Correspondence between Bob Churchill and Michael Foster

Correspondence between Bob Churchill and Michael Foster, MP for Worcester, regarding "faith schools" and the Education and Inspections Bill 2006.

Dear Michael Foster MP

"Faith schools are sect schools"

I am expecting press coverage of my campaign in the Worcester News this Wednesday.

I am a constituent from Worcester who has drafted an open letter to all MPs and Lords, which has been distributed by various secularist organisations. Over 350 members of the public have signed it so far.

In recognition that 64% of the British public think "the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind" (ICM) we are proposing the adoption of the term "sect school" as a replacement for "faith school", for common perjorative usage.

The signatories are also calling for amendments or the scrapping of the current Education and Inspections Bill, which as it stands will:

* introduce Trust schools, half of which (if their parterships roughly mirror those of Academies) will be religious institutions, thus proportionately increasing the number of sect schools in the UK
* afford sectarian interests more powers and greater liberties over state-funded schools, and over our the ideological inculcation of children
* cause further social division, especially in communities such as Worcester where minority faiths and other worldviews are educatinoally under-represented, and Christian worldviews are significantly over-represented in our schools

Furthermore, in line with the interests of the majority of British adults, the signatories call for an end to all religious affiliation in state-funded schools.

The letter is available in full through www.bob.seldo.net/schools or directly at www.petitiononline.com/sects

Your attention and response to this matter would be greatly appreciated. I hope you can see why the current Education Bill should be regarded as a transgression against the secular values of this country, and should not be voted through in its current form.

I believe that the concessions made to the Bill over selection by aptitude (etc) were, while necessary, a distraction from the issue of state-funded religious instruction.

This is not about parents' freedom of religion, or about parents' choice in schooling. This is about children's rights to freedom of and from religion, and about the massive social damage that must be done by dividing our children along lines of (presumed!) metaphysical belief.

Kindest regards,
Bob Churchill

I respect your opinions and views, but disagree with them. I do not believe your analysis of Trust schools is soundly based either.

I will be supporting the Education and Inspection Bill this week, as I know will the vast majority of MPs.

Dear Michael Foster MP

Thank you for your swift response to my letter of 13th March. I see that, as predicted, the Education Bill survived its second reading.

You write that my analysis of Trust schools is not "soundly based", but do not give a reason.

My analysis is simply that:

- Trust schools are being introduced, are encouraged by the government, and in some cases existing schools will be forced to take Trust status in response to "failure"
- Community schools will be harder to open (and a central government veto is retained over them)
- Therefore there will be more Trust schools than there are now (i.e. there are zero Trust schools now) and the number will increase over time

- Trust schools need to be in partnership with businesses or "community" groups, not so dissimilarly from Academies, or in federation with other schools
- Like Academies much interest from external partners in running these schools will be from religious groups (about half of City Academies are run by religious groups)
- Therefore, since some schools becoming Trust schools will not already have had "faith" status, there will be more religious schools

- Trust schools are encouraged to develop their own "ethos" according to their partners' principles or beliefs
- The partners of Trust schools have power over how money is spent, what is taught, and how, by which teachers, and to which children (i.e. selected by the faith that is presumed of them)
- Therefore these religious state-funded schools have more power over the education and instruction of the children that attend them. This is, after all, the whole point of being a partner to a Trust school

Presumption of religious belief, institutionally enshrined in a state education, is -- as far as I'm concerned -- tantamount to a breach of childrens' International Human Right to freedom of and from religious belief.

Having appeared in the Worcester News yesterday ( http://www.thisisworcestershire.co.uk/worcestershire/worcester/news/WEN_NEWS_LATEST4.html), other media outlets (both radio and television) have contacted me regarding my campaign. (This is the campaign to promote the term "sect school" and resist what the BHA have called the "creeping gift of the education system to religious interests". See http://www.bob.seldo.net/schools.)

If my analysis is not "soundly-based" I would appreciate my MP's reasons for believing so.

Again, my case as far as the Bill is concerned is just that there will be more sect schools (schools which divide and define children along religious lines), with more power. My view against sect schools themselves is that any institutional affiliation with particular religious beliefs, and/or the power to select along those lines, necessarily engenders social and religious division in a society already troubled by religious tension (and in some cases correlating with ethnicity, which can only make it worse).

