Five ways the Catholic Church misled the Government into a U-turn on faith school admissions

“The quite remarkable nerve with which the Catholic Education Service has made these false assertions is matched only by the astounding credulity of the Government and its readiness to accept them without so much as a question asked.”

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PM Theresa May announced the plans last week

You may well have seen in the news over the last few days that the Government has proposed to end the rule requiring new religious schools to keep at least half of their places open to children from the local area, irrespective of religion or belief. The proposal represents a triumph of religious lobbying over thoughtful and evidence-based policy-making. Here are the five ways the Catholic Church of England and Wales and the Catholic Education Service seriously misled the Government into making the move.

1. Catholic schools and canon law

Those of you who were watching the Prime Minister deliver her speech on education last week will know that she announced the following:

‘When a faith-designated Free School is oversubscribed, it must limit the number of pupils it selects on the basis of faith to 50 per cent… [This] does prevent new Catholic schools opening, because the Catholic Church believes it contravenes its own rules for a Catholic Bishop not to prioritise the admission of Catholic pupils…we will remove this 50 percent rule to allow the growth in capacity that Catholic schools offer’.

The PM is referring here to the Church’s claim that opening schools that do not prioritise Catholic children for all of their places would ‘contravene canon law’. The quite remarkable nerve with which the Church and the Catholic Education Service (CES) has made this false assertion is matched only by the astounding credulity of the Government and its readiness to accept it without so much as a question asked. And it is a false assertion.

Recent research shows that the overwhelming majority of Catholic private schools in England do not set a religious test for all of their places, as is being claimed must be the case in the state sector. In fact, just 18 of the 101 Catholic private schools in England surveyed by the British Humanist Association (BHA) gave full priority to Catholics. A cursory look at the websites of these Catholic schools reveals statements like ‘we do not select for entry on the basis of religious belief’ and sentiments explaining this approach like ‘diversity serves both to enrich our community and to provide a vital ingredient in preparing our pupils for today’s world’.

If the CEE believes that these schools are breaking canon law, then presumably it would have moved to bring them in line by now. Given that it has made no such move, this appears to be less about enforcing canon law, and more a case of ‘one rule for the rich, another for the poor’.

Incidentally, if that wasn’t proof enough that the CES has pulled the wool over the Government’s eyes, it’s worth pointing out that a great many Catholic state schools in Scotland do not select on the basis of faith either, and though we might see religious selection as part of our educational furniture, we are one of just four countries identified by the OECD that even allow this in the state sector, the others being Estonia, Ireland, and Israel.

Education Secretary Justine Greening
Education Secretary Justine Greening

2. Catholic schools perform better than other schools

It is a further sign of the ‘ignore-the-evidence-ignore-the-experts’ zeitgeist which we now live with that this claim can even still be made. It is also another triumph of Catholic Education Service spin and dishonesty.

It has been proved time and time again that any difference in the performance between religious and other schools is attributable entirely to the socio-economically skewed intake that religious selection produces. This is the point made by academics Stephen Gibbons and Olmo Silva in their paper Faith Primary Schools: Better Schools or Better Pupils?.  It is evidenced by the research of the Fair Admissions Campaign, which found that  though a disproportionate number of religiously selective schools feature in the top 100 best-performing schools by GCSE results, those schools take an average of 44% fewer children from poorer backgrounds than would be expected given their area. For the top 10 ranked religiously selective schools, that figure is 56%. And this effect has even been acknowledged in a report published by Christian think tank Theos which states that ‘the body of evidence appears to suggest [the better performance of faith schools] is probably primarily the outcome of selection processes’.

So, it matters not a jot that Catholic schools are ‘more likely to be located in deprived communities’, as the PM mentioned in her speech, because they’re not actually admitting the deprived children from those communities.

Either the CES has been successful in obscuring this evidence from Government – surprising given that it is also recognised in a research paper for the House of Commons Library– or the Government has wilfully ignored it. Neither looks particularly good.

3. Catholic schools are more ethnically diverse

If this sounds wrong, it’s because it is.

In fact, Catholic schools are ethnically diverse only to the extent that the Catholic population within urban areas (where the majority of Catholic state schools are situated) is diverse. More revealing, however, is that Catholic schools admit far fewer children from ‘Asian’ backgrounds given their local areas than pretty much any other kind of school in the country. 2013 research found that one in eight Catholic schools didn’t have any ‘Asian’ pupils at all, compared to just one in 729 schools with no religious character.

