Labour leadership candidates challenged over faith schools

As part of the Labour leadership hustings, the five prospective candidates (Diane Abbott, Ed Balls, David Miliband, Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham) have all faced a series of questions over their party’s unpopular policies surrounding faith schools. Despite their recent election mauling, it seems the leadership hopefuls remain as enthusiastic as ever over the role of faith groups in the education system.

At hustings organised by the Christian Socialists, all the candidates said that they supported faith schools in principle. It was only Andy Burnham who seemed to indicate his disapproval of discriminatory admission procedures, saying faith schools “should be open to all”. Unfortunately, he later went on to explain that he was encouraging faith schools to be open to all because “this would strengthen the position of faith schools in the community”. Mr Burnham is the only Christian of the five candidates.

Meanwhile, in an interview for the Guardian, NSS Honorary Associate Polly Toynbee probed Mr Balls on why, as a non-believer himself, he supported faith schools. He seemed rather vague in his reply, trotting out the same old justifications for keeping religious schools ­­– because they’ve been there for centuries, and they were providing free education before the state did. Balls did however concede that many of our best maintained schools have the ‘ethos and purpose’ it’s claimed parents want, without being religious.

Perhaps a clue as to why Ed Balls blindly supports faith schools comes from his reply to a question that came up during a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party. When the candidates were asked what were the most unpopular political decisions they’ve ever made, Ed Balls responded: “The most unpopular were the decisions on the systematic abuse of admissions to faith schools.”

Here, Balls was no doubt referring to accusations, including those made by Catholic activist Cristina Odone in a highly questionable report, that he was leading a “Government witch hunt” against faith schools after he commissioned a report to investigate the widespread abuse of admission codes by such schools.

Then, at a leadership rally in south London this week, David Miliband was asked by NSS campaigner, Stephen Evans, whether a Labour Party, under his leadership, would be as enthusiastic about faith schools as it had been while in Government. Miliband offered the familiar sounding response that as we have Christian schools, it’s only right that Muslim schools and Hindu schools are also allowed, adding “and they are now, thanks to a Labour Government”. The Labour leadership frontrunner went on to say “The purpose of schooling in Britain is to produce British citizens. Whatever school they may go to, whether a denominational school or community school, they’ve got to produce citizens who aren’t just adherent to a particular faith, they’ve got to be British Citizens”.

When challenged further about the lack of options faced by the non-religious when trying to get their children into local publicly funded schools and the discrimination they faced, he offered a solution of effective local education authorities to ensure there is adequate supply of places for all parents.

Stephen Evans commented: “Mr Miliband’s response gives the worrying impression that he deems it perfectly acceptable for our education system to be used by religious groups to inculcate children – just as long as they’re also British Citizens.

“His empty pledge to create more schools to address this problem misses the point and could in fact create more division in our communities. In many cases the problem isn’t that there aren’t enough places, it’s that children are denied access to local publicly funded schools simply because their parents don’t go to church. Increasingly parents are choosing to fake piety to obtain a school place for their child – a farcical situation in a modern secular democracy.”

Mr Miliband courted controversy earlier this year when it emerged he had sent his son to a Church of England school even though he himself was an atheist.

There is however better news on another key areas of interest for secularists. When the leadership candidates were asked at the meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party, whether they supported a 100% elected House of Lords with no Bishops, they all said they did.

See also:

I don't want to find God to find a good school (Evening Standard)