Special Report: State And Religion

An Islamic school is raided by anti-terror police. A fresh intake of middle-class children fills the classrooms at high-performing C of E schools. Are religious schools an unfair anachronism? Are they threatening our society? Sarah Cassidy, education correspondent, investigates

Last weekend police raided an Islamic school in East Sussex after fears that young men were being indoctrinated and groomed for terrorism. Officers are still searching the grounds of the Jameah Islamiyah school near Crowborough, which is alleged to have been used as an al-Qa'ida training camp.

The raid came as right-wing commentators in the US warned that Muslims in Britain now pose the greatest risk to US security. They argue that the UK has become a breeding ground for terrorists because we have failed to integrate our multicultural community. With a policy of diversity, critics say, Britain has encouraged different communities to stay divided with catastrophic results, and segregated education - schools like Jameah Islamiyah - lie at the heart of this.

The arguments against faith schools go beyond terrorism. The vast majority of religious schools are Christian, many of which out-perform their neighbouring secular schools. Concerns rumble on that élite Roman Catholic and Church of England schools, which are allowed to select their pupils by faith, exclude a large number of local children and contribute to a skewed and unfair public education system that favours the white middle classes. Then there is the bigger picture: in an increasingly secular society, aren't these schools an anachronism that defy what we are trying as a nation to achieve - an integrated multicultural society?

A lot of people don't like faith schools, even though many fall over themselves to get their child into one. A poll last week found that 44 per cent of Londoners believe that all religious schools should be banned, while an ICM poll last summer, in the wake of the 7 July bombings, found that 64 per cent of respondents agreed that the Government should "not be funding faith schools of any kind".

Yet the trend is towards more religious schools. One in three schools in England is now a faith school with further expansion planned by the Government, including Muslim, Sikh and Hindu schools. The Church of England plans to open more than 100 new schools by the end of the decade.

Tony Blair's government has been almost evangelical in its promotion of faith schools, actively encouraging private faith schools to enter the state sector and making it easier for religious groups to set up new schools. The Department for Education and Skills has given the Association of Muslim Schools £100,000 to help make the transition from private to state school smoother for its 140 independent Islamic schools.

Other controversial policies have allowed religious groups to shape state education in ways that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. Of Tony Blair's first 100 flagship academies, 42 have Christian sponsors who have a say in how the school is run. The Conservatives too are broadly supportive of faith schools, arguing that their distinctive ethos contributes to their success.

And many are very successful: 132 of the 178 primaries at the top of last year's league tables had a religious affiliation. Christian schools in inner cities are acknowledged to be the cheapest escape route from troubled local schools for middle-class parents.

Church schools educate fewer children from the poorest backgrounds than others, according to a recent study by an education think tank, the Institute for Research in Integrated Strategies. Only 14 per cent of pupils in church primary schools were on free school meals compared with 19 per cent in their catchment areas.Chris Waterman, the report's author, argues that church schools are practising selection by stealth. Church schools are not allowed to select pupils by ability, but can interview prospective pupils. Some heads are suspected of weeding out the less able and cherry-picking those from "desirable" homes.

Six hundred secondary and 6,400 primary schools in England are faith schools. The Church of England has 4,540 state primaries and 204 secondaries, and there are around 2,000 Catholic schools. In addition there are 36 Jewish, seven Muslim and two Sikh state schools. On top of this there are around 1,000 fee-paying schools in England with a Church of England ethos, 130 private Catholic schools and more than 100 Muslim schools. Like any private school, these institutions are free to select their pupils on ability.

Faith schools have a long history in Britain. Until the beginning of the 19th century, education was the preserve of the wealthy. This changed in 1811 with the foundation of the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales, the aim of which was to establish a church school in every parish so that poorer children could have a religious and moral education.

During the 19th century thousands of schools were established, while the Roman Catholic church educated its own young. The state began to provide some funding for schools in 1833, but it wasn't until 1870 that the state set up schools of its own. It is to these beginnings - this historic partnership between church and state - that Britain owes its distinctive "dual system". The legacy is that most church school buildings and land are owned by the church. If state funding were withdrawn, the church would aim to keep as many as possible open by running them as private schools - leaving the state with a massive shortfall of school places. Faith schools receive the same levels of funding as other state schools, but if the schools have voluntary aided status the church must pay 10 per cent of capital costs, the taxpayer funding the rest.