In your original e-mail you suggested that half of Trust schools will be religious institutions. This is an untested assumption based on a small number of academies, and is in my words, not soundly based in fact. I do know of discussions with schools in the County about Trusts, none of whom are with a religious body.

The National Curriculum ensures that there is consistency in subjects taught to school children and your fear of a group having the power over what to teach is unfounded.

I'm sure that if the Humanist Association formed an educational charity, had something to contribute to the running of schools, then they too could consider partnership with a local school.

Dear Michael Foster MP

Thank you kindly for your second reply regarding "faith" schools, 22nd March.

You disagree with my estimate that around half of Trust schools may be religiously-affiliated, calling it "an untested assumption based on a small number of academies". I fully accept that this is the case. My assumption can be tested only when Trust schools receive partners.

However, if it is an "untested" assumption, I nevertheless think it is a reasonable assumption.

It is of course possible that the ratio of religious to non-religious Trusts will not be as high as 1:1. (It is also possible it will be higher!) But the number of religious schools will undeniably increase if the Bill is enacted, a conclusion we can draw from both the stated intentions of central government, and the simple logic of how these schools are "partnered".

Prime Minister Tony Blair MP and Ruth Kelly MP are both on record stating that they would like to see a greater proportion of state-funded faith schools with more power and greater freedoms to assert their "ethos". The Education Bill is undeniably the mechanism through which they mean to achieve this. Any attempt to argue otherwise can only be disingenuous.

To be clear, I concede we cannot know that the exact percentage of religious Trust schools will parallel that of Academies.

But would you concur that the number of religious schools will go up, by some amount, and that the powers the religious partners have over these schools will rise to some extent, when the Bill is enacted?

Members of the NUT and ATL do concur. Yesterday the NUT tabled a motion "to prevent the growing influence of religious organisations in eduaction", and their General Secretary agrees with my analysis stating with regard to the Bill that, "There is a view that the promotion of greater influence of faith groups in running our schools could be derimental to community cohesion and social cohesion." The ATL, tabling its own motion, is concerned that "the government's policy of increasing numbers of faith schools will hinder integration, foster religious divisions and provide fertile ground for religious and ethnic conflicts." (Guardian, today.)

Meanwhile the DfES repeatedly insists that religiously-affiliated schools are "popular with parents", despite the ICM finding of last year that two thirds of the British public want to see no state-funding for religious schools. (Two thirds against cannot be described as "popular"!)

The DfES also repeatedly argues, in line with Rowan Williams, that faith schools "make an important contribution to community cohesion." Frankly, this claim is absurd. Of course a religious school can make efforts in the direction of social cohesion, as any school can. But a religious school must do so despite the massive hurdle of religious divide that it places in front of itself from the outset. Religious schools have their own extra barriers to struggle against, and they offer no comparison to genuinely open, integrated schools which do not discriminate along religious lines.

In Scotland and Northern Ireland, where religious division in schools has deepened and prolonged the Catholic-Protestant frictions, there is consensus toward rolling back the religious branding and division of children. Why is the policy for England and Wales, with greater religious and ethnic diversity, acting in complete contradiction to these lessons?

I live in the Arboretum area of Worcester. I adore living in this area, where the ethnic and cultural diversity is as evident as the unity. I banter with Sikhs and Muslims and Christians... In this area, any division along religious lines (division which the denominational ethos and religious admission criteria of faith schools inevitably fosters) would not only separate the children of neighbouring houses according to metaphysical beliefs (which the children cannot sensibly be said to even hold!); it would also divide them by ethnicity.

A Christian or Sikh or Muslim school, would be nothing short of a white or Asian or Middle Eastern school. Via a policy of religious segregation, we would literally end up with children of different colours taking different buses to school.

I realise this is emotive imagery, but I stand by it. In this country, in this wonderful area that I live in, any policy increasing (by whatever amount) the number and powers of religious schools, risks engendering religious and racial divide between our children. Faith schools, and thus any Bill which encourages more of them to be founded, is a backdoor route to racial segregation . It is a thoughtless, fruitless, outright dangerous policy.

You further suggest that the British Humanist Association could, with an educational charity, found their own Trust schools. I realise you are attempting to say by this that the playing field is level for the non-religious; that any respectable ideological group could become Trust school partners. However -- even if the BHA were as well-resourced as world religions, such that this supposed option was in any way tenable -- I can only respond thusly: that it is my firm hope that the BHA would never do anything so presumptious of their children, so restrictive to education, so divisive of society.

