LEARNING TOGETHER: INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING

Faith schools seem to do pretty well in the league tables. But look more closely and you see they do it by top slicing the local community. The other schools in the area do rather badly. The presence or absence of faith schools does not affect the overall results.

This does not mean their impact is neutral. Their admissions are often based on parents’ or pupils’ religion or belief. When recruiting or employing staff they are allowed to discriminate on grounds of religion or belief. They are not required to provide an objective, even handed programme of religious education. Faith schools exist to promote a brand; they segregate. Social cohesion is rarely one of their concerns.

The ACCORD coalition for inclusive schooling aims to change all this.   Christians, Humanists, and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers were among its founding members. Its Chair is a Rabbi, and supporters include Hindus, Sikhs, the chair of the Muslim Foundation and many others.   Inclusive schooling means doing away with discrimination in admissions and employment, and every publicly funded school providing comprehensive and objective religious education and having inclusive and inspirational assemblies instead of compulsory acts of worship “of a broadly Christian character”.

ACCORD already has strong allies, among them the Liberal Democrats and the National Union of Teachers. And there are other interesting signs of people moving away from old entrenched positions. The Anglican Archbishop of Armagh says it is time to think about joint Catholic/Anglican schools in Northern Ireland. And in their Easter messages both the retiring Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor and the Archbishop of Canterbury said Christians should lead by example; Christian faith and values should not be imposed. 

At a time when the government seems eager to have more faith schools, when it is impossible to discover the secret agendas of some of those promoting academies, and when Surrey County Council is facing damages of more than £400,000 for failing to protect head teacher Erica Connor from false accusations of religious phobia, ACCORD’s is the voice of reason and tolerance.

DIOGENES

THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE

The Little Red School House was at the very heart of American communities. That was where the children of immigrants from all over the world became Americans, playing and learning together. And where they still go to schools serving their own locality.

Instead of fulminating that the Office of National Statistics is playing politics by reminding us that one in nine UK residents was born abroad, Phil Woolas and his ministerial colleagues should be asking what policy implications this has. In some parts of London the person next to you is more likely to come from a different ethnic or cultural group from you than anywhere else in the world.

There may be formal tests of Britishness for would-be citizens, but where are Britain’s Little Red School Houses? Instead of promoting community schools where the whole population plays and learns as one, the government seems bent on encouraging division and difference through semi detached academies and a proliferation of faith schools.

Our man from California was amazed when he visited faith schools maintained by a local authority. The very idea seemed at odds with what he understood by community and nation building. 

Diogenes