Faith schools at gunpoint in education

Faith school. A school that is dedicated to a religion and their beliefs, the most common faith that comes to mind in education would be Christianity and its many branches. Two of those branches that are commonly known are Catholic and Church of England (CofE). 10% (2245) of schools in England and Wales are Catholic, moreover many of the older Catholic schools are single-sex schools rather than co-ed.

During the past few years many Catholic faith schools have been under attack by the government. The green party has a policy that religious run schools should not be state funded, this gives the school freedom to teach anything when it comes to religious education, meaning they can only teach their religion if need be, however they must follow the national curriculum other than that.

Liberal democrats were in support of pledging to end faith based admissions because like them and many others deemed it unfair to discriminate against non-religious parents. However, this proposal implies not only discrimination but division, however division in education can also be seen through grammar schools and we all know how people can gain knowledge over time as well as how not everyone displays their best abilities in one exam, because different life factors can affect your mindset and mood. Overall, this proposal was later defeated, as well as Julian Huppert said "We wouldn't allow them to discriminate based on sexuality, ethnicity or anything else. So why have a special rule for religious education".

In favour of Huppert the labour party, which are also one of the largest political parties in the United Kingdom believe that faith schools play an important role in the English education system and prepare young people for a life in multicultural Britain. This is deemed true as according to the Catholic education service “At GCSE, Catholic schools outperform the national average by 5%.” On the other hand, admitting young children in a school that has a common link in between each individual does not prepare them completely “multiculturally” this is because they do not mix with all sorts of religious cultures other than their own for their years in education, this can cause some to be close minded about other religious beliefs. Even though, yes. They do mix with variety of ethnic groups now a days. However some Catholic schools years back used to be populated with mainly Whites and had a very little ratio of Blacks and Asians.

Ultimately, the green party outlines that faith schools and grammar schools should not be disbanded but not grow in numbers. This is a fair judgement as many faith schools offers bright students and many positive factors, however the negative factors can also outweigh the positives. As I mentioned many faith schools are single-sex schools, this offers concentration for the majority but also deprivation of interacting with the opposite gender. This is important because when you go into the life of work you will not only be interacting with one gender (unless you want to be a strict nun in a convent). Additionally, many faith schools add daily prayer and church services to their school day, this takes out learning time and classroom time. As an example a girls convent school proposed to add a compulsory church service during the school day every Wednesday, this sounds unreasonable as it is in the middle of the week and instead they could have not proposed this at all or made it on a Friday. Finally, people say that young people are very influential, many people go into faith schools believing strongly in their faith, however many manage to come out of faith schools believing in their faith little to none.Therefore, is it right to hold faith schools at gunpoint or is that deemed unfair judgement?

Always supporting and voting for you.
Josephine Beth-xx