You say you "just don't agree with" my views. But 64% of British adults do according to ICM. There have, I'm told, only been letters of support sent to the Worcester News for my campaign which was covered therein. The phone-ins to my Hereford and Worcester radio interview were both positive, and this was during the "God-slot" Sunday Morning Breakfast show! Now the NUT and ATL also dissent. Simply disagreeing with me isn't enough. In this case, towing the party line should mean having to answer a multitude of questions: How can religious schools qua religious schools possibly engender "cohesion" in our multicultural communities? How can religious instruction possibly be fair to children, who have a right to freedom of belief? How can the Education Bill possibly fail to increase the numbers and powers of such schools? It will. This is part of its design. How can a practice so divisive possibly be conscionable?

Most sincerely,
Bob Churchill

I'm afraid your emotive imagery does not reflect current practice surrounding faith schools. Living where you do, you will appreciate that the local school for the Muslim population is St George's C of E Primary school - a faith based school.

The case you describe of segregation is dismissed by the very simple act of looking at the real world today.

I'm afraid to say your arguments have landed on stony ground and the mere exaggeration of your argument actually weakens it further.

Thank you for your letter of 25th April. I'm sure you're getting bored of this by now, as it probably feels like we are going around in circles somewhat. But I do however want to respond to your most recent letter.

The situation today in Arboretum (and Worcester in general) is indeed not one of segregation (beyond the ethnic clustering that goes on in most places all over the world). This has nothing to do with "the Muslim population" in general (I think Arboretum has more Sikh residents, although I could be wrong) but I fully accept your point that the various religious minorities of Worcester do attend local religious schools, which as elsewhere in the country are overwhelmingly Church of England. After all, they have little choice in the matter.

However this does not mean that my position is "dismissed by the very simple act of looking at the real world today". The hypothetical situation I presented was one in which the real world today had been changed by the Education Bill. It was a situation in which differing religious beliefs were catered for in local schools: the Education and Inspections Bill is precisely about bringing about "parental choice" between schools run by different "community groups" (which is DfES-speak for "religious groups") and other "partners". In that (future) situation, which the Bill is designed to bring about, social diffraction would occur.

(To defend the contrary position, one would have to assert that if a religiously heterogeneous population was given the choice between a selection of schools defined in terms of varying religious ideologies, there would be zero polarization for any given religious group toward the corresponding religious school, that Anglicans would be no more likely to pick the Anglican school than anyone else, that non-Muslims would be just as likely to elect to go to the Muslim school as any other, etc etc. Such a peculiar zero-polarization hypothesis would of course have to stand up in the face of massive evidence to the contrary.)

Let me assume for a moment, however, that the Bill goes through, but no local schools are interested in becoming Trusts, are not tempted by incentives to form "partnerships", nor persuaded by vocal minorities that religious affiliation would be beneficial in some way. In other words, let me assume that the situation remained unchanged in Worcester. My position against ideologically-affiliated schooling does also include the here-and-now marginalisation of beliefs that are under-represented or entirely unrepresented in the school system. You assert, as if it is a counter-criticism of my position, that "the local school for the Muslim population is St George's C of E Primary school - a faith based school." This is supposed to be a good fact? Would you tell this fact, with the same enthusiasm, to members of that community? You're saying that, for any given, non-C of E parent, their local school, which their taxes pay for, is a C of E Primary, like it or lump it -- and that's supposed to be a good thing?

Whether I'm Catholic or Muslim or humanist or atheist or whatever, I know I could pull my (hypothetical) children out of the Anglican instruction and collective worship if I wanted to, or home-school them, or that I could apply further afield to a non-religious school, or educate them privately, or perhaps attempt to form a "partnership" with a state school of my very own... But should I have to?

How is it okay that "the local school", the default state school for everyone in this or any area, is affiliated with a highly specific ideological denomination which only a small and shrinking proportion of the population subscribe to?

PS The Worcester News rang me up the other evening regarding their regular feature on "What you would do if you ruled the world?", in which various local people have nine questions about their own hypothetical autocracy put to them, and they thought of me as a result of the Sect Schools petition coverage. One such question was what law I might abolish. I have responded that I would not so much abolish an existing law as abort one in progress...!