members who to support equality of opportunity and social cohesion in education - as I believe Alan Johnson does - but faced with the huge vested interest of the churches standing the way of a fairer schools system. But, if this was any other kind of education policy proposal that would inevitably result in at least one school in any neighbourhood automatically becoming more middle class than the others...it would be rejected...right?

How church schools bend the rules to get the brightest pupils

The Local Government Ombudsman lifted up the stone on how one prominent church school admitted its pupils, and guess what it found?

Gordon Marsden MP: "Why we must press faith schools on rights and equality"

Gordon Marsden is the Labour MP for Blackpool South and a member of the House of Commons select committee on education. The committee has recently released a report that was critical of how a number of faith schools approached citizenship education.

Gordon has expanded on this criticism in a recent article.

"Citizenship education is not just about encouraging young people to understand our democratic system and institutions - thought this is important in helping them to participate in the civic process. It should be about how we got to where we are today, and how we learn to discuss, argue and sometimes disagree with each other, while identifying the circumstances and values we have in common...

That is why we took a close look at how schools should handle 'difficult subjects' - controversial contemporary issues about the balance between civil liberties and security and how we express dissent in a democratic society. In particular, we tried to see how our faith schools within the public system - the emerging Islamic establishments as well as the established Jewish, Roman Catholic and Anglican ones - handle these and other 'hot potatoes' such as homosexuality and homophobia, the role of women, our attitudes to people with disabilities, and to differing views over abortion, contraception and the marriage debate.

There is some very good practice out there in these areas. I personally was very impressed on a visit to a Muslim faith school in Tooting, which is regularly having productive pupil exchanges with a local Church of England primary school and which has classroom media bulletin boards that gave a balanced presentation of the way in which the post 7/7 debates were affecting the Muslim community.

Less impressive was the complacency shown by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham Vincent Nichols, who told the select committee: "I would expect those difficult issues to be dealt with in religious education. We do not need citizenship education to engage with them."

Fortunately, there will be many individual Roman Catholics who will not take so dismissive a view. But the Archbishop's response illustrates precisely why we must press faith schools on rights and equality. Those funded from the public purse should engage with such issues openly and from all sides of the argument."

Teaching union calls for funding to be cut from faith schools who discriminate against children and staff

ATL - the Association of Teachers and Lecturers - after debating and consulting its members on faith schools has published a hard hitting position paper which says faith schools which discriminate against potential pupils and staff should no longer be allowed state funding.

The ATL believes  Faith schools must become far more accountable if they are to continue getting the current level of tax-payers money. The paper says:

"In a country which is becoming increasingly secular and multi-faith it is hard to justify public taxes being used to fund schools which discriminate against the majority of school children and potential staff on the grounds of their religious belief...We acknowledge that some faith schools provide excellent teaching and are well integrated into their local community. However, too many do not and unless there are some important changes to the way faith schools operate we fear they will escalate divisions in society rather than help integrate our communities.”

The paper shows concern over what it sees as the selective admissions pupils in faith schools - who are less likely to be entitled to free school meals, and are more likely to have English as their first language than the national average in schools across England. The union is  also concerned that many faith schools are allowed to discriminate when they are employ staff -  Voluntary aided faith schools can stipulate the beliefs of all their employees.

As a result of the consultation exercise the ATL are calling for:

• The level of school autonomy – over admissions and the curriculum – to depend on the school promoting community cohesion.
• No extension of rights to be given to faith schools to refuse to employ staff on the basis of their religious belief.
• Faith schools to minimise segregation and promote community cohesion through their admissions, curriculum and employment policies.
• Faith and non-faith schools to work more closely together.
• More rigorous criteria with regular monitoring and inspection of the religious education (RE), personal, social and health education (PSHE), and citizenship taught in faith schools.

