Runnymede Trust on faith schools

On Friday (slow news day, so you can perhaps understand why the report was released for coverage on that day), the UK news media covered a report on faith schools by the Runnymede Trust. This trust has for a number of years researched and reported on issues relating to equalities. I have a report from a good few years ago on Islamophobia.

The BBC website coverage of their report can be found here. The Times report is here, headlined "Faith schools must give up religion as a basis for selecting pupils, says report".

My own trade union is of course very exercised on this, so there has been a comment on the e-mail network among branch secretaries and executive. My contribution is below:

Dear Colleagues

What I found interesting in the Times report (and I have perceived it in other media coverage of faith schools in recent months) was the way in which it included an unstated assumption - that schools with a religious designation are OK so long as they are not allowed to be religious. It seems a bit discriminatory to me ...

The assessment of schools solely on the basis of their contribution to a particular assumption about what makes for good sociology is flawed for any type of school - any school is about other things as well, and focussing on research that does not take account of that will anyway produce only a partial picture.

I was suitably amused by the DCSF spokesman quoted on the BBC news website: "The bottom line is that faith schools are successful, thriving, popular and here to stay".