If you want to stir up a really nice, big juicy public argument you are going to need some emotive ingredients. Let’s start with children. To that you could add education, and the difficulty of getting into good state schools, particularly for those who based in London. Finish with a hefty dose of religion and you’re left with a very promising cocktail of indignation, offence and defensiveness: the faith schools debate.

This can make it pretty difficult for ordinary parents and children to get a handle on what’s going on. Those on either side of the argument draw on research to back up their positions, congratulating themselves on an evidence–based approach. The only problem is that tends to be different kinds of research. Those who advocate faith schools draws on that which demonstrates good academic results, while on the other side of the debate faith school critics point to another set of research to back up claims they exacerbate social division.

Both sides, entrenched in their positions, are over claiming. We have brought together the relevant evidence in one place in a new summary and analysis of existing research, entitled “More than an educated guess: assessing the evidence on faith schools”. It looks at some of the key questions around faith schools including: are faith schools divisive? Are faith schools elitist? And is there a faith schools effect? It shows that they are neither a silver bullet for academic attainment nor a strong driver of division or inequality. In so many ways, faith schools are just schools, and the debate around them unnecessarily overheated.

For instance, faith school critics have long maintained that they are exacerbating racial and ethnic divisions and harming social cohesion. This narrative dates from the Cantle Report on the riots in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham in 2001 which implied that “self–segregated” schools were partly to blame. Occasionally this claim is pushed so far as to be absurd and distasteful, as in this recent National Secular Society article which links the Nairobi bombings to the British faith school system. Our review of the evidence showed there is little reason to be concerned about this, as the “schools with a religious character” (as they officially known) are at least as good at other schools at promoting cohesion, and possibly better.

Elizabeth Oldfield | Read the full article on huffingtonpost.co.uk