Parents who campaign for new schools choose community schools over faith schools

How to measure the claim that "faith schools are popular with parents"? This claim is usually backed up by pointing to faith schools where there are more applicants than there are places. But this kind of correlation takes no account of whether it is the schools' faith "ethos" or their good exam results which attract more applications.

Ok, how about this as a different measure...if parents were genuinely keen on having faith schools, as supposed to merely academically successful schools, where parents have got together to campaign for new schools in their neighbourhoods then we should expect parents to be asking for those new schools to be faith schools....right?

Thanks to a recent report we have at least one small opportunity to use this test.  Research released by the LSE "Parents in the Driving Seat?: Parents' role in setting up new secondary schools" found:

"Nearly all of the campaigns for a new school wanted or assumed that the new school would be a community not a religious school.  There was a concern that faith-based schools were replacing non-faith schools. There is a case for a debate on this issue, given that choice for parents who want a school without a particular religious focus/sponsor could diminish."

So when parents come together to campaign for a new school they almost always want a community school not a faith school. Well, fancy that!

Faith Schools: Results, Selection and Citizenship

Faith schools which control their own admissions get better exam results, well strike me down! We already know, thanks to the IPPR, that faith schools who control their own admissions are "ten times more likely to be highly unrepresentative" of their surrounding neighbourhoods than schools where the LEA is the admission authority. Faith schools admit fewer children from poor homes and that is a crucial factor in allowing them to get better exam results.

Also recently published is the House of Commons select committee on education's report on citizenship education. The committee reported that when citizenship is taught well it can be inspiring for young people as it addresses their everyday lives and concerns - yet the quality of citizenship teaching is very "patchy". In this regard faith schools had their wrists slapped for not recognising their responsibilities "to examine openly the differences and differing views that come with this, in the context of mutual respect and human rights, and that it requires a more explicit approach than simply asserting that an overall ethos of citizenship permeates the school and its curriculum." From scanning reports of the committee's public hearings it seems to be the case that some faith school reps rather arrogantly believe that their "ethos" and Religious Education lessons covered everything that mattered and they didn't have to do anything else.

But in so many ways in the debates about faith schools, much of this is incidental. To make a topical comparison there may exist in the House of Lords hard working, thoughtful all round top class members of the human race, but if they are there because of the hereditary principle they still have got to go - it's wrong in principle that someone can be allowed to vote and make laws for the rest of us on the basis of their parentage. Likewise, it doesn't matter how well faith schools do in exams, important community institutions such as schools, paid for by the whole community, should be open to the whole community and shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on the basis of belief.

Vardy academy at it again: Teacher asked if he believed in Noah's Ark during interview..."they were asking for a missionary not a teacher"

Here we go again, more lunacy from the state schools handed over to creationist zealots. A teacher applying for a job at the Vardy King's Academy in Teeside says he was confronted by "religious intolerance" and was amazed at the "right wing Christian" approach he found - the teacher Dr Simon Valentine - a Methodist lay preacher if you don't mind - claimed the school was looking for "a missionary not a teacher."

According to a report in the local Evening Gazette newspaper:

"Dr Valentine, a part-time university tutor, applied for the position of head of philosophy, theology and ethics (PTE) at the school, which has a strong Christian ethos.

But instead of being asked about teaching style, he says he was quizzed about his views on birth control and whether he believed in Noah's Ark.

"They were asking for a missionary, not a teacher," said Dr Valentine, himself a Methodist lay preacher...I had five different interviews from staff and members of the Vardy Trust and they were basically sussing out my views on birth control and the Roman Catholic Church," said Dr Valentine.

"I have to say I was made very welcome when I arrived, but we were being grilled according to our theology rather than our teaching ability.

"They asked me what I believed to be the most important duty as head of PTE.

"I replied by saying how important it was to prepare pupils for state examinations, but I was cut short by a sarcastic and disturbing comment - 'What is the point of sending young people out into the world with 20 GCSEs when they're going to go to Hell?'

