Only nine percent of headteachers across primary and secondary schools want to see an increase in the number of “faith schools” according to the survey by Education Guardian and EdComs. Almost half of headteachers (47 percent) believed there should be either fewer or no faith schools while 32 percent believed there should be no change, the poll found.
Some 801 headteachers from across the country took part in the survey, 28 percent of whom work in so-called “faith schools”. Only a quarter said they believed that schools promoting a particular religion created more religious tolerance in society and a further 18 percent said they made no difference at all. Forty-five percent said they thought the schools actively contributed to a less tolerant society.
The Guardian poll also revealed 17 percent of headteachers believe church schools should be granted an exemption from new legislation preventing schools from teaching children that homosexual acts are sinful.
A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills repeated a familiar mantra in response to the poll, saying: “We have a long tradition of faith schools in this country. They are popular with parents and can make an important contribution to community cohesion by promoting inclusion and developing partnerships with schools of other faiths, and with non-faith schools. Earlier this year the leaders of the major faiths committed their schools to teach pupils about other religions as well as their own, to help pupils to develop respect and sensitivity to others.”
The idea that “twinning” schools from different religions somehow creates “cohesion” was shown to be deluded by a study by Professor Irene Bruegel of London South Bank University. She found that special sessions mixing children from different primary schools did not have anything like the same effect that day to day contact did in helping them form friendships with people from other backgrounds and cultures. When efforts were made to bring children from mono-cultural schools into contact with those from other cultures, the results were actually counter-productive. White children still referred to the children they met as ‘coming from the brown school’ and could not remember their names, as ‘too difficult’.
Professor Bruegel’s study also found:
* Primary school children had difficulty recognising different
ethnicity and rarely referred to it.
* In primary classes where at least a third of the children were
from minority backgrounds there was far greater evidence of mixed
ethnicity friendships carrying over to secondary school friendships.
Where eighty per cent of the children were white they were significantly
less likely to make friends at secondary school across racial divides.
Children from the less mixed primary schools were described as ‘distinctly
different’. None felt that Muslim or Asian children were ‘picked
on’ in their local neighbourhood.
* Ethnic minority children are also far more likely to make and
retain inter-ethnic relationships where they are not in a majority
in their primary schools.
* Children who went to Catholic primary schools were more likely
to be in ethnically homogenous classes, compared with other children
living in the immediate locality, but that this was not the case
for those at CofE primary schools in the areas that were studied.
* Less than half the Muslim children (49%) said that their parents
knew those of their friends compared with 74% of non-Muslims. This
seemed to be because they took their friends home less, whether
or not they were Muslim
* The study also found that aspirant parents use their contacts
and spending power in an effort to influence the child’s future
social milieu.
See also: Faith schools’ success down to selection, not religion
http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee%20dps/ceedp72.pdf
Guardian poll http://education.guardian.co.uk/newschools/story/0,,1963587,00.html
NSS January 2007