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It is bad news that the Church of England is proposing to open or take over the first twenty of a hundred new secondary schools with the blessing of the government which will pay 95% of the capital and all the running costs.
Other faiths for example Jews, Muslims, Greek Orthodox will all be given the same advantage if they can show there is a demand. To hand more schools over to various major faiths is by any standard a retrograde step.
We are no longer a religious society with only about 5% of people attending church regularly and over 30% saying that they no longer believe in a God. Despite this state money is being handed over so that children can be brought up in the preserve of a religion.
Religious schools are by their nature divisive. Despite the fact that they are funded by all taxpayers, church schools are allowed to discriminate and choose children of the faith. It is hard luck if you are an atheist who lives next door.
Despite popular conceptions church schools are no better that ordinary state schools where they compete on an equal basis by taking in all children from a catchment area. Where they have good results it is because they are allowed to choose children with higher academic standards. In other words church schools are selective schools contrary to what is supposed to be government policy.
Our only hope of improving race relations is to bring children together at an early age. Separation only demonises as Northern Ireland surely has demonstrated. We must keep a close watch on Warwickshire County Council and oppose any attempt to take any state funded schools out of the control of the local education authority and them over to a church.
BRIAN NICOL
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The Church of England wants the Government to give it 100 new secondary schools so that it can try - almost totally at public expense - to revive its flagging support (3 per cent of the population) by this privileged access to young impressionable minds. It proposes "challenge those who have no faith" and it wants to "re-Christianise" those schools that have become like community schools, with a reasonably fair and balanced style of religious education.
It ignores that the (mixed) success of its schools is founded on the self-fulfilling expectation of committed parents seeking the best for their children, so that church schools tend to be socially divisive. It does not admit that the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches are already historically privileged, having between them 28 per cent of all school places, and that by the same token there should be hundreds of schools for other Christian denominations, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs. Jews and other religions.
The Government, meanwhile. turns a blind eye - despite Oldham, Bradford and Northern Ireland, let alone countless examples abroad - to the threat to social cohesion posed by sectarian education. And it ignores the only official research on church schools (conducted in Wales), which shows that their "success" is based on a selective intake.
Can the new Education Secretary realise that learning together creates mutual understanding, while learning apart is liable to produce prejudice, and that in our diverse and largely agnostic community, education about religious beliefs must be "objective, fair and balanced"? Only probably, if all who favour learning together raise their voices loud and clear without delay.
DAVID POLLOCK
(Chair. Education Sub-Committee), British Humanist Association, 47 Theobalds Road, WC1X 8SP.
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Church schools were first established in the 19th century, when the State was reluctant to provide education for the masses. It was a laudable initiative in its time, but now the State is a willing provider of compulsory free education for all, what possible justification can there be for the continued existence of church schools?
Your leading article (
The Times
, June 15) provides the answer when it says that the proposed 100 new Anglican schools will help the ailing church survive by exposing children to its doctrines "for the most formative years of their life". The intention, then, is to provide the Church of England with its next generation of worshippers.
Surely this evangelisation by stealth is not a proper use of public money. If the Church of England wants to recruit, it should do so at its own expense. Education resources are scarce enough without devoting large amounts to religious proselytisation in schools.
KEITH PORTEOUS WOOD
Executive Director, National Secular Society, 25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL.
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