Few things are guaranteed to provoke stronger reactions from parents than the difficulty of getting places in good state schools. Add religion into the mix and you have a heady cocktail. No surprise then that “faith schools” has become a subject of perennial debate. The highly polarised positions taken on issues relating to religious identity have exacerbated social divisions and made it more difficult for us to live in an inclusive manner.

Part of the problem with knowing what to do with faith schools is the politicisation of the evidence. Campaign groups collect dossiers of research and “data banks of independent evidence.” There is, of course, no reason why such groups shouldn’t be able to grind their axes in a way that suits their interests. Nonetheless, “independent evidence” should be handled with care because the facts are rarely straightforward or uncontestable and rarely, if ever, speak for themselves – they are invariably selected and interpreted.

Those who advance the case for faith schools draw on one set of research (mainly related to academic results); while the other side point to data which suggests that the institutions exacerbate social divisions. There’s lots of heat, but almost no light for ordinary parents and children. To try and tackle this, the religion and society think tank Theos has compiled a summary and analysis of existing research looking at some of the key political questions such as: Are faith schools racially divisive? Are they elitist? Do faith schools have material effects?

The summary relates only to voluntary-controlled and voluntary-aided schools, as there is not yet sufficient research in academies or free schools. The findings, tentative as they are, indicate that faith schools are neither a silver bullet for academic attainment nor a strong driver of division. A faith-based education isn’t magic; it does not undo the effects of wider social and economic disadvantage. Indeed, for those that have a degree of power over their own admissions criteria, it seems that socio-economic “sorting” rather than the “faith factor” may be the main factor in higher achievement in education.Nor, however, are they, as some critics make them, overly mono-cultural or sites of social division of tension. On the contrary, they tend to draw from ethnic minorities as much – in some cases more, in other cases less – as ordinary community schools.

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

Image by Lynne Featherstone