Michael Gove and the “atheist schools”

By Terry Sanderson

The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, faced a House of Commons Education select committee this week to answer questions about the Academies Act. It became law yesterday after having been rushed through Parliament with scandalously inadequate scrutiny, given the scale of the changes and the complexity of our education system.

The newspapers majored on Gove’s welcome for Richard Dawkins’ apparent desire to open an “atheist school”. It made a wonderful distraction from the awkward questions that need answering about “faith schools”. (Between 35 and 40 of the present 150 applications for academy status are “faith-based”).

Faith groups wanting to open new academies must pledge that they would restrict selection on grounds of religion to 50 per cent of their places. (And indeed, converting “faith schools” can retain their current admission arrangements even though oversubscribed ones could result in 100% religious selection.) However, Mr Gove said he doubted whether it would work the other way round and said bizarrely. "I don't think we will have children saying in assembly, 'Our Father, which art not in heaven.'"

One wonders how many “Muslim schools” are going to be welcoming 50 per cent of non-Muslims into their Koran-pushing midst – or, indeed, how many non-Muslims would want to expose their children to fundamentalist religious indoctrination on a daily basis.

Mr Gove says that safeguards will be put in place to stop extremist religious sects getting their hands on state-funded schools. Oh really? During the debate in the House of Lords on the Academies Bill, Baroness Murphy revealed: “Now take the case of the Ebrahim Academy in Whitechapel, an academy school for boys. It is highly selective and employs only male Islamic teachers. The school day is... divided into two sections. The school day begins with Tahfeez, which is reciting the Koran and getting the pronunciation right, which takes up half the day. Then the national curriculum takes up the second half of the day. It is a state-funded, tax-funded madrassah for the Islamic faith.”

It is reported that the Ebrahim Academy is contemplating applying for Academy status. Can anyone imagine a Government minister saying to the people who run this indoctrination centre: “Not likely”? An uproar over Islamophobia would follow as sure as night follows day.

Mr Gove says that he will ban the teaching of creationism in science lessons. How, in that case, is he going to cope with the Seventh Day Adventist School, presently state-funded? The Adventists’ whole religion is based on creationism (see the sixth of their “28 Fundamental Beliefs” here).

It seems to me that the rush to get this legislation through has left open so many loopholes that the religious extremists will drive a coach and horses straight through it.

And what about those parents who would prefer not to have their children indoctrinated by religious proselytisers while they are at school?

Mr Gove has said: "One of the principles behind our education reforms is to give people the maximum amount of choice so that those people, and they may not themselves necessarily have a very strong religious faith, but who believe that the ethos and values of faith-based education are right for their child, have that choice but others who want a different approach can take it as well." Indeed, Mr Gove, whose two children attend primary faith schools, told the cross-party group of MPs that he "recognised that there are some people who explicitly do not want their children educated in a faith-based setting".

Yet, Mr Gove’s encouraging words are difficult to reconcile with his concession to demands from the churches that religious education and collective worship will continue to be a statutory requirement in the new academy system (as it is in other schools). So, as the law now stands it would be impossible to set up a religion-free publicly funded school.

We throw down the gauntlet to Mr Gove to demonstrate that he will carry through his mantra of choice without fear or favour to its logical conclusion – and reverse the legal requirements for daily religious worship and “mainly Christian” RE. Or do I detect that the seemingly cardinal principle of “choice” is subordinate to a greater and more noble one common to at least the two largest UK political parties: give the churches everything they want? We would be delighted for Mr Gove to prove us wrong, and if he does, I will be the first to raise a cheer.

National Secular Society

Challenging Religious Privilege

Michael Gove and the “atheist schools”