Green fields, windswept clifftops, rolling hills. This is rural England, and if you send your children to school here, there’s a good chance you’re sending them to a Church of England school.

This isn’t necessarily a matter of faith – in many areas, all the primary schools in the village are affiliated to a church. It isn’t a bad thing even if you have no faith because these organisations are concerned first and foremost with the provision of an excellent, modern education. Religion comes second – or it used to.

A few years ago, I volunteered as a foundation governor. I was appointed by the church, acting through its local diocese, in the village primary school. My lack of religion wasn’t an issue; I was happy to promote the “Christian” ethos because the values were mostly just humanitarian. More importantly, I wanted to ensure the school maintained its high academic standards, nurturing environment and commitment to a broad, all-round education.

Over the next few years the school did just that. Yes, we have strong links with the local church – there are regular religious education lessons, we have harvest festivals and nativity plays, and there’s a religious element to school assemblies. But these were kept in their place – below English, maths, science and the individual needs of the children. The Church of England helped the school, it didn’t interfere in the curriculum or tell us what to do.

But an institution is only as strong as the people who run it, and when those people change, anything can happen. Islam wasn’t called into question during the Trojan horse scandal in Birmingham’s schools – the problem was the people seeking to impose their vision of it. In our school, to a lesser degree, something similar has happened. The diocese that administrates and “advises” church schools – and has the final say in the appointment of foundation governors – has got muscular, and it’s starting to look like it’s on steroids.

Change started with us governors. It’s no longer sufficient for foundation governors – who form a majority on the governing body – to promote the “Christian ethos” of the school. Now, you have to be a regular church-goer, at the right church, with a vicar to vouch for you. While those of us who don’t fall into that category can brush off the implied insult about all the hard work we’ve already done, we aren’t happy that, when our four year term comes to an end, people who might care less about the school and more about how it fits with the church could take our place.

Moreover, when schools right across the country are struggling to recruit governors, it seems foolish to limit the field. We’re ok for the moment, but it’s a knife-edge – some of us will be leaving soon and there’s no one on the horizon to replace us. No one who ticks the diocesan boxes, anyway.

That’s the high-level, theoretical stuff. Who the governors are isn’t something children, parents or staff get too excited about, they have more pressing concerns – and the diocese wants in on those too. We’ve been told that the school should actively promote Christianity not in the casual way we’ve always managed it, but more directly, overtly, and it feels with a hint of evangelism.

This, they tell us, is now more important than anything else. When I heard this last part, I assumed there must be a mistake. More important than football or drama? Maybe. But more important than maths and English? They couldn’t possibly mean that, could they?

They could. The message was repeated loud and clear and enough times to convince the most ardent denier. The word of the Lord is more important than Pythagoras and Shakespeare and the rest of the heathens. Precisely how we’re to implement this remains vague. But it’s concerning – we’ve always put the “school” bit first, and anything less feels like a betrayal of the purpose of education.

It’s early days in this strange new world and we can’t tell if this is just talk, or if there are teeth behind it. We’ll be including something about strengthening our Christian basis in the next school improvement plan, and we’re hoping we can let it sit there and not do a great deal about it.

But we’re nervous. What happens if we don’t toe the line? We can handle a negative church school inspection: nobody likes being told off, but we’ll live with it. But more significant sanctions, like direct appointment of governors, loom on the horizon and would lead to more influence on the way the school is run day to day.

We’ll just have to see how serious they are. But they should be warned: we’re not prepared to sit back and let them do what they want. The “Christian ethos” we signed up to was the spirit of kindness and forgiveness, not the anti-scientific intolerance we hear about from across the Atlantic. That’s not something we’re prepared to let into our school, whether God’s on our side or not.

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