Furthermore, analysis of the school ethnicity data used by the Government in its green paper reveals that the cap has a significant impact on diversity within Christian settings. At CofE free schools (i.e. that opened under the cap), 63% of pupils are classified as of ‘white ethnic origin’, but at fully religiously selective CofE schools, 78% of pupils are white. At ‘other Christian’ free schools, 55% of pupils are white, but at ‘other Christian’ schools that are fully selective, 85% of pupils are white.

Of course, none of this is to mention that religious diversity is just as important as ethnic diversity, if not more so, and I would like to see anyone try to claim that Catholic schools perform well in this regard. If diversity is what the Government is after, Catholic schools aren’t their guys.

ces

4. Catholic schools are needed to meet demand

One of the great myths present in the faith school debate, peddled chiefly by the CES of course, is that there is demand for faith school places. Unfortunately, it is a myth that again the Government has bought into.

For the avoidance of doubt, there is very little demand for Catholic schools, and much less than existing provision caters for. What there is demand for is good schools and since, for the reasons given above, Catholic schools often get good results, parents can often be seen gravitating towards those of them that perform well. The numbers bear this out.

Asked to pick their top three factors from a list of twelve that most inform their decisions about which school to send their children to, just 9% of parents picked religion. The vast majority, unsurprisingly, picked the performance of the school, how easy it was to get to, and what kind of area it was in, as well as other factors like facilities and class sizes.  A similar poll found that just 5% of parents picked ‘Grounding of pupils in a faith tradition’ as important to their choice of schools and 3% picked ‘transmission of belief about God’. A third places in the state sector are already at religious schools; 10% are at Catholic schools. The idea that there is significant demand for more faith school places is simply nonsense.

It’s also worth mentioning that religious selection is hugely unpopular among the public. The most recent poll on this found that 73% of people thought schools should not be able to discriminate on the basis of religion in their admission arrangements. So even if it could be shown that there was demand for faith school places, that still wouldn’t justify allowing all new schools to religiously discriminate for all of their places.

Lastly, and crushingly, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that many of the people trying to get into Catholic schools under the faith criterion are not really Catholic at all. Polls have shown that as many as 36% of parents have lied or would be willing to lie about their religion in order to get their child in a good, local school. And the Church’s own figures reveal that Catholic baptisms are moving away from birth and towards school admission deadlines in terms of when they’re carried out. While baptisms of children under one fell by 5% from 2001 to 2012, the number of late baptisms (almost all by age 13) rose by a staggering 29%. The willingness of parents to game the system (and who can blame them) should not be taken as evidence for high demand of Catholic schools.

5. ‘Choice

The last myth to deal with, again mentioned by the PM, is that this policy will increase choice for parents. We are surely not alone in seeing that religious selection is inherently the enemy of parental choice – it is the process by which schools choose children, instead of children and parents choosing schools.

And even if that wasn’t true, let’s not forget that (ostensibly) increasing the choice for the 10% of the population who are Catholic has the effect of limiting the choice of the 90% who are not. As one parent whose experience was previously detailed on this site put it, ‘we had less choice of taxpayer-funded schools than someone whose child was a Catholic, has been baptised etc. Any of those people can of course apply to non-faith schools and get an equal chance of a place to us, but the converse is not true’. Well quite.

And finally…

Even setting to a side all of the above, would that make the PM’s proposals any better? We think not, because whatever the reasons, discriminating against children on the grounds of their parents’ religion, and then dividing them up on that basis, is fundamentally wrong. We’ll leave you now with the irrefutable words of the Irish Roman Catholic Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Dr James Doyle, who said this to a parliamentary committee in 1830 – how little progress we’ve made:

‘I do not see how any man, wishing well to the public peace, and who looks to Ireland as his country, can think that peace can ever be permanently established, or the prosperity of the country ever well secured, if children are separated at the commencement of life on account of their religious opinions. I do not know any measure which would prepare the way for a better feeling in Ireland than uniting children at an early age, and bringing them up in the same schools, leading them to commune with one another, and to form those little intimacies and friendships which often subsist through life. Children thus united, know and love each other, as children brought up together always will; and to separate them is, I think, to destroy some of the finest feelings in the hearts of men.’

FSA team

Girls banned from going to university

“No girls attending our schools are allowed to study and get a degree. It is dangerous.”

