The coverage of this in the Times described it as a "powerful alliance", opposing the legislative arrangements that allow schools with a religious designation to include faith affiliation in criteria for pupil admission and for some staff appointments. Accord recognise that some elements of this legislation come in to force today, and, at the beginning of a new academic year, more pupils than ever are attending schools with a religious designation. This appears to me more an admission of the powerless nature of the alliance ....
Religious supporters of Accord do not represent the main religious denominations - indeed, a robust response to the launch of Accord has been published by the providers of religious schools. From a look a the list of seven founding organisations of Accord the predominance of secularising organistions is quite apparent, including my own trade union, whose leadership appears to be now thoroughly secularist in its outlook. No agendas there then ...
Press Release issued on behalf of Faith Schools’ Providers Group: ‘Faith Schools in the System’
A coalition of religious figures representing over 6,000 Church of England, Catholic, Methodist, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu state-funded schools have today issued the following statement in response to criticism of faith schools from a group called ‘Accord’, as a greater number of families than ever choose to send their children to faith schools in the maintained sector this September.
Faith communities entirely refute the allegation that faith schools are discriminatory, or that they represent a divisive force within British society.
We stand as representatives of schools who work tirelessly to not only provide high quality education in some of the most challenging contexts in the country, but to nurture religious values of respect and care for others in young people. This latest attack, based on unspecified 'research', does a disservice to the huge value that faith schools add to our state education sector and the extent of appreciation that parents and students have for these schools.
European Human Rights legislation guarantees the rights of parents to schooling compatible with their religious and philosophical beliefs. We believe that parents and students should have the right to choose the type of environment in which they will flourish academically, socially and spiritually.
It is interesting to reflect on the relationship between a state funded school and the state. If state funding is seen as being at the service of the common good, a state funded school should not, simply by virtue of its state funding, be seen as an organisation of the state. Instead, it remains an organisation of civil society, and should have an autonomy from the state that is still respected. This allows for a diversity of school types, which meet the needs of different communities in society, with equality of funding for all these different types of school. The state might well set certain expectations of schools in the country - but these expectations should be limited to protecting the common good for all in society.
This is not exactly the situation we have in the UK. The introduction of the National Curriculum was probably a cultural step towards state control of schooling. True, the governing bodies of schools, particularly in Voluntary Aided of Foundation schools, are strictly speaking responsible for the curriculum of their schools. But, in many cases, the ethos is one of obedience to government guidance, a culture of acceptance of a kind of government control. And the secularist attack on schools with a religious designation does have a hidden assumption about how the relationship of schools to the state and to society is understood. Generally, this attack assumes that schools, by virtue of state funding, become organisations of the state. Perhaps a more careful analysis of this relationship is needed as part of the response to secularist attacks.
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