An education secretary who belongs to Opus Dei, a prime minister who prays with George Bush before going to war: with a government like this, no wonder we are seeing a determined effort to roll back secular education... Education: Blair is taking us back to the Middle Ages – and beyond
WORKERS, NOV 2005 ISSUE
At a time when workers in Britain, a country with a highly sceptical and secular culture, are dismayed by the acts of religious psychopaths who want a fast-track entry to heaven by massacring infidels, the government's drive to push religion through schools continues apace. The promotion of religious thought has become a major plank of educational policy in Blair's third term.
Congregations in the Church of England are at an all-time low but C of E schools are growing rapidly due to government encouragement. Four years ago the Church set itself the target of creating 100 new religious secondary schools by 2008. It looks as if this target is likely to be reached three years early, due to the government's academies programme on the one hand and on the other to more than 40 non-religious schools converting to the C of E since 2001. Another 54 are on the takeover list.
In July this year, Labour reversed a 60-year-old rule that required churches to contribute 10% of building costs for new schools, pledging £550 million from taxes to rebuild every religious secondary in the country.
Evidence
The government justifies its policy by claiming that religious schools are good at raising educational standards, reflecting a widely held belief. In fact there is little evidence for this: although their results can be higher, they have far fewer pupils from poorer backgrounds on average than maintained schools, and many practise covert forms of selection by interview to ascertain "religious commitment". The National Foundation for Educational Research has shown that pupils in religious schools do not make better progress than pupils in non-religious schools.
At present there are almost 7,000 religious schools out of 25,000 state-funded schools in England and Wales. In most, the school governors, rather than the local authority, control admissions criteria and the employment of staff.
Labour's academies are new or amalgamated secondary schools funded by the state but independent of local authorities and free from many regulations governing normal schools. The academy programme is heavily dependent on various religious groups to keep it going.
The King's Academy in Middlesbrough, where creationism is taught on an equal footing with Darwinian science, has been praised by Blair and by Ofsted. The director, Nigel McQuoid, recently said "...to think that we just evolved from a bang, that we used to be monkeys, that seems unbelievable." Ofsted inspectors branded him inspirational.
Of 38 new academies in the pipeline, 15 are backed by religious organisations. A typical sponsor is the Oasis Trust, led by Baptist minister Steve Chalke MBE, friend of the Blairs, and planning a chain of six academies. Since he had a revelation at 14, his missionary zeal is to do good to the poor and needy, or as he puts it in a truly Blairite phrase, to those who lack choice. Let's hope they are suitably grateful.
Ministers are now offering such private backers a cut-price deal of four for the price of three on academies, so that instead of having to contribute the paltry sum of £2 million to control the new school, they will only need to pay £1.5 million.
The archdiocese of Southwark will contribute just £200,000 to sponsor the new St Paul's Academy in Abbey Wood, Greenwich. This is because the present site of St Paul's school, owned by Greenwich Council, is to be sold off to developers for £1.8 million, with the proceeds going to the Catholic Church!
The push to bring the influence of other religions into the state sector has been introduced by the Labour government in the name of "equal opportunities". Sikh, Hindu and Muslim private schools are now being given funding to become state schools. The latest one is the Leicester Islamic Academy, which at present charges £1,400 a year per pupil, which will open in 2007 as a state-funded school. More such Islamic schools are planned in Leicester, and a Hindu school will open soon in Harrow.
Divisive
Since the London bombings, rather than seeing the role of religion in education as dangerous and divisive, some have called for even more religion to be brought into state schools. For instance, in the name of integration, there is now a call to bring the madrassas, Koranic classes for children held normally in mosques in the evenings or at weekends, into state schools. And the Religious Education Council for England and Wales is calling for a new government initiative to force schools to follow a centralised RE curriculum from age 3, on the grounds that many "faith and community members" have concerns about how their faith is portrayed and treated in community schools.
Add to this general picture the fact that we have a secretary of state for education, Ruth Kelly, who is a member of the extreme right-wing Catholic secret society Opus Dei, and a prime minister who prays with George Bush before deciding to go to war, and we can see an ideological onslaught being waged on workers in Britain. In this most secular of countries, where workers take a common sense view of religion and superstition, the supernatural is being promoted by government to divide us and to back the development of ever more authoritarian powers for the state.
Segregating children into religious camps is a dangerous and retrograde step. How will children make a mix of friends, learn about each other, raise questions and develop critical thought if their lives are bounded by religions? The example of Northern Ireland should be enough to teach us where that can lead. And religious terrorism will not be fought by allowing – even encouraging – communities to retreat into ghettos.
The religious delusion that led to death on the London underground this summer has its parallels in all religions, and history is littered with examples of zealous torture, exorcism, abuse, perversion and slaughter. Will they teach about the burning of witches in the RE curriculum? Those on the "left" such as Livingstone and Galloway, and those in the liberal establishment who bleat on about the need to respect the religious beliefs of others (at present, this seems to mean mostly Islamic beliefs), share the blame for where we find ourselves.
How is it progressive to demand the "right" of girls to go to school with their bodies shrouded from head to foot? Even Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, has discovered that we are "sleepwalking to a segregated society".
We need far less religion, not more. Secular thought is progressive for human beings, because when the promise of heaven is removed it becomes clear that we have to make life better for ourselves in this world as there is no other. This fight for a better material existence is what unites us.