An odd coalition indeed. If faith schools are so good at evangelising for their faiths and discriminating against people of other faiths or none then why would the parents of other faiths want to send their kids there? Surely because the schools are often not very committed to evangelism and happen to be very good schools – the same reason that atheist and agnostic parents sometimes start attending church around admissions time.

If AC Grayling’s anti-clericalism is as trenchant as all that wouldn’t he be better off trying to improve secular schools so that parents do not feel obliged to send their kids to schools sponsored by faiths they do not share. Or is that a bit too much like hard work? Much easier shear the troublesome religious aspects away from existing good schools and hope that the quality of the school is unrelated to the religious character.

Many here would surely counsel caution when criticising failing schools lest the criticism make it still harder for the school to improve. I fail to see that it makes more sense to excoriate excellent schools over issues not directly related to education.

(I am of course aware that not all faith schools are excellent – but since we are talking here about improving the access that those of other faiths have to religious schools I think it is reasonable to assume that this group is mostly concerned with the ones that are)

Again the Left invents more problems as to distract from it’s glaring failure on education and the ugly effects of the comprehensive dream. We are failing badly as an economy and a society and you want to play the part of little latter-day emporer Neros.

We are failing badly as an economy and a society and you want to play the part of little latter-day emporer Neros.

failing as an economy AND a society? Bloody hell, talk about doom mongering. If you think things are that bad, why not emigrate instead of moaning?

Roger@3 – Wrong formulation. It is not true that we are failing in any absolute terms, but only that we are not succeeding to our full potential (and in many cases by a large extent).

Condemning apologists for our lack of success as malign do-nothings is largely inaccurate and it is counter-productive – you imply reactionary policies will solve the problems caused by current policy when they themselves the product of reaction to previous problems.

“(Editor’s note: Sunny is also a signatory)”

Err, how is that supposed to convince anyone?

Is there an age at which religion becomes safe to learn? Just wondering…

The point surely is not whether ‘Faith Schools’ are better or worse than the State schools but should they exist at all.

By their nature faith schools seek to instill a belief in something outside of any proven existance and then call that education! All schools should be secular (as in France) and if parents wish to pass on a belief in the super natural then they can do so out of school time. As a first step I would like to see State funding stopped and ultimately faith schools banned.

freethinkeruk – Well “the state” doesn’t really exist either.

Sure people dress up in uniforms and wear badges to indicate affiliation to it, and there is plenty of headed paper being sent round people’s houses that come from so-called state agencies. But if that were grounds for belief in an entity, then God has plenty of supposed affiliates and evidence of existence! I suppose some might argue that the state exists at least legally, but then so do “acts of God” which rather implies an entity.

So I would be happy to dispose of “faith schools” so long as we agreed to stop having these so-called “state schools” too. How much of a free thinker are you:)?

Come on now Nick, you don’t have to be a free thinker to know that ‘The State’ is an amalgam of various levels of governance arrived at over centuarys and constantly evolving for the welfare and maintenance of the whole of society and therefore exists.

‘Acts of God’ is (was) a phrase used in the main, by insurance companies, as a get out clause from paying out for lightening strikes and other exceptional but natural events. I believe this has now fallen into disuse.

But are you describing a real entity or the genealogy of an idea that the majority of people happen to hold? You can’t ever see these “various levels of governance”, but you can see plenty of people invoking its authority – just like God.

Freethinkeruk, the question of whether faith schools should or should not exist is precisely the point that this group does not address. My point is that the people who constitute this group seem to be people who might with greater honesty argue for the abolition of faith schools. Why would Jewish or Methodist parents or indeed AC Grayling be so keen on the right to send their kids to a Catholic school?

Presumably because they perceive these schools to be better than average and consider that the light touch indoctrination in Catholicism that their children may receive there is a small price to pay for their children receiving a better education.

Abolishing faith schools would sling the baby out with the bathwater and get rid of a swathe of good schools and Accord seems to know it.

Surely the question that Accord (and perhaps freethinkeruk) ought to be addressing is why it is that faith schools, taken as a group, are perceived to provide a better education. Once they have discovered the answer to that question they could argue rather less hypocritically for the replacement of faith schools with secular or pluralistic schools which recreate the same ethos by different means.

(Until that time opponents of faith schools can console themselves with the thought that a solid historical understanding of any of the major faiths which run schools in this country will open up the dominant source of metaphor and reference in the Western literary canon)

No hypocrisy George V, just a burning desire for equality and fairness. I agree entirely that faith schools have a better system (in general) than most state schools. They are usually smaller making for better social contact and their ethos leans more towards loving co-operation rather than competition. There is reason, other than dogma, that these attributes could not be easily incorporated into state schools.

I generalise I know but the parents of children at faith schools tend to be the better educated, the better off and know how to work the system to get their offspring a place. That is my main objection, it is unfair. My secondary objection is that in order to achieve the placement, parents will subject their children to, albeit light, religious indoctrination even though statistically they are unlikely to have a belief themselves.