To say religious state schools shouldn’t exist?

[Mushroo]

This is probably controversial but interested in opinions on both sides!

I attended a catholic primary and secondary school and had a lovely education (my parents are actually quite religious). However, given how increasingly secular the UK is it seems quite antiquated and divisive to segregate schools based on religion?

Where I live, our closest primary school as the crow flies is religious (c of e) and as a now atheist we wouldn’t get a place as we sit at the very bottom of the admissions criteria (other religions are given priority over atheist). This means we’d have to walk past it to get to the non-religious school further away.

This leads to many people ‘finding god’ in the nursery years to get a place which I refuse to do.

I don’t see the benefit of religious schools, surely if you are a religious family, you can learn about religion at your place of worship / Sunday school or equivalent.

I think state school should be secular and teach all religions equally (including atheism as an option) and places shouldn’t be offered based on religion. State school places should be based on particular needs (e.g. adopted children, siblings and then distance only).

Genuinely interested in thoughts, AIBU?

All publicly funded schools should, in this day and age, be non-denominational. Comparative religion only. Feel free to practice your religion at home and to attend worship outside school hours, but keep it out of the classroom.

It is ridiculous that publicly funded faith schools even exist.

From the most recent (2021) Census:

37.2% of the UK have 'no religion'

46.2% describe themselves as Christian.

(Other religions are small percentages in comparison)

So it is really quite close but there are on the whole more people in the UK who are religious than not.

It makes it a very difficult question and religious state schools are an institution which have been with us forever.

But I agree with OP that if we want a truly integrated and multicultural society, state religious schools don't help with that vision and they are exclusive.

On your point that ‘we’re a Christian country’ historically yes, but the latest census says that we aren’t (see below)

@Mushroo Actually if you look at the Census, Christianity is still the largest proportion of the pie chart, even though it is no longer more than half of the population.

It's very tricky. I'm not religious myself and wouldn't send my children to a religious school. But we do have a majority-religious country, if not majority-Christian, so that makes it difficult, and I think anyone trying to abolish religious state schools would have a huge challenge on their hands. (Not a reason not to do it, but I think a lot of people would be upset).

If the government has to borrow to fund this, then so be it. It's a valuable investment for the future of our society.

The alternative is to continue using taxpayer funds to support a divisive and discriminatory system.

As a first step, why not to change the admission criteria from faith-based to distance-based for all faith schools? At least it will stop excluding people in the community. No need to abolish any school that or restructure the asset ownership or similar.

I agree that this would be a good start.

There's more than one kind of nominally religious school, called controlled and maintained. The Catholic, other faiths and a few c of e (in cities typically) are controlled and actually have religious institutions giving oversight, 20% spaces must be allocated to local pupils without the faith criteria (80% allocated on faith, some newer schools it's less though). Aided are different, there's very little oversight or input and are for historical reasons, the church built the school pre 1900 so owns the land generally - a quick visit from the local vicar a few times a year and that's it.

My kids first school was nominally ce but no religion criteria at all, village school. I work for the church now and the primary takes 80% max on religious grounds but we aren't quite full (demographic changes in area) so take anyone

State funded religious discrimination is never acceptable.

In this case it is discrimination against those who do not practice the right religion. It would not be acceptable in any other area of life - Catholic/CofE hospitals anyone...?

It is a ridiculous anachronism and ought to go. Admission based in church attendance for a state funded school is appalling - why should our taxes prop up these religions?

I agree with you OP. Religion should not be any sort of criterion to access state education. Why should my taxes prop up a school that my child can't access because her parents don't believe in a particular brand of sky pixie? Religion should be an extra-curricular activity.

This.
In the UK, 1625 of our CofE schools are voluntary controlled and admissions criteria are set by the LA. They will be set based on local need but no different too other schools in the County.
1491 are voluntary aided where the governors set the admissions criteria. In those schools, which tend to be more ' Christian' as more of the staff and governors will be practising Christians, they may be admitting church families from beyond catchment but would normally be looking to provide education to their surrounding community.
I would be interested to know how big an issue it is that local families cannot get kids into local school because they do not attend church. I would have thought a bigger factor is population increase whilst village school remains tiny.

I totally agree. Our choices were narrowed down when school hunting due to some of them being religious - we are atheists.

Out of interest @unsureatthispoint do you agree with state funded religious schools that aren’t Christian?