YeGlasses-and-Torah-Jewish-schools1-1068x801sterday the Independent published a document, written in Yiddish, which detailed the decree of the prominent strictly Orthodox Charedi Jewish sect Satmar. The decree, aimed at the independent schools it operates in both the UK and around the world, reportedly says this:

“It has lately become the new trend that girls and married women are pursuing degrees in special education. Some attend classes and others online. And so we’d like to let their parents know that it is against the Torah.

“We will be very strict about this. No girls attending our school are allowed to study and get a degree. It is dangerous. Girls who will not abide will be forced to leave our school. Also, we will not give any jobs or teaching position in the school to girls who’ve been to college or have a degree.

“We have to keep our school safe and we can’t allow any secular influences in our holy environment. It is against the base upon which our Mosed was built.”

As shocking as this is, it’s nothing new.

Just a few months ago a judge upheld Ofsted’s decision to ban a Charedi school in Stamford Hill from admitting new pupils because it was, among other things, ‘fail[ing] to encourage respect for women and girls’ and teaching pupils ‘that women showing bare arms and legs are impure’. Last year, too, two schools in London reportedly wrote to parents to say that ‘no child will be allowed to learn in our school’ if they were driven in by their mothers, as this went ‘against the laws of modesty within our society’. The schools were forced to drop the ban after the Equality and Human Rights Commission deemed it ‘unlawful’.

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A picture of the decree, originally published by the Independent.

In April, a Jewish private school was failed by Ofsted because ‘pupils demonstrated stereotypical views on the roles of men and women, with men “going to work” and women “cooking and cleaning”’. And last year the Rabia Girls’ and Boys’ School in Luton was criticised by inspectors for, among other things, teaching a design and technology syllabus which ‘limits girls to activities on knitting and sewing’.

We could go on, believe me, and those are just the schools we know about. As has been well-publicised, not least on this site, the existence of illegal, unregistered Charedi schools has been an open and shamefully unaddressed secret for years.

But this is by no means a problem specific to Jewish schools, or indeed to any other kind of ‘faith’ school. And that’s the problem. For too long religion has been allowed to range free in our schools and run roughshod over the education of our children. As long as this is the case, we’ll be forced to come on here time and time again to highlight yet more tragic and heartbreakingly avoidable failings in UK schools.

Until the next time…

FSA team

A dictatorship which does not aim to teach but rather to control

“I had spent years in school and I felt like I knew nothing. I was extremely anti-social with no idea how to make friends. The people I knew, I had known forever, and I was desperate to be free from my cult-like surrounding.”

2016_08_18_lw_v1_fundamentalist_xtian_schoolWith every sentence of writing this I have felt guilty but have come to understand that this feeling is familiar as long as I’m doing anything I know ‘they’ would not like. So, I carry this guilt, and have already decided that if this can save one person from the struggle that I have had to face then it’s worth it.

As someone who attended an Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) school from the ages of 3 – 15 I learned not to question and not to ask questions, because you must be obedient and “obey them that have the rule over you.”

As with most faith schools my parents attended the church which had services held on both days of the weekend. This meant that unless I was ill, I simply attended that building 7 days a week. I had no external life and didn’t know what living was. All I knew was to work as diligently as possible and be completely passive. When I look back on my school life I wonder how I survived.

The majority of ACE schools seem to be linked to churches. Every subject taught is infused with religion and a perception of the way one ought to behave. There was constant segregation between the boys and girls and healthy friendships between the sexes were quickly put a stop to. Mobile phones had to be turned in at the beginning of the day and were returned at the end. There was a lot of unfairness, which was especially evident when you consider that every authority figure had their own children in the school and there was no way they were going to let anyone be better than their kids. If you had talent, it would be hidden. You could get through the workbooks, or PACEs (Packets of Accelerate Christian Education), as long as you were not catching up to their kids. When I did, my literature PACE was taken away.

From 11 years old you were considered a ‘homeschooler’ which meant no more music or art classes.  It was just devotions and PACE work (in your ‘office’ with dividers to ensure you had no contact with the other children) until I was finally able to leave. If it sounds like a prison or is reminiscent of the film Matilda, I also made that connection.

'Offices' in an ACE school
‘Offices’ in an ACE school

Upon leaving, I had no respect for education and found it pointless. I had spent years in school and I felt like I knew nothing. I was extremely anti-social with no idea how to make friends. The people I knew, I had known forever, and I was desperate to be free from my cult-like surrounding. Only I wasn’t able to fly.

