The Church Times carried two items this week:
A news report by Margaret Holness Faith groups slam ‘ignorance’ of new schools campaign and a comment article by Paul Vallely Beware the erosion of faith schools.
The Guardian had a leader column earlier in the week, which I failed to list previously, Testing faith.
Others writing there were: Savitri Hensman in support of the Accord position in Schooled to be neighbours and in support of the status quo, Henry Grunwald Have faith in our schools.
Two pieces of research which Accord cites in support of its position are:
National Foundation for Educational Research The impact of specialist and faith schools on performance
London School of Economics London faith secondary schools cater for affluent pupils
Posted by Simon Sarmiento on Saturday, 6 September 2008 at 9:41am BST | TrackBackI have a great suggestion to solve the 'faith school' problem... Let the CofE run all schools in England.
ps By the way, the suggestion that they may generate social problems is hypothetical - based on theories about terrorism in Northern Ireland, which had it's roots in more than religious differences... AND the terrorism has stopped even though NI still has faith schools!
pps No-one can point to any REAL problems at the moment; so banning them now seems unnecessary and almost a phobic overreaction - to a perceived risk that is not real!). If some school ever did give rise to trouble-makers in the future, I think most people would accept that it should be taken into public control until it was sorted out.
In the meantime there is no need to stop everyone, except atheists, being able to choose that their children are educated according to their own beliefs.
Posted by: davidwh on Thursday, 11 September 2008 at 2:48am BSTDavidWh writes:
pps No-one can point to any REAL problems at the moment; so banning them now seems unnecessary and almost a phobic overreaction - to a perceived risk that is not real!). If some school ever did give rise to trouble-makers in the future, I think most people would accept that it should be taken into public control until it was sorted out.
KF> I would say that the continuing existence of denominational schools in the Scottish education system has done much to prolong the scourge of sectarianism in Scottish society. Just be in the environs of Ibrox and/or Parkhead on an OLd Firm match to see some of the problems.
DW>
In the meantime there is no need to stop everyone, except atheists, being able to choose that their children are educated according to their own beliefs.
KF> IT's just expecting the taxpayer to pick up the tab for denominational schools that I have a problem with.
See:
http://www.sces.uk.com/articles/62/1/Catholic-Schooling-in-Scotland/Page1.html
http://www.nilbymouth.org/history.htm
but
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2008/08/28094446
Kennedy
Posted by: Kennedy on Thursday, 11 September 2008 at 1:51pm BST