Secular groups admit that separating church from state will be difficult but argue that the ties should be severed - "The sooner the better," says Terry Sanderson, vice-chairman of the National Secular Society.

"Religion has had such deep penetration into our education system, it will take decades to reverse. That doesn't mean we shouldn't start now."

Supporters of faith schools argue that they achieve better results because they are built around shared values and that ecumenical values contribute to a disciplined, committed learning community. Their success is due to a wealthier intake, counter critics. The British Humanist Association, which also wants an end to faith schools, is certain that some manipulate their intake in favour of the bright, obedient and wealthy. "They take less than their share of deprived children and more than their share of the children of ambitious and choosy parents," said a spokesman.

However, research by Bristol University concluded that Christian schools tend to be more ethnically diverse than their secular counterparts, because they recruit their pupils from a wider area. These pupils may share a faith but they often come from a wide variety of ethnic groups. Community schools, the researchers found, tend to be more polarised: white parents sent their children to "white" schools while ethnic minority families opted for schools where they were a majority.

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, became an unlikely champion of faith schools last week when he warned against making "policy by anecdote", arguing that there had been plenty of "dispassionate research" and "clear-eyed analysis" into faith schools but the positive findings were often overlooked in favour of anecdotal evidence that reflected people's fears about others cheating the system.

Canon John Hall, the Church of England's chief education officer, insists that the Church of England remains true to its original educational mission of helping the most disadvantaged and that its schools are still open to all. Half of its 4,500 primary schools are voluntarily-controlled, meaning that they are run by their local authority, like a community primary. Places go to those living nearest; practising Christians are turned away in favour of children of other faiths or none.

Other Church of England schools are either voluntarily-aided or foundation schools. Running their own admissions, these schools have freedom to decide their own selection priorities, within the government code which covers all schools. They must set out a list of categories of pupils who will be given preference if the school is oversubscribed and they cannot select on ability (unless they are also grammar schools), but they can ask that all pupils demonstrate that they are Anglicans. Alternatively they could set aside a proportion of places for children of other faiths and of none to be allocated according to how far they live from the schools.

The Church of England has historically urged its schools to open up to children of other faiths. New guidance from the church this autumn will remind schools of these priorities, although it is up to individual schools how they run their admissions.

Roman Catholic schools unashamedly give priority to Catholic children. "Our Catholic community is made up of people from all races and cultures, therefore already creating diverse school communities," says Oona Stannard of the Catholic Education Service.

Much of the faith school debate is not really about Christian schools, but fuelled by fears about allowing other religions - particularly Muslims - to have their own state schools. The segregation of communities was blamed for the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001. The official report into the riots, commissioned by the Home Office, concluded that people in Britain were leading "parallel" lives where people from different backgrounds did not mix.

Muslim schools are more ethnically polarised than other faith schools. Yet Trevor Phillips believes that much of the recent anti-faith school rhetoric is motivated by racism and prejudice. He dismisses critics as "a nuisance and a distraction" and said their fears were often nothing more than "hypocrisy dressed up as a leftish concern for integration ... what the proponents of this view really want to say ... is that Muslims can't be trusted to run schools."

Even eminent thinkers such as Amartya Sen, the Indian-born Nobel prize winner, former master of Trinity College, Cambridge and now professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard, has argued that while Christian schools are acceptable because they are intrinsically tolerant institutions, the Government's policy of extending state funding to other faiths - especially Muslims - threatens to produce a dangerously divided society.

"I am actually absolutely appalled," Professor Sen said. "It overlooks the way Christian schools have evolved and often provide a much more tolerant atmosphere than a purely religious school would. A lot of people in the Middle East or India have been educated in Christian schools."

If the Government failed to allow Muslims and other faiths the same right to a faith-based education as Christians, they would probably face a challenge under the Human Rights Act. Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Great Britain, says that refusal to allow Muslim schools would be clear discrimination. "Over 50 per cent of Jewish children attend Jewish schools, most of which are funded by the taxpayer," he says. "Should people from other minority faiths not be allowed the right to send their children to similar faith schools if they so wish?"

Arguably, by encouraging Muslim schools to work inside the state system, they can be better regulated and required to teach a broad and balanced curriculum. Jameah Islamiyah, by contrast, is a £1,000-a-year private school lambasted by Ofsted last year for a wide variety of educational shortcomings but particularly for its failure to work with other local schools.

