Leave them kids alone

As the parent of a child who attends a local village school (and a second one starting this week) that has the misfortune to be Church of England Voluntary Controlled, I was concerned to see this report from the National Secular Society. We don't send our children to a VC school out of choice - the church controls almost all village schools in the area. In fact, a quick check on the net shows that there are 7 primary/first schools in the area and they are all controlled by the Church of England. To compound the problem, the middle school and secondary school that take children from the area are also C of E.

The history of the VC and VA (Voluntary Aided) status seems to be a hangover from the donation of land or buildings by the church in the distant past. The annoying thing is that the church still gets a say in the running of the school and the appointment of teachers even though they don't contribute anything towards the upkeep of the school or the teachers' salaries. The money comes from our taxes

The report from the NSS shows that the government are trying to make the situation worse. It's bad enough that the schools are obliged to employ a teacher who can teach RE. Now a proposed change in the law makes it possible for a VC school to restrict the post of head teacher to someone who has the 'right' religious views. Previously, it was not permitted for a school to restrict the head post to so-called 'reserved teacher'. The actual definition in the Act (School Standards and Framework Act 1998) is

(5) If the school is a voluntary aided school—

(a) preference may be given, in connection with the appointment, remuneration or promotion of teachers at the school, to persons—

(i) whose religious opinions are in accordance with the tenets of the religion or religious denomination specified in relation to the school under section 69(4), or

(ii) who attend religious worship in accordance with those tenets, or

(iii) who give, or are willing to give, religious education at the school in accordance with those tenets; and

(b) regard may be had, in connection with the termination of the employment of any teacher at the school, to any conduct on his part which is incompatible with the precepts, or with the upholding of the tenets, of the religion or religious denomination so specified.

The proposed law change means that it is possible for a school to reserve the head teacher role for someone who meets the criteria above. So, now the head teacher has to live a 'Christian' life in and out of school and if the governors of the school decide so, no non-Christian would be allowed to take the role of head. By the way, the local vicar always gets a seat on the board of governors.

To be fair in our case, the amount of religion that the children are 'taught' is minimal and so far we have managed to counter it in our son by letting him know that people believe lots of different things and that you shouldn't believe something just because someone important tells you that it is true. He knows that we don't believe in god, but we aren't telling him what to think, just that he is allowed to work it out for himself.

There has been a lot of discussion in the media over the last few weeks about faith schools (like here and here). A big problem I have with the supporters of faith schools is when they talk about the ethos of the school as if there are certain aspects of behaviour, ethics  or morality that could be taught in a religious context. I've found through a recent diocesan inspection of our local school that you pick out all the good bits, like politeness, good manners and hard work and call them Christian values. Parents who send their children to religious schools do so because they appear to get better results. Of course, allowing a school to select its pupils on any grounds gives it the opportunity to weed out less able pupils and less interested (and possibly less wealthy) parents. The sooner we removed all religion from schools (apart from some healthy Comparative Religion classes), the better. If anyone can provide some evidence that faith schools are better because of their faith, then I'd like to see it.