The Accord Coalition has warned that a failure by government to ensure faith schools reform and abide by the same standards as other schools will only further undermine public confidence and so faith school’s position in society.
Accord has commented following the announcement last week by the Secretary for State for Education that in future only parents will be allowed to raise objections with the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) about the admission arrangements of state funded schools due to ‘vexatious complaints against faith schools from secularist campaign groups’. The announcement followed publication of a report in December by the Accord Coalition which highlighted – through a case study of objections it took to the OSA about four faith schools – how religiously selective schools have become a major and worsening source of racial discrimination in Britain’s school system, so undermining Government anti-extremism and social integration strategies.
Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said ‘Government requires schools in England to teach that democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance are British Values. But it simultaneously expects society not to notice when faith schools are excused from the same principles.’
‘The application of double standards or rewriting of standards has happened time and again, whether in granting state funded faith school’s exemptions from religious discrimination laws, allowing the schools to choose who inspects their RE provision, or now in wishing to restrict complaints about all school admission arrangements after faith schools have been shown to present systemic problems.
‘If the Government really wants to serve the long term interests of those that sponsor faith schools then it should be ensuring that all schools operate to the same standards of transparency and openness. Doing otherwise will only feed the public anxiety and cynicism that brings the future of faith school’s into question.’
An ICM poll conducted in August 2010 for Channel 4 found that 59% of British adults thought ‘Schools should be for everyone regardless of religion and the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind’. Meanwhile, an Opinium survey in June 2014 pained a similar picture. It found that 58% of adults in Great Britain were opposed to faith schools, with 35% of the whole sample believing the state should not fund them and 23% recording that they should be banned entirely.