Yes, I do agree. I have no problem with other religions

There are lots of taxpaying families who don’t have a “suitable” school to send their children to. As an example, the highest performing schools are often religious, and effectively exclude families who don’t go to church. When you have an academic child, but one who isn’t religious, there is often no “choice” but to send them to a school with a poor academic track record. Religious schools often have better music departments. A non religious musical child has to be sent to a comprehensive with little music provision. The only other “choice” for those parents is to pay privately. Why should religious families be given more choice over the children’s education, when every tax payer is funding those schools?

I’m not suggesting banning religious schools. A tolerant society is something which should be welcomed. They should not be funded by the state though. If schools are discriminating based on faith, they should be wholly funded by the church or by parents. Otherwise, everyone should be give an equal chance of being given a place.

The only “fair” way to allocate state funded school places is by lottery. That would also stop those who can afford more expensive houses moving into catchment of better performing schools and would open those schools up to everyone. I do accept that they’re is an argument for academically selective schools (although if that system is kept, we need to build more of them because that system is entirely unequal and unfair at the moment).

It wouldn't work.

The school would be quickly full of kids (and parents) who hate said religion, and would do anything within their power to disrespect those beliefs and teachings. No

OK. So getting rid of state funding altogether is the only option then.

Every school - not just the faith schools - legally has to have a daily act of worship. Of a Christian nature unless the school has obtained permission to substitute in a different religion. But either way, it has to be religious worship. A primary school in our county wants to have a non-religious moral/ethical assembly instead - governors, staff and parents all support it - but not allowed by law.
We could start by changing that.
I agree, though, religious worship should be for personal/private life, not state funded schools. Educate about all religions in schools, but don't endorse one "school" religion as the way and the truth. Let all children be educated with all their neighbours' children, not silo'd by faith or denomination. Historically entrenched vested interests make it hard to change that, though.
I find it interesting how many people of faith seem to think that having "secular" schools would somehow stop them practising their faith and raising their children in their faith.

A primary school in our county wants to have a non-religious moral/ethical assembly instead - governors, staff and parents all support it - but not allowed by law.

And what are they proposing to replace it with? Woke morals? Can't you see that morals and 'ethics' are as debatable as religion and many taxpayers perhaps don't agree with what would they are proposing to 'teach'?

That's the point though. Taxes shouldn't be funding discrimination. If people want a religious education they should pay for it themselves.

Again, what would a 'secular' 'ethical' assembly cover? It would be funding discrimination also. Very quickly, as religious families would be excluded

By that logic religious people are "excluded" from doing anything that isn't overtly religious. Do you go to a religious supermarket? Faith based swimming pool?

The local cofe primary in London is struggling to recruit kids, frankly the middle classes are generally not keen to send their kids to somewhere religious if they can avoid it. It still has immigrant (largely African) communities but there aren’t enough of them to fill it. It doesn’t seem such a problem once people move out to the countryside, but that’s not a big sample size and I don’t know if it’s practicality (we have about 5 primaries in walking distance) or people who are a bit less woke about it? Still I don’t see anyone doing anything about it for the foreseeable future but I’d be fine if faith was removed from schools.

No, but there are no 'teachings' in supermarkets or swimming pools

I think this attitude thinks of schools as something that were created by the state and it is just not true. Schools, especially religious schools, were the product of local communities banding together to create institutions that they wanted for their children.

Over the last century the state has gotten more and more involved in education and part of that has been the way in which state funding is used to control schools (for instance catholic schools receive a % less funding for every hour/week they spend on teaching catholic classes).

Its not that “as the UK becomes more secular these schools are an anachronism” but rather as the demographic of the country changes the education offer should change with it. Unfortunately modern Britain is SO state reliant that people don’t want to set up schools anymore, except when they do everyone says “this is terrible and should be shut down because it’s not a state comp”.

The situation is basically that religious groups (who had a vested interest in educating children) set up these schools- if there are secular groups who want to setup secular schools they could do so. The issue is they don’t want to/can’t be bothered/think the government should do it. But governments are terrible at doing things like this because they work with big data, they don’t work with local communities. Which makes them utterly shit decision makers.

So no- those schools do serve communities- the descendants of those original communities who setup those schools. That the numbers are dwindling doesn’t mean the school shouldn’t exist. If there is a sufficiently large number of children who want to attend a secular or non-religious school, set up a local academy. Run that instead. Why say to the religious they can’t have the schools they setup when the issue is others can’t be bothered to establish their own?