Church schools

Ekklesia is discussing a report on the social makeup of church schools in this country. Apparently:

almost 19% of children living in the postcode area of church schools were from families eligible for free meals, but only 14% of the schools’ intakes were… The Church of England’s chief education officer, Canon John Hall, said…“If there were covert social selection for church schools – of which there is no actual evidence in this report – we would deplore it and seek to root it out.”

Now, I think that it is a good thing for the Church to run schools. I hope that we have something to offer to schools and their students. I also think that the other religions should also be able to be involved in schools in similar ways. However, if “church schools” are, in effect, socially selecting for nice middle-class children, there’s something very wrong. Christian schools should surely be doing what they originally did – offer better education to those who would not otherwise have access to it.

In other words, I would expect Christian schools to contain proportionately more of the disadvantaged children. Something is going wrong, I think.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 9:03pm on 14 February 2006
Category: Faith, Politics, Struggling