A Critique on Faith Schools: Progress 8

By PA Cook

4th December 2018

Inclusion is the main educational concept I would like to critique, especially in-regards to ‘faith schools’ and their educational results in the UK league tables since 2008 onwards. Inclusion, by its very nature wants to include people in the processes of learning so that a students learning journey can be equal and it seems that non-secular education is working well compared to those studying with only secular beliefs, why? In ‘Globalisation and Education – Critical Perspectives’ by  Burbules and Torres (2000) they mention the fact that neoconservatives see teachers in a distrustful way and that pollution of the curriculum can occur, this the authors argue is a highly racialised understanding of the world. They go further to introspect the text, ‘The Bell Curve’ by Herrnstein and Murray (1994).

This work was claimed to be very popular at the time of its release in the books recent marketing output and the authors at the time argued for ‘genetic determinism’ to occur based around race and in some cases gender? Their conclusion that this book has since entrenched a lot of thought around race and actually has helped promote racial stereotyping and profiling that occurs today and especially in the West when it comes to dealing with multicultural and non-secular communities. So whilst the UK government of the day would like the policy of ‘every child to matter’ in reality there is no such thing evidently as non-secular based education as is not acceptable for all, which is very strange as I recall every morning singing ‘Church of England’ hymns in my schools assembly even though the majority of my peers had been secular and had not attended any place of worship whatsoever? This concept of ‘inclusive apartheid’ is nothing new as we can see if neoconservatives base their policies on ‘The Bell Curve’ and its romantic notions of how education should be delivered. There cannot be anything other than some form of apartheid occurring in the educational system somewhere down the line if they are always going to base their educational policies on what is acceptable to just a minority white Anglo Saxon demographic and fundamentally Christian culture in Britain. A report on BBC Radio 4 argued that an Anglican Church in the UK had its membership reduced by 90% due to its policy of allowing non English speaking people to attend its church and study the religion.  It seems that the mainly white middle class population found a larger Anglican church in the same area that didn’t have the same ethnic divide weighted against them. It appears they felt more comfortable being the majority it seems when it comes to practising their religion (BBC Radio 4. Radio, Online, 2016:na). In the work, ‘Globalisation and Education – Critical Perspectives’ Burbules and Torres (2000)  state; ‘Why should we as the authors of the book described, give false hopes to the poor and the less intelligent, most of whom will be black’ (Burbules and Torres, 2000:71).

And going back in time to one of the great ‘Civil Rights’ activists in America in the 1960’s Martin Luther King who’s biography suggests he was a practising Christian (Biography.com, Online, 2017:na). Stated most famously something similar, ‘how can we be called equal or how can we all be included in education if we are not all equally dining from the same table’ (Jordan, 1987:784). How can inclusive practices ever be anything but rhetoric to support neoliberal and neoconservative agenda setting? The language in the whole inclusive education movement in the UK is completely flawed by the very nature of the educational setting being so diverse that no policy on inclusion or inclusive practice technique could be designed or put in place to ‘make all things equal’. For all those lucky enough to have a private school education and to have studied Latin that translates as, ‘omnia aequalia facere’. Whilst governments can quantify success through league tables, the very things that can create inclusion amongst learners in poor and impoverished areas can suddenly be taken away from them as if to further expand on that neoconservative policy of putting people back in their place. This could be down to something simple as funding cuts in a particular area. To examine the concepts further I would like to critique the recent ‘Progress 8’ results key findings in 2016 from a first ever national release of such data recently (Whittaker,F and Dickens,J. Online, 2016:na). Muslim schools are not practicing ‘inclusion’ in any respect or adhering to the ‘Equality and Diversity Act 2010’ yet its learners are achieving higher results than all the other schools in the country. However the current government in the UK has lambasted the same faith schools in recent years for not conforming to its governments standards (National Secular Society, Online, 2016:na). What this result does possibly show that has been overlooked somewhat is that whilst the segregation of learners in genders is not acceptable to most in society today, what is occurring is that the learners are feeling valued and are allowed to succeed irrespective of their polarised learning environments. They are succeeding when other educational strategies in non faith schools are failing (Whittaker and Dickens, Online, 2016:na). In faith schools it seems every child does matter and this is a focus of some attention that allows the learners to perform unrestricted by other ‘norms’ and through other distractions to feel included in the educational process and therefore succeed. It will be interesting to see how over time the neoliberal and neoconservative alliances fair with the concept of inclusion in our multicultural society in the UK and if by the next release of ‘Progress 8’ results there hasn’t been a shift in the numbers favouring faith schools as the anomaly that surely it must be if we believe those highly paid authors of, The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray (1994). In the governments GCSE results data it shows for the very first time a national analysis of the ‘Progress 8’ scores (Whittaker and Dickens, Online, 2016:na).

