Return of 100% Faith Schools in the UK

[SenpaiNoticeMeYouBlindShmuck]

https://humanism.org.uk/help-us-oppose-p...s-schools/

In a country where there are more "Nones" than Christians, there's been a rather unusual twist with the rise of the new Prime Minister Teresa May and a secret new policy of her own devising which I haven't seen on the headlines yet.


Currently in the UK faith schools for several decades have been restricted to only intake a set number of students based on their religion; while in practice this doesn't always happen since for instance Islamic Schools exist mostly in areas with 98-100% Muslim populations in theory a school funded by the state can only select a set number of students based on religion. If this happens, they will be able to select children only from their denomination.

This while problematic for non-believing taxpayers is problematic enough, but it carries something far more serious with it. With the free school policy basically the government agrees to grant funding and support for any company that wants to start up a school, and said "free school" does not have to follow the national curriculum(!!!). Now the main reason the UK hasn't seen a flush of new faith schools with this new system is purely because so long as they can't discriminate against who can enter the school and what they teach in it (e.g: Sex Education) groups like the Catholic Education Service have refused to build new schools or improve ones already here.

The UK could see a new rise in ultra-conservative schools as previously seen in Scotland's Evangelical sponsored schools, and it hasn't even made the news since the main focus has been on the Grammar School proposal.

What do you think? The CoE might be fairly mild and tame these days, and there aren't really enough Jewish, Sikh or Hindu schools for them to really have much of an impact but the idea of the wealthier and vastly more severe Catholic, Evangelical and Islamic groups here being able to say and do whatever they like in schools I find to be quite a scary prospect, never mind it will be at the expense of the taxpayer.

[ukatheist]

Indeed, the justification seems to be that for the minor faiths, people not of that faith do not want to send their kids to that school, and for the major faiths they have to turn away people of the same faith to accommodate people of other faiths.

Of course one solution would be to ban selection on faith grounds altogether, but then the govt would have to find the funds to replace the shortfall when the churches withdraw their financial support.

For those not in the know, the issue is the govt proposing lifting a restriction that oversubscribed faith schools must take 50% of students of other/no faith.


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[zebo-the-fat]

Keep your superstitious myths out of education!

I sometimes wonder what (or if) our political rulers are thinking

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Faith schools are an abomination in our public school system, espoused because of the generally good results that students get often to the detriment of other local schools which aren't allowed to discriminate.

Anyone with even an ounce of logic can see the ghettoisation in our cities is only worsened by segregating off entire communities based on a nebulous concept of 'faith' that almost every child at the age of beginning school has had no say in espousing or exploring in any meaningful way without their parents telling them it's the truth.

What's worse is the continual lack of effort directed towards tackling illegal faith schools which operate outside of the law within every city in the UK, many of which espouse a radicalised version of the religion they fall under. The British Humanist association has been fighting against these illegal schools for years now, and thankfully have met with some success with the LGA announcing they are At least aware of the problem:

http://www.local.gov.uk/web/guest/media-...57375/NEWS

But yes, the issue of faith schools will not go away any time soon now. It will most likely only get worse.

[Aoi Magi]

Of course one solution would be to ban selection on faith grounds altogether, but then the govt would have to find the funds to replace the shortfall when the churches withdraw their financial support.

Just tax those bullshitters and there'll be no shortage of funds.

[The Grand Nudger]

What do I think.  LOL, have fun teaching the controversy for a decade or so, yall.  You're welcome.

[account_inactive]

I hope they keep the Islamic schools under surveillance.

[RobertE]

From wikipedia:

In 2011, about one third of the 20,000 state funded schools in England were faith schools,[9] approximately 7,000 in total, of which 68% were Church of England schools and 30% were Roman Catholic. There were 42 Jewish, 12 Muslim, 3 Sikh and 1 Hindu faith schools.[1]

Now, let us get to present day, where there are in fact 182 Islamic schools. That is one hell of a major increase in 5 years.

[SenpaiNoticeMeYouBlindShmuck]

It's probably even higher than that, there are many secular schools that are secular in name only; the Students are 90%+ Muslim and Islam is taught as truth in the form of "Islamic Studies" during what should be "Religious Studies" (World Religions and Ethics).

Those are just the ones being open about it :/

[Neo-Scholastic]

I think parents should decide what children should be taught and how not some distant group of bureaucrats.