Once
again, the question of state funding for denominational schools has hit the
headlines. The immediate reason this time is the government's announcement
last week that it would not grant voluntary-aided status to a private Muslim
school in Brent, north London.
Baroness
Blatch, the Minister of State for Education, said that the Islamia primary school,
founded ten years ago by Yusuf Islam, formerly the pop singer Cat Stevens, did
not qualify for state funding because there were already more than enough state
primary school places in Brent. Muslims responded by denouncing the government
for pursuing a blatantly discriminatory policy. If state funding is all right
for 2,100 Roman Catholic, 2,000 Anglican, 21 Jewish and four Methodist schools,
they argue, why shouldn't Muslim schools get it too?
As just about
every quality newspaper has remarked in a leader, the Muslims seem to have a
strong case. The government's excuse for refusing state funding is feeble even
by its own execrable standards: the Islamia school is heavily over-subscribed,
with a 1,000-name waiting list even though it charges more than £1,000 a year
fees, and a majority of its 180 pupils live outside Brent. It is, by all
accounts, including that of John Patten, the Education Secretary, who visited
it earlier in the year, professionally run and regularly inspected, following
the National Curriculum to the letter.
More
important than the specific case of the Islamia school, the way that Muslim schools are
treated differently from those of other denominations is patently
unfair. According to the most reliable estimates, there are in the United
Kingdom today 1.8 million adult members of the established Anglican church, 1.9
million Roman Catholics, 1.2 million Presbyterians, 400,000 Methodists and
900,000 members of other Protestant denominations. Between 1975 and 1990,
total membership of Christian churches declined by 15 per cent. The only
Christian churches that have grown are evangelical and charismatic ones.
During the
same period, Islam became a firmly rooted part of British life, as did other
religions rare here until the wave of immigration from the Indian
sub-continent in the 1960s and 1970s. There are now more than one million adult
Muslims in the United Kingdom, 300,000 Hindus and 300,000 Sikhs. It is not
inconceivable that, within 25 years, Muslims will outnumber Anglicans in the
UK.
But if there
is a clear case for treating Muslim schools no differently from Anglican,
Roman Catholic, Jewish or Methodist schools, that does not necessarily mean
that state funding should be extended. It would be just as fair to withdraw it
from existing denominational schools and to make state education wholly
secular – and there are sound arguments for doing just that.
The most
important is based on the simple liberal principle that religious beliefs are
essentially private, personal matters. The state should ensure that people are
not persecuted for their religious beliefs (or indeed for the lack of them) and
should intervene to stop religious practices that break the law. But that
should be the end of its involvement. Just as it should do nothing to suppress
religious belief, it should do nothing to encourage it. Yet, by funding
denominational schools, that is precisely what the state is doing.
It is doing
it, moreover, in a way that flies in the face of the assumption, universally
applied to other spheres of life, that children do not have the experience to
make responsible decisions, even about personal matters. Sex is barred until
the age of 16, voting until 18 – but denominational schools operate on the basis
that there is nothing wrong with a person's choice of religion being heavily influenced,
if not determined by, teachers before he or she has reached the age of ten.
Broadening
the scope of denominational education would also increase racial segregation
in society as a whole, which in turn would exacerbate racial tensions. As the
Commission for Racial Equality used to put it (it has subsequently changed its
line): "Separate schools are in conflict with the pluralist principles of
'education for all', as not providing pupils with a common education experience,
as absolving schools from the need to adapt to a multi-cultural society and as
leading to community polarisation and isolation along racial lines."
Unfortunately,
such opinions are rarely voiced these days in British politics. Politicians of
all parties realise that, even though religious observance in Britain has
declined inexorably in the past century, there are votes to be had in religion.
For the
Conservatives, with little support among ethnic minority Hindus, Muslims and
Sikhs, defence of the status quo against calls for the extension of the
denominational schools system is a convenient means of playing the race card
to white voters, of a piece with being "tough" on "bogus
asylum-seekers". For Labour, which once argued for the abolition of
denominational schools (against the wishes of members in its north-western and
Scottish Catholic heartlands), promising to extend the system appears attractively
fair to liberal opinion and goes down very well in key marginal seats in the
Midlands and Yorkshire.
Ultimately,
however, the problem is not just one of political opportunism. The whole
question of state funding for denominational schools arises, in the end,
because of the privileges granted Anglicanism as the official religion of the
British state. As with so much that is wrong with British life, the only true
solution will come when a government dares to give our creaking constitution a
radical overhaul.
