The British Humanist Association’s Chief Executive recently warned in the Guardian that the Government’s Academies Bill risks 'increasing religious discrimination and privilege in our education system.' Parents, teachers and governors alike will be relieved to learn that his unsubstantiated claims are all refuted by actual evidence.

Andrew Copson first recycles the myth that faith schools 'segregate communities along religious, socioeconomic and often ethnic grounds.' In truth, as judged by Ofsted inspection gradings, they 'play an important and positive role in both promoting community cohesion and equality of opportunity whilst taking positive steps in eliminating discrimination'—and do so more than non-faith schools.

He laments that faith schools converting to Academy status will automatically retain their religious character, with no option to change. One might equally regret the lack of provision for non-faith schools that 'have an eye for social justice and a desire to progress' to adopt a religious character, but any such change would surely first require much broader consultation among parents, staff and governors.

He disingenuously suggests that recent years have seen constant public concern over 'narrow religious ideologies and inferior sex education … in connection with religious academies.' Actually, the public should be as concerned about secular fundamentalist ideologies creeping into our schools as faith-based ones. The quality of sex education provision is also unrelated to school type. Rather, the abstinence-based relationships education he rejects has 'repeatedly been shown to be effective in reducing sexual activity' and delivers significantly greater reductions in teen abortions than other programmes.

This contrasts starkly with the last government’s youth development programme, which saw Britain attain the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe, soaring rates of STIs, and increased levels of teenage abortions. The best relationships education should equip children with the information they need to make wise choices—including research showing that 'married adults have made greater economic gains over the past four decades than unmarried adults,' people who cohabit before getting marriage are at 60 per cent greater risk of divorce, and that the death rate for people who are unmarried is significantly higher than for those who are married and living with their spouses.

Importantly, Copson rightly acknowledges there are different kinds of 'faith schools.' Further research needs to be done in this area, as the term loosely describes a wide spectrum ranging from those that see their distinctiveness in terms of how the school’s faith community impacts pupils’ own identity, through those concerned for the wellbeing and spiritual development of the whole child regardless of faith, to those that simply offer a moral and ethical framework for character formation and promoting civic values, or enhance pupil performance through beneficial learning habits. If we are to understand better the contribution they make to their pupils and local communities, we must stop treating them as a single class of schools.

That said, there are of course questions about the Academies Bill that still need clarifying. For instance, what provision will there be for schools federations—raising standards through collaboration, not just competition? What measures will there be to help struggling schools and stop them getting to the stage where they need to be converted to Academy status—surely a cheaper and less disruptive option? And, given that most of the reasons for educational failure lie outside the school, what support will be given to parents of disadvantaged children and how can schools both contribute to, and be a part of, wider healthy communities?

Nevertheless, the Bill’s emphasis on giving 'greater powers to parents and pupils to choose a good school' and 'greater freedom over the curriculum' is a welcome change to the statist interference of recent years.  As the Universal Declaration on Human Rights makes clear, it is for parents—in partnership with teachers, governors and others in their local school communities—to choose the kind of education that will be given to their children.  Given that more than one in three currently prefer that to be an inclusive faith-based education that focuses on character development as well as academic standards, it would be sad if the country’s secular fundamentalists were to scare them off elsewhere.

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