It was very fitting after analysing each table that at section six of the release faith schools had outperformed all other schools in the results. In particular Muslim run faith schools had a greater percentage of success of 0.79 compared to the Church of England Schools result of only 0.02. This is a remarkable result from a series of schools in the country with an ethos that predisposes itself to segregation of its learners into genders. But how are ‘faith schools’ doing it? I worked with a Muslim ‘faith school’ in Bradford and I can testify two things, one that the work ethic and effort towards education is second to none and no distractions occur in the learners. And secondly whilst a patriarchal ethos does prevail in the schools and whilst they do segregate girls from boys my findings from experience of working in a Muslim college was that the girls had been more intelligent than the boys in their work, but that aspect was kept hidden due to the culture they worked within. However my professional discussions with female staff working in these organisations was always very positive especially if the female members of staff had arrived at their faith later in life funnily enough. The majority of Muslim females would open up to me as a non Muslim white male and they did tend to view Muslim men as rather less intelligent in the scheme of things and inform me of that fact on a regular basis. In an article in the Telegraph by Swaine (2008) he suggests that ‘faith’ leaders insist schools do well because of their religious ethos and a focus on traditional discipline and teaching methods’  (Swaine, Online, 2008:na). Swaine (2008) also reported in his article that ‘Muslim schools performed best overall, although they constitute only a fraction of the country's 7,000 faith schools. In the same article it was also suggested that Catholic schools being much sought after by parents should be devolved of their selection powers to avoid distortion in the school results, this was proposed by the Runnymede Trust - a multi-cultural think-tank (Runnymede, Online, 2016:na). But who are this trust and why would they say this? Looking further at this organisation and its website it appears to be owned by the London School of Economics. In the same year as the Telegraph Article Swaine (2008), Runnymede published a research paper by Berkeley and Vij (2008), titled ‘Right to Divide’ Faith Schools and Community Cohesion (Berkeley and Vij, Online, 2008:na). In this paper they produced a six point plan to clarify the role of faith schools in our education system?

1. End selection on the basis of faith.

2. Children should have a greater say in their education.

3. RE should be a part of the core national curriculum.

4. Faith schools should serve the most disadvantaged. 

5. Faith schools should value all young people

6. Faith should continue to play an important role in our education system

(Berkeley and Vij, Research Paper, 2008:3).  

My understanding of this plan was that as long as it is white Anglo-Saxon as the preferred ‘modus operandi’ then there is not a problem. Who are the London School of Economics? (LSE, Online, 2016:na). And why is the Runnymede think tank so obviously biased? Dr Berkeley is the deputy director of the trust, and Savita Vij is a research associate at the organisation? You could say that the LSE is the quintessential English University it dates back to 1895 when it was founded by the Fabian Society. According to the LSE website the University has the largest selection of foreign students of any university in the UK, 70% out of all of them. And just for the record the ‘Fabian Society’ founded the Labour Party in 1900 and has influenced and continues to influence British policy to this day as is evident by its research paper by Berkeley and Vij in 2008. I think it is also very interesting that as a staple of the UK ‘The Telegraph’ had to make a point with the ‘Runnymede’ piece to set their agenda as practising neoconservatives wanting to oppose the fact that faith schools especially Catholic or Muslim have any worth and this is indicative of their positionality in the British scheme of things and ultimately hegemonic agenda setting on their part. The director of the Catholic Education Centre also stated in the ‘Telegraph’ article that,’ Our success comes from fulfilling our mission, which is so much more than what Ofsted or the Government says a school must do (Swaine, Online, 2008:na). Every child matters and other UK government educational policies spring to mind and why is it that every faith school is trying to make a point in the article as if they need to really prove anything when the ‘Progress 8’ results speak volumes on how well they are doing? So why the attack on them and why is ‘Oona Stannard’ of the Catholic Education Centre having to defend her schools ethos so vehemently? This ‘Telegraph’ article goes back to 2008 and in 2016 the Progress 8 scores are still telling the same story and giving further credence to the fact that ‘faith’ run schools are outgunning non-secular schools in the UK in the national league tables.

