Faith schools are in the news following Ed Balls’ allegation that they operate exclusive admissions policies and the veteran Labour MP Frank Field describing Mr Balls’ criticism as “simply incomprehensible”.
This is the same Frank Field who is campaigning against the abolition of the 10p rate of income tax – no friend of exclusivity and privilege. I can’t speak with authority on all faith schools but I do know a good deal about Church of England schools and most of the faith schools in this country are Church of England schools. Mr Field is on firmer ground than Mr Balls as far as they are concerned.
There is a small number of Church of England schools – mostly secondary and mainly in London – where there is competition for places and attendance at church is an important criterion in deciding who should be admitted.
However, this is not true of the vast majority, all of which exist to serve the community in which they are set. In this Diocese of Worcester, for instance, there are 102 church schools which fall into this category. They are all committed to the local community and do not operate exclusive admissions policies.
When Lord Dearing was asked to chair a commission to look into Church of England schools he praised them very highly.
He said that he wished that he could ‘bottle up’ their extra ingredient and make it available to other schools. What is that extra ingredient? It is the promotion of the Christian values of love, care and compassion. There are all sorts of reasons why learning such values is a good thing.
There is the fact that they are good in themselves but also that most of the things that we hold dear in our society are derived from these values. These values are based on Jesus’ summary of the law – he told people that all they needed to do was to love God and love their neighbour.
Learning to love one’s neighbour, to care about one another, is probably the most important lesson for us all to learn if this country is to remain civilized.
Church of England schools do a first-rate job in helping their students to learn to do just that and, in so doing, make an invaluable but not at all exclusive contribution to their communities and to our society.