Accord has updated its collection of personal testimonies and media reports that highlight a wide variety of narrow and discriminatory practices at state funded schools and their effects. New examples added to the portfolio include:
- A Church that has revealed four fifths of families stop regularly attending once they obtain a place for a child at the parish school
- A private Muslim boarding school restricting pupil’s from accessing the media
- An independent Jewish school ordering that pupils must not be driven to the school by their mother
- A Church going parent, who could not provide the required record of Church attendance due to illness, eventually winning a place at a religiously selective school, but only after having lost two admission appeals
Accord also maintains an over 100 page databank of contemporary evidence and research from independent academic sources about the implications of current policy on state funded faith schools and their practices. The portfolio of testimonies and reports compliments the databank by providing real life examples.
Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, ‘Although some of the news items and personal testimonies are subjective and not subject to academic scrutiny, they help demonstrate that exclusionary practices by schools are not hypothetical, but negatively impacts many in the education system. The portfolio makes for disturbing reading and emphasises the pressing need for changes in how schools operate.’
My son does not have a religious belief, he began a Cof E school in Sep 14. We negotiated harvest, Christmas, Epiphany and Easter with the class teache/vicar so that he could attend without fear of being expected to pray and all was well. At the end of the year all children were to be presented with a bible, my son independently told his teacher he would not wish to receive one but was told he couldn’t refuse as it was a gift from the school. He was a little upset and disappointed that he couldn’t sort things out for himself and we left the bible at school in the end. My son loves school, behaves and achieves well but religious evangelism, often by stealth, has clouded his experience at times.