At ‘Point 6’ in the Progress 8 report it was reported that Jewish Sikh and Muslim schools are way ahead of the curve and in some cases 20 points above the Church of England based schools (Whittaker and Dickens, Online, 2018:na). So the LSE and ‘The Telegraph’ have cause to be concerned as the status quo of all things according to standardised British policy is being eroded and since 2008 whatever has been proposed by ‘Runnymedia’ has not been taken very seriously at all, and how could it now when Progress 8 data has thrown a spanner in the works quite literally. In 2015 the UK government was accused of a Trojan horse policy in that it ‘doctored’ the traditional ‘RE’ GCSE with elements of non religious arguments intended to teach school children that atheism is also a wide spread and valid point of view (Espinoza, Online, 2015:na). Again reported by our good friends from the ‘Telegraph’ so putting non-belief on the agenda as well as further arguing the case for a more secular education system to prevail? But then why are non-secular faith schools doing so well in the league tables and now shining like the proverbial ‘Star of David’ in the Progress 8 reports? Because mainly of the strict regime of education that these faiths instruct along with the old ‘Catholic’ educational dogma new faiths introduced into the UK have the same rigour. They meter out the same discipline as like the favoured Conservative ‘Grammar’ school Victorian and Dickensian approach and in some respects it works compared to the 1970’s liberal Secondary Modern approach that didn’t. The question for all involved in education and government today in the UK surely must be, how do we deal with the success of the non-secular faith schools and what is next on the agenda, a complete ban on faith schools perhaps. And why not? The ‘Fabian’society would champion that notion entirely according to their plan (Berkeley and Vij, Online, 2008:na).

Bibliography

Burbules, C.N. and Torres, C.A. (2000) Globalisation and Education – Critical Perspectives, New York, Routledge.

Herrnstein, R. and Murray, C.A. (1994) The Bell Curve, New York, Free Press.

Jordan, W.D (1987) The United States Combined Edition, Prentice-Hall, USA

Torres, C.A. (1992) The Church, Society, and Hegemony: A Critical Sociology of Religion in Latin - Praeger Publishers, Westport, USA.

Research material and links:

Anglican Churches in the UK (2016) BBC Radio 4. 5th December, 17:30pm

Biography.com (2017) Martin Luther King https://www.biography.com/people/martin-luther-king-jr-9365086 [Internet] A&E Television Networks. [Date Accessed 5th December 2016]

Berkeley and Vij (2008) ‘Right to Divide’ Faith Schools and Community Cohesion https://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/Summaries/RightToDivide-Summary.pdf [Internet] London School of Economics [Date Accessed 5th December 2016]

Equality Act 2010. (2016) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents [Internet] UK Government website [Date accessed 13th October 2016]

Javier Espinoza (2015) All pupils at non-faith schools must study atheism, judge rules https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/12015859/Non-religious-views-should-not-have-been-left-out-of-new-GCSE-High-Court-rules.html [Internet] Telegraph Media Group Ltd [Date Accessed 5th December 2016]

Jon Swaine (2008) Faith school pupils 'outperforming others at every age'

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/3852653/Faith-school-pupils-outperforming-others-at-every-age.html [Internet] Telegraph Media Group Ltd [Date Accessed 5th December 2016]

LSE (2016) https://www.lse.ac.uk/About-LSE [Internet] London School of Economics [Date Accessed 5th December 2016]

National Secular Society (2016) ‘Conservative MP criticises division caused by faith schools’ https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2016/11/conservative-mp-criticises-division-caused-by-faith-schools [Internet] National Secular Society Ltd [Date Accessed 3rd December 2016]

Peters,R.S. (1965) The Concept of Education https://www.imd.inder.cu/adjuntos/article/595/The%20Concept%20of%20Education.pdf [Internet] Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd [Date Accessed 12th October 2016]

Runnymede (2016) https://www.runnymedetrust.org/ [Internet] London School of Economics [Date Accessed 5th December 2016]

Whittaker,F and Dickens,J. (2016) Progress 8 results 2016: Key findings from the first national data release https://schoolsweek.co.uk/progress-8-results-2016-key-findings-from-the-first-national-data-release/?utm_content=buffer23276&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer [Internet] Learning & Skills Events Consultancy and Training Limited [Date accessed 13th October 2016]