Faith in Free Schools
Civitas, 29 July 2010
The coalition Government’s ‘free schools’ proposal hasn’t so much split religious believers from atheists, but more those who accept parent choice as a progressive reform, and those who reject it. Despite the fears from all sides, there is a good chance that all of Britain’s diverse belief systems will benefit if schools gain more independence.
The British Humanist Association has been an outspoken critic of free schools, fearing that it will lead to a proliferation of faith schools able to select pupils on the basis of religious observance. Free schools will also be allowed more autonomy regarding their curriculum and ethos, which means they may add more religious instruction to their teaching timetable. Meanwhile, the Board of Deputies of British Jews has complained for opposite reasons. The new free schools will only be able to select up to 50 per cent of their pupils on the basis of faith, and they fear that it might now be ‘harder to set up any type of Jewish school, not just a free school, because of competition for sites and pupils’.
Coming from different perspectives on education, the common denominator amongst these complaints is a fear of parent choice. The Humanists want to deny parents the choice to educate their children in even a moderate religious environment. Instead, the Board of Deputies are concerned that additional choice might make it less likely that parents will choose the religious option for their children. This is actually one of the benefits of school choice: existing providers, including faith schools, should have to work harder to impress parents and keep pupils coming to their schools. The Board of Deputies should not be able to assume that they have a monopoly claim on Jewish pupils in areas where a faith school is established, and nor should the Humanists be able to restrict schools to following their preferred secular curriculum.
Prof. Richard Dawkins, the prominent atheist, seems to get the idea. He has endorsed the idea of opening free schools that focus on ‘free-thinking’ and scepticism that will not teach any religious values at all. Rather than being a threat to secularism in the UK, free schools offer an opportunity to test out their pedagogical and ethical principles in a way that has never been possible before. Rather than having to persuade politicians to alter an entire school policy, atheists can appeal directly to parents and show them what kind of results (both in terms of knowledge and personal development) humanist ethics can achieve. Meanwhile, faith communities will have to do the same thing, or else lose their pupils to successful innovators.
Indeed, a Civitas report, Disunited Kingdom by David Conway, found that allowing communities to bring up children according to their own values does not represent a threat to social cohesion as the more aggressive secularists have been apt to claim. Instead, it is the compulsory association of communities in comprehensive schools that can more readily provoke inter-communal tension. Allowing schools to project a robust and particular ethos (whether religious or secular) is something to be praised rather than feared.