To say I had a culture shock when I left and went to college is an understatement. Here I was free to be like other teens, free to socialise, and explore the outside world that I longed to get into. But I struggled to adapt. I soon realised that I was not as incredibly smart as the A-star student that was depicted from my ACE grades. The reason for that is because the ACE curriculum does not actually teach you, you teach yourself. You do not have to learn and all that is required are memorisation skills. You memorise so you can pass the test and then you very quickly forget the rest. My grades had fooled me, my student convention medals had duped me, and nothing I had meant anything in the real world.

“I thought people outside were evil because in my mind if the leaders and teachers are the most righteous and they deliberately crush beautiful potential out of children how much worse must the others be.”

When I dropped out of college my spirit was broken. I had no idea what to do or what I was good at or who I was. I felt disabled in every way and fell into a deep depression. I barely left my house for two years and remember being so low that it was a struggle to say my name if there were more than two people in a room. I only wanted to disappear. The effects couldn’t be denied on one trip when I remember travelling in a car with someone and they unexpectedly  turned down the school road.   I literally climbed into the car boot just in case someone from there was walking by. At this point I knew I was experiencing some type of trauma but I had no idea how to deal with it. I wanted to be fixed. It seemed  there was no cure from the anxiety that would have me on edge constantly because I would need to be prepared just in case the head teacher had an outburst that she would direct towards me.

There was so much public humiliation and slandering of children for such menial and ridiculous things. The whole system of merits and demerits, talking in class, and the dreaded ‘vestry’ that you would be called into if you were in trouble or if they felt like you were developing a mind of your own and they wanted to put a stop to it. This room was mostly used to intimidate and instil fear into children as they were interrogated for periods of time; it also occasionally meant the paddle.

Packet’s of Accelerated Christian Education (PACEs)

The head teacher and pastor genuinely seemed to get a high from breaking children’s spirits.  It was as if your fears and tears recharged their batteries.  The head teacher also thought of herself as one of God’s prophets. There were plenty of occasions where she felt she could predict our futures . For the girls in the room, the prediction was almost always a teen mum. One instance she went around the room inflicting her predictions: ‘do you wanna have a baby at 15’, ‘do you wanna be a shoplifter’, ‘do you wanna grow up and be a rapist’, all whilst reinforcing a message that unless you follow my rules this is how you will end up.

It seems far-fetched and outrageous that this could go on. An Ofsted inspection gave a good report. Of course they would because these people were master manipulators. They knew how to make things appear. Inspectors were given the schoolwork of the teachers’ children. They spoke to the prefects who were all part of the family also.

“To sum up my experience, the ACE curriculum, along with the types of people that seem to gravitate towards it, is a dictatorship which does not aim to teach but rather to control.”

One of the hardest things is how alone you feel. It’s an abuse that is so strategic that it can’t be pinpointed down to one thing. You can try and explain but it is something that you have to have experienced to really understand. I just wanted to avoid people because they would never understand how I felt, or they might be evil. I thought people outside were evil because in my mind if the leaders and teachers are the most righteous and they deliberately crush beautiful potential out of children how much worse must the others be. I grow weary of trying to explain the gaps on my CV – time after I left that was utilised on catching-up and learning things I should have had the opportunity to learn about in school. An interview means questions and that takes me right back to the child in a vestry.

Lost and hopeless seems to be a recurring theme from attending these schools. They are intentional in their propagandist messages (through the comics) that there is only one way to live and that is their way. Submit to their will or be punished and doomed to hell. They use religion as a form of slavery, making it seem that they are directly linked to God and to oppose them makes you anti-Godly.

'Propagandist messages' in an ACE comic strip
‘Propagandist messages’ in an ACE comic strip

With this belief imposed upon you when you’re barely out of nappies you can only imagine how difficult it is to reprogram your mind and reconstruct a puzzle for which there are no pieces. To sum up my experience, the ACE curriculum, along with the types of people that seem to gravitate towards it, is a dictatorship which does not aim to teach but rather to control. The ACE system provides them with a way to legally abuse children and render them useless outside of their school gates.

I have since tried many things to help my recovery, but now realise that I can’t recover. It would mean going back to who I was previously, which was a toddler. Now, I can only try to become the adult I want to be. It’s a daily journey that I take literally one hour at a time, on a learning process that has meant going back to start over in a world that is decades ahead of you.

Anonymous

P.S. To any parents who think this is a good system where their child/children will learn Biblical principles (I understand you wanting your kids to have a firm spiritual foundation if that is your belief), please realise that your child/children do not leave school and immediately enter Heaven’s pearly gates. They will then have a life to live for which they will be gravely unprepared.