"Not surprisingly, to my great relief, I was not offered the job. I know it may appear that this is sour grapes from me but it's not.

"Among other things I was angry that my taxes were financing a school which seemed intolerant and imposing one very narrow religious view on its pupils."

When is the DfES or Ofsted going to do something about this? And when will Labour members get a chance to vote and cancel this embarrassment of an education policy?

IPPR research: church schools are highly unrepresentative of their local neighbourhoods

It's time for a bit more honesty in the debate about the ways in which our schooling system is being skewed by the expansion of faith schools. The IPPR are about to release a research report on schools admissions that will show that faith schools who control their own admissions are 10 times more likely to be highly unrepresentative of the communities they are supposed to be serving.

The report is yet more evidence of a truth known to most parents, but never conceded by supporters of faith schools within Labour such as Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis and, of course, the churches themselves, that many church schools get better exam results by socially selecting which children get into the school, and they are able to do this because they can use "faith criteria" to vet who they want and don't want. And it's no co-incidence that when faith criteria are applied to Church of England schools in particular, that school becomes more middle class than the surrounding neighbourhoods of the school.

It's reasonable to conclude that an expansion in the number of church schools controlling their own admissions will exaggerate this effect further and we will have have more communities divided by the social selection policies used by faith schools. Anyone supporting more church schools should be honest enought to admit under the current system this will be the consequence. Is that what we stand for as the Labour Party these days? Or once Messrs Blair and Adonis have been moved on can we rebuild a more just schools admissions system?

"vampire row" teacher - the kids bite back

This is silly, if it weren't so serious for the teacher involved. A Church of England school in Lancashire has suspended an English teacher while they "investigate" her published vampire novel. The Lancashire Telegraph clearly thought it had a free hit on the "lurid" "gothic" teacher, but seems to be back peddling after a backlash from local readers who had actually been to the school and who have posted a large number of comments supporting the teacher on the paper's web site

The only "issue" appears to be can a teacher of English carry on teaching if, in her private life, he or she writes novels which include "adult" content. If the answer to this question is no, then that means George Orwell, Ian McEwan, VS Naipaul, Jeanette Winterson or even Shakespeare and Lord Byron - the list is huge - would be theoretically banned from ever teaching children about literature . Totally ridiculous.

Jack Straw launches stinging attack on worship in schools

Jack Straw has made a stinging attack on worship in schools and rebuked Christians who wish to use education to impose their values on others. Straw also warned the churches that they will only “survive in this country only on the basis of what they do, not what they write into the laws for schools to do.”

The collective worship laws require schools to carry out daily acts of worship of a broadly Christian nature, regardless of the wishes of the pupils, staff and ignoring the wider aims and character of the school.

Although Straw describes himself as a Christian who goes to church he said: “…we (Christians) should judge what should become law not by what is suitable for ourselves but by what is suitable for others, who may disagree with us…we must be careful about imposing our approach to family life and religion upon others.”

He also attacked supporters of compulsory Christian worship in schools as being “over-zealous” and imposing “an intolerant structure” into our law and failing to respect the views of other people “They have failed to take into account those of no faith, those of other faiths and those may have begun to have doubts about their faith.”

Jack did indeed make all these statements, except not recently, but in the House of Commons debate when the then Conservative government brought in the authoritarian requirements on worship. (For reference the debate took place on July 18 1988 with Straw’s speech starting on Column 816 if you are reading it from Hansard.) Labour’s front bench opposed the introduction of compulsory worship but made it a free vote for its MPs. Labour believed that if it was inappropriate to write “Christian” into education law in 1944 when the country was overwhelmingly Christian, it was even less appropriate to do so today.

Can someone tell me when the Labour Party changed its stance on these issues? In which policy document was a change suggested, at what conference debate, at which report for the National Policy Forum? You know I am being sarcastic here, but genuinely, is there anything out there from the last 10 years which actually offered mere party members a chance to debate these issues, please let me know.