The Accord Coalition’s databank of information highlighting the consequences of faith school policy and practice has been updated with several new and insightful pieces of research. The databank is freely available and is the most comprehensive source of information available on the implications of the current role of religion and belief in state funded schools.
Several of the new pieces of information added demonstrate the remarkable and wide ranging consensus that is emerging in civil society about how religion and belief in schools should be negotiated. Since ‘A New Settlement: Religion and Belief in Schools‘ was published in June 2015 – written by former Secretary of State for Education, Charles Clarke, and sociology of religion national expert, Professor Linda Woodhead, and which recommended a range of reforms to RE and how faith schools operate – three highly publicized reports looking at religion in school age education have followed.
In November ‘RE for Real‘ by the Faiths and Civil Society Unit at Goldsmith, University of London was released and urged for RE to be made a nationally determined subject in all state funded schools. Headed by Professor of faith and public policy, Adam Dinham, the report was based on interviews with employers, teachers, students and parents. Among its findings were that 86% of teachers and 94% of parents thought RE should be made part of the National Curriculum.
Later in November, the Arts and Humanities Research Council issued its report ‘Collective Worship and Religious Observance in Schools: An Evaluation of Law and Policy in the UK’. Produced by academics from across the UK, it called for a wide-ranging government review into the law on school assemblies, including the rational for requiring schools to provide daily religious worship.
In December a major two year study into role of religion and belief in public life undertaken by the Woolf Commission was published. It was chaired former Lord Justice of Appeal, Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, while other commissioners included leading faith exponents. It urged for faith schools to reduce the number of pupils admitted and staff employed on faith grounds, for improved training for RE teachers, and for faith schools to no longer be able to choose who inspected their own provision of RE and assemblies.
Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said ‘The common theme of all the reports is for greater inclusivity, highlighting the change in attitudes away from schools that indoctrinate or segregate, towards ones that better promote mutual respect and understanding. They mark an important step on the road towards wider change.’
Another study add to the databank is ‘Training and Development Partnerships Project: Needs Analysis Report’, by the Church of England Education Division. Released in September 2015, the report revealed how the current national shortage of school leaders was ‘… felt even more acutely by the Church of England’s network in education’, echoing other research looking at the impact of religiously discriminatory teacher employment policies on staff vacancies, ‘… [but that] many dioceses have become more flexible around the requirement that head teachers need to be practising Christians and can reference successful church school heads who are from other faiths or none at all but are able to maintain a clear vision for education in line with the overall vision’ (p36). The study highlights how it is not just society at large that benefits from faith schools being more inclusive but also – as in this case the Church of England itself finds – the school themselves and pupils that attend them.