David Bell, the then head of Ofsted and now the top civil servant at the Department for Education and Skills, caused a furore last year when he warned Muslim schools in particular, but also evangelical Christian and Jewish schools, that they needed to be "intolerant of intolerance" and do more to educate their pupils about the wider world. "Faith should not be blind. I worry that many young people are being educated in faith-based schools with little appreciation of their wider responsibilities and obligations to British society," he said.

So where should we go from here? There is obviously much wrong with the current system. Thousands of parents and children face months of stress and worry every year as they try to secure the school place of their choice.

Church attendance may be dwindling but many parents who do not consider themselves at all religious appreciate the values and results associated with faith schools. Some of the parents who clamour to get their children into faith schools might actually prefer a secular education but fear there is nothing on offer of sufficient quality. Politicians will never get rid of faith schools while they have so much popular support among parents.

It is also naive to think that the abolition of faith schools would see a level playing field. The Government's long-standing education policy has been to encourage a diverse range of schools to bring the promised end to the era of "the bog-standard comprehensive". This includes controversial schemes that have spread some of the freedoms of church schools across the state system - Tony Blair's controversial academies own their buildings and run their own admissions. The majority of state schools now have specialist status giving them the right to select up to 10 per cent of pupils on aptitude for the specialist subject - something no ordinary church school would be allowed to do.

The Conservatives recognise that there is a problem over admissions to some faith schools, but would aim to ease the pressure on the system by reforms rather than by limiting faith schools' freedoms.

Tightly woven into the fabric of British life, faith schools are unlikely to be expelled from the state sector. Dismantling the existing system would cause such upheaval and upset that it is hard to see how the benefits would outweigh the disadvantages. If Anglicans and Catholics are to run their own schools, it is impossible to justify preventing other religions from being allowed to do so.

THE NUN HEADTEACHER: 'The selective grammar system is more divisive'

Sister Alice Montgomery is headteacher of the Roman Catholic Ursuline College, Westgate-on-Sea, Kent.

"One of the most important things about Christianity is respect for other people, and our task is to respect other religions. Our school is a co-educational comprehensive. We take Catholic children without reference to ability and from a wide geographical area. After that we take Christian children and children from other faith backgrounds. We have Anglican children, Baptists, Salvation Army and a few Muslims.

"We're pleased with the high academic results we achieve. This is a lot to do with our sense of community, which we really work at. We teach a shared understanding of Gospel values, and we believe that every single child is a gift from God: important and valued and can get somewhere. Our discipline is also rooted in Gospel values: we treat everyone fairly and look after each other. Because we are a faith school, we're allowed to use language like that.

"We believe that our students should leave school to play a positive role in society. We look at issues like justice, abortion, crises in the world - trying to get them to be reflective, something that is desperately needed in society. I can explode the myth that Catholic schools don't teach sex education.

"I don't agree that faith schools are divisive at all. Good Catholic, Jewish or Muslim schools encourage young people to play a constructive role in society. The selective grammar system is more divisive."

THE ISLAMIC STUDENT: 'The teachers shoved Islam down our throats all the time'

Nussaibah Younis, former pupil of Manchester Islamic High School for Girls.

"I was 13 when I moved to Manchester and started at an Islamic high school where a headscarf was part of the compulsory uniform, along with a massive long skirt and full-length overcoat. I hated that uniform! We looked idiotic traipsing through town on the way to school. The kids from other schools would stare at us and think we were freaks.

"At the Islamic school every day would start with an assembly akin to a religious sermon. In Ramadan, lunch would be cut to 15 minutes and the day finished early. It was compulsory to perform two daily prayers. These practices helped pupils feel more comfortable with their religion, but I wondered how these girls would cope when they inevitably had to join secular society.

"It annoyed me how teachers would use religion in normal lessons. Like my biology teacher used to tell us how grateful we should all be that God created pretty little animals for us. I found her use of Islam a bit patronising. The teachers should have had more confidence in Islam and stopped shoving it down our throats at every opportunity. Learning the Koran was homework.

"Educationally the Islamic school did really well, with 95 per cent pass rate at GCSE, which is much better than other schools in that area. And being at school with so many different types of Muslims also helped the girls to widen their religious horizons. They stopped believing their parents' interpretation of Islam down to the last detail, because they met so many who practised the same religion differently.

"I left after three months. I don't think Muslim schools should exist in a secular society, in which we all have to live and work together. However, in many areas it's difficult to access a decent education - especially for young Muslims who remain the country's most economically deprived group."

