For the first time in many years Conference delegates will have the opportunity to debate our policy on faith schools. The debate on Sunday morning will provide a choice between three broad positions.
- Against faith schools: Motion 31 and five of the amendments to it (31.1, 31.4, 31.5, 31.6 and 31.7) argue against the expansion of faith schools and the reintegration of existing religious schools into the local authority system.
- For the right of religious groups to state-funded schools: amendment 31.2 from Westminster asks Conference to ‘support the rights of Muslims, as of other religions, to have faith schools teaching according to the National Curriculum’.
- Establish a working party and convene a seminar: amendments 31.3 argues for amendments to the Education Bill which seeks to limit the powers of religious groups who run schools and protect our members from discrimination. On the principle of faith schools, however, it deletes the calls for ‘an immediate halt to new government funded faith schools’ and ‘a long term phased programme of ending state funding to faith schools’ in the original and replaces them with calls for a working party and a seminar. This is repeated in 31.8.
In summary the original motion and the majority of amendments give delegates the opportunity to oppose the expansion of state-funded faith schools and move toward a secular education system.
All of these make reference to the recent ICM poll for the Guardian which found that the clear majority of people in Britain oppose state funds going to faith schools. We would urge delegates to support this side of the debate. Ideally 31.1 and 31.4 will be passed as they put a much clearer opposition to religious control of schools and remove the absurd claim that religious schools ‘foster terrorism’ in motion 31.
It is worth considering why NUT associations have submitted and prioritised motions on faith schools this year and not especially before. The central reason, I think, is the publication of the White Paper and Education and Inspections Bill (with the developing Academies programme as important background). These initiatives taken together threaten to take us from a position where the influence of religion was relatively mild, liberal and in decline to one where it is in the ascendant and aggressive. The emergence of Christian fundamentalists as Academy sponsors may now be the forerunner of a more systematic growth of religious influence under the umbrella of trusts.
Such a development would be retrogressive not only because it gives the advocates of particular beliefs greater influence over children but also because it increases the number of schools with weak or non-existent links to the local community of schools overseen by elected local authorities.
For sure there may also be a reaction against the revival of political religion whether in the form of US evangelism, Blair’s promotion of Christian values or Islamic fundamentalism. If our members are responding to these developments with concern and a wish to assert secular values that is positive and we should encourage it.
Whilst there might be tactical differences about the precise means and speed of a move from the existing VA and VC schools back into a fully integrated local authority system, there should surely be no question that our aim is for a fully secular education. No hostility or intolerance toward religion is implied here. The right to religious freedom, including the right to practice and to worship, should be protected against any suggestion of repression. These are private matters, however, and should not be promoted by the state in any way. Schools in particular should not be used to promote a particular faith, whether by the content of the curriculum, the selection of pupils or the conditions imposed on staff.
Neither does this mean that there is no place at all for religion in schools. The RE curriculum should allow pupils to learn about the variety of religious beliefs in society as well as alternative belief systems and codes of ethics. Staff of non-Christian religious background should be entitled to special leave for religious festivals for as long as the school calendar is based on Christian holidays. Equally, however, all children should have access to a thorough health and sex education, including PE and science and these should not be areas of the curriculum from which religious parents can exclude their children by opting out.
There is a misplaced fear that to be opposed to an expansion of faith schools is racist (or at least discriminatory on race grounds) since the vast majority of existing faith schools are Christian and mainly ‘white’. It is misplaced for a number of reasons:
- Religion is not race: religious beliefs and practices we should tolerate but not promote. We need to be free to criticise and even offend religious views since people choose to live by and advocate them as superior to the alternatives. Criticism and offence on the basis of race is on a completely different level and is never acceptable.
- State-funded schools for religion is not a right: all of us, regardless of our race, gender, sexuality or belief should have the right to free speech, expression, to vote and to be free from discrimination in employment and so on. But the idea that people of given religious beliefs should be able to insist as of right that the state should fund schools run by their chosen religious organisations is absurd. Even Anglicans and Catholics do not have this right currently. 31.2 from Westminster clouds the whole debate by implying that religions other than Islam have the right to faith schools and therefore that this should be extended to Muslims (not to Sikhs or Jews mind just Muslims). This really is a confused demand. Since you cannot, by definition, have a ‘right’ that only some people possess this is clearly a call for all religions to have the right to state-funded schools. The Union cannot possibly support such a proposal.
- Undemocratic anachronisms aren’t solved by extending them: the fact that historically the Churches have been involved in running schools and that the 1944 compromise has left them with a stake in many state schools today is a problem. It leaves us a legacy of a state system which is not secular in a society that largely is. The answer to that anachronism is not to extend the influence over schooling to yet more religious groups and to the nuttier end of Christianity (the Vardy’s etc). It is a bit like dealing with the undemocratic problem of Anglican peers in the Lords by allowing the Board of Deputies and the Council of Mosques to appoint their own peers too. You would have more religious equality for sure but no more democracy. Worse still you would reinforce the basic problem, an undemocratic institution, by giving it the appearance of fairness and a broader base.
- There is little or no demand for faith schools: one of the most encouraging things about modern British society is that there is no real demand for religious control of schools from any significant section. (a possible exception is the Islingtonite SUV-driving classes who believe church school equals high standards). Most people of all religious backgrounds and none want a good local school for their children which reflects the ethnic and cultural mix of their local communities. The Westminster amendment acknowledges this too. We should celebrate this and protect it from being undermined by the encouragement and promotion of schools for particular faiths.
- Religion is not a response to racism: there has been a history of religious ‘community leaders’ seeking to use the genuine problems of racism to promote religious identity as the only effective answer. Whether in Northern Ireland, the US or inner-city Britain many of us have felt the pressure to defend ‘our schools’ against attempts at integration. Catholic schools in NI were portrayed as havens of autonomy against the British and Unionist state. In fact they were a mechanism by which the priests attempted to control their flock. We should be wary of treating communities faced by oppression and marginalisation as if they are homogenous and speak with one voice. Usually the keenest advocates of faith schools are the people with most to gain by them and the most to lose from seeing children going to multi-cultural secular schools.
- The most important rights belong to children: the people to whom we owe our first duty of solidarity in this case are children. Schools should be the one place in their lives where there is room for free-thinking, questioning and exposure to the widest range of ideas and experiences possible. It should not be a place (for many yet another place) where one particular view is promoted, rituals are imposed and they are excluded from access to crucial parts of education. Schools should be a haven from racism and prejudice certainly but also from religious propaganda whether soft and liberal or hard and fundamentalist.
On the basis of all the above we would ask delegates to support those motions and amendments which argue clearly for a move to a secular school system and oppose those that would allow the expansion of faith schools.
