Ruth Kelly’s Cynical Attempt To Divert Attention From The Dangers Of “Faith Schools”

The announcement this week that religious leaders had recommended that so-called faith schools should teach about the principles of the main religions, rather than just their own, has been dismissed as a cynical ploy by the National Secular Society. (See story here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2052978,00.html.)

The recommendation, launched jointly by Education Minister Ruth Kelly and signed by the usual suspects from the “faith communities” said that faith schools should teach religious education according to guidelines issued by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, in 2004 (http://www.qca.org.uk/downloads/9817_re_national_framework_04.pdf).

These guidelines – which are non-statutory and can be discarded by those who don’t agree with them – recommended that time should be set aside in RE lessons for teaching about all major religions, and if appropriate, non-religious philosophies.

The official guidelines contained endorsements from religious bodies and the British Humanist Association, but were dismissed by the NSS as a “charter for indoctrination”. We stand by that assessment. The cursory mention of non-religious approaches to life in the guidelines is derisory and simply gives religious groups the opportunity to claim that they have “included the non-religious” when the concessions are pathetically small – and optional. The idea that faith schools – committed as they are to indoctrination – would tell their pupils at any stage “It’s OK to be an atheist” is absurd. It is their stated aim to “bring pupils to the faith”.

This latest attempt to pretend that faith schools are going to be forced to open up their religious education classes to a multi-faith approach is just a cynical ploy to mislead critics about the dangers of their plans to open hundreds more religious schools, many of them Muslim. There is no need for any school to take the slightest bit of notice of these recommendations if they don’t want to, and many of them don’t want to.

Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported the head of Leicester Islamic Academy, Dr Mohamed Mukadam, as saying: “It is not required by law. We teach our young people they have a duty and responsibility to respect fellow human beings. The best way to do that is through their own faith perspective.”

We suspect that every other Islamic school that comes into existence will think the same thing. Otherwise what is the point of having Islamic schools? What is the point of having any single faith schools if they aren’t going to proclaim the superiority of their own faith?

Joshua Rowe, chairman of the school governors at the King David Jewish school in Manchester said: “Let’s be realistic here. Some pupils in religious schools have no inkling of other faiths at the moment. The government has been driving this agreement over concerns that faith schools produce insular graduates.”

Official statistics that the Government never mention show that two-thirds of young people define themselves as non-religious.

This announcement just happens to come a week before the government launches its new education plans that controversially include the creation of hundreds of new religious schools. Many influential people are gravely worried by this development. The government is trying to head them off at the pass. We certainly hope that they won’t be fooled by this empty gesture from religious leaders who are desperate to get their propaganda stuffed into the heads of young people when they are at their most vulnerable.

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