THE JEWISH PUPIL: 'Religious parents are more pushy'

Adam Cannon, 32, attended the Jewish Free School in London. His daughter just started at a Jewish nursery.

"It is much easier to learn respect for other religions when you have a firm grounding and a confidence in your own. At JFS we had Jewish studies, but every other subject on the curriculum was covered in as much detail as it would be in any normal, non-religious comprehensive. It was an excellent school. It didn't select academically: it took students from across the academic range, but it pushed up the results of everybody. Because everyone at my school was Jewish, there was more of a mix across the board, and I socialised with a far wider range.

"Parents from all faith backgrounds are generally more pushy and competitive, which could partly explain the good results.Up to a point some parents might have been encouraging their children not to socialise with children from other faiths, but a lot of my friends were very secular.

"I now have a three-year-old daughter who started at a local Jewish nursery last week. She'll probably go to a faith school, too - after all, it done me all right."

THE ATHEIST MOTHER: 'We "cheated" to get in'

Sarah Robinson (not her real name), 39, is an atheist but went to church to get her first son into a C of E primary school in London.

"I chose a Church of England school for my son because the local primary was so oversubscribed and we couldn't afford the independent schools his friends were going to. We weren't churchgoing and we didn't believe in God, but the little C of E school we found was everything we wanted a school to be. When I asked what to do to get my boys in, they said I must be a regular churchgoer.

"We got married in a Buddhist ceremony abroad, so we didn't even have a tame priest on hand. So I approached the church where I used to sing in the choir as a child and told them we were thinking of getting our child christened, and so we started attending Sunday school.

"After 18 months of suffering those terribly boring C of E services, I could definitely say: 'I do not believe in God.' But eventually they agreed that we had been regular churchgoers, and we squeezed him into the school at the last minute.

"However, Jesus answered us back because about a year later it became clear that this school wasn't nearly as well run as they pretended it was. The headmistress was well past her retirement date and the staff were slightly out of control. The sweet little middle-class children were spiteful brats and we couldn't wait to get him out."

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND PUPIL: 'Our faith gives us good reason to behave well'

Stephanie Baldwin, 17, is a pupil at St Edward's Church of England School, Essex.

"My Christianity is very important to me, so going to St Edward's was an obvious choice. The Christian ethos means better results, better pastoral care and a sense that we are all pulling in the same direction. I've done really well in all my exams - meeting expectations and even going beyond them sometimes, and I think that going to a faith school has definitely played a part in that. When you consider our intake, groups that would normally underperform actually do really well at St Edward's.

"Our faith also gives us a good reason to behave well because it gives you a proper value system, which means there's a lot more respect for your teachers and fellow students. Of course there's the odd problem pupil, but because there is good discipline and the teachers are fair, it means that classes are more settled and any problems are resolved pretty quickly. Christianity helps you understand there are very good reasons for behaving in a certain way."

THE SECULAR TEACHER: 'Education is about truth, not belief'

Stewart Davies is head of information and computing technology at Sandfields Comprehensive School in Port Talbot.

"A church is a place of worship and a school is a place of education. People can express their faith in a church, but education should be about delivering skills and presenting opportunities to people. We should get rid of religious schools. Education is not about what you believe: it's about truth.

"Faith schools are inherently exclusive because of the belief systems they have: they exclude people who are not of the same religion which is as bad as selection by any other means. At our school we believe in inclusion, in respecting everybody at the school.

"Faith schools can help isolate communities. We are living in a time of great religious and cultural tension and faith schools contribute to that."

THE MUSLIM CONVERT: 'They still have friends who are not Muslim'

Laura Woodward, 40, sends her children Saeed, 8, and Mohammed, 7, to the Islamic state school Gatton Primary, in Tooting, London.

"Faith schools are a good thing. They generally have better results, and as Muslims living in a non-Muslim country we feel it's very important that our children understand what their religion is and not feel that they were different from everybody else. Their years at primary school are the most formative. I don't think I will send them to a Muslim senior school. By then they will need to adjust to the society that they are going to live and work in. But they're not segregated now. When they come home they play with neighbourhood friends who are not Muslim.

"If a family is following a faith, it's following a set of rules and the child gets to understand about right and wrong. If we hadn't been able to get them into an Islamic school we would have gone for the Catholic option because of the discipline."