When will we get a Government that is prepared to say no to the bishops?

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Editorial by Terry Sanderson

Every year, as schools admission results are announced, the NSS receives a blitz of emails from parents who have been turned away from their local school — sometimes right next door to where they live — because they aren’t the “correct” religion or they don’t go to church often enough. They are told that their children must go somewhere else, sometimes quite a distance from their home, to get an education.

“Surely this can’t be right,” they say, “Have I got a case for legal action?” We have to tell them that they do not. The discrimination is perfectly lawful, and there is nothing they can do about it. We suspect the schools minister, Ed Balls, gets lots of similar complaints from outraged parents who simply weren’t aware that their lack of interest in religion renders them and their children second-class citizens when it comes to education.

As if being able to pick and choose their pupils on the basis of their parents’ religion wasn’t privilege enough, “faith schools” have also been operating other — not so legal — tests to ensure that they get only the cream of the pupil crop. Some of them have even been “suggesting” that parents who want places might like to make “donations” and other financial commitments to the school.

Parents wanting the best for their children (and what parent doesn’t?) have no option but to play the elbow-or-be-elbowed game in which only the pushiest can win. Atheists, or people who have been indifferent to organised religion, suddenly find a piety that they didn’t know they had and start attending church on a regular (I mean, very regular) basis. Unless their faces are familiar at the local house of worship, they won’t get the all-important vicar’s letter that gives them entrée to the school.

That’s right. In many instances, it is the vicar who decides who does and does not get a place in the local school. The schools that we all, as taxpayers, have to pay for.

Ed Balls heard about these abuses and decided to check to see if there was any substance to the claims. He found many “faith schools” flagrantly breaking the rules. And he said so. And like any politician who dares even look at a “faith school” with anything less than complete adoration, he brought the wrath of the religious establishment and its media supporters crashing down on him.

Look at some of these reactions in the right-wing press here:

After attacking faith schools, now Ed Balls turns his sights on grammar schools

Stalin would be proud of this grotesque attack on faith schools

Admissions breaches trivial, say faith schools

A middle England warning to Ed Balls: lay off faith schools

Nasty Ed Balls tears up Tony Blair's homework

'Ed Balls is witch hunting faith schools'

and many others besides.

We don’t know how Mr Balls is feeling after this drubbing. If he was testing the water to see how far he could go with the reform of the religious schools system, then this might cause him to pull back. (Just as his predecessor, Alan Johnson, did when he suggested that “faith schools” should be required by law to take 25% of children from other religions and none. The Catholic Church fell on him like a hoard of screeching banshees, and he was forced to perform what came to be known as the fastest U-turn in political history.)

The conventional wisdom is that any political party that tries to challenge the religious grip on schools “has a death wish” and will be shown the door at the next election. “Don’t try it mate, or we’ll punish you,” is always the first cry of the bishops and cardinals when there is even the faintest whiff of change.

At one time that threat might have had real power – but does it anymore? Do the churches still wield that much influence among the population of this country that they can bring down a government with a click of their bejewelled fingers? (See next story for an indication).

Parents are asked by pollsters whether they think “faith schools” are a bad idea, or if they want their children to be educated in what amounts to an apartheid school system – between 60% and 96% say no. But many still fight to get into religious schools. Why? The answer, of course, is that they may not want faith schools, but they want good schools. The perception that religious schools perform well can be countered with the argument that they achieve their results by selecting so ruthlessly.

If the religious schools were taken into local authority control and their religious selection criteria removed, the skilled teachers and the heads would still be there. They would, though, be available to the whole population instead of just the privileged few.

Ed Balls has dipped his toe in the water and found it scalding hot. But he shouldn’t necessarily assume that the churches have the power over the people that they claim to have. One day a politician with guts will come along and stand up to the bullying bishops. Then we’ll know who really runs this country’s education system.

See also:

The ideological tug-of-war over schools

Johann Hari: The ideological tug-of-war over our schools

11 April 2008