Ofsted on Church Schools
There have been accusations about Church schools being divisive. Ofsted’s report, though, says that faith schools score highly on community cohesion (that includes having meaningful interaction between people from different backgrounds. The Church Mouse reports here, including this clip from the report:
For secondary schools, however, there is clear evidence that Faith schools are awarded substantially higher inspection gradings on this characteristic than Community schools. Faith school grades are similar to those in Foundation schools, but with no Faith schools being graded ‘inadequate’.This finding is particularly relevant to the debate about schools’ contribution to community cohesion – and runs completely counter to those who have argued that because Faith schools have a distinctive culture reflecting their Faith orientation and are responsible for their admissions that they are ‘divisive’ and so are so [sic] contribute to greater segregation amongst their communities. This is clearly not supported by the most recent Ofsted inspection evidence reported here.
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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Can I point out that the OFSTED exercise was not looking at state so-called ‘faith schools’ – it was looking at independent schools. So the primary segregation is (as the report notes) financial, and it notes that those who attend the schools are not representative of the local community.
Independent schools are divisive in a different way. Amongst those who oppose so-called ‘faith schools’ there will be some who have no problem with independent schools and would therefore uphold their right to exist; others hold to the comprehensive ideal. For this Reformed Church minister, however, schools funded by the taxpayer should not be run by religious organisations : this is a matter of theological principle. I also have a problem with the concept of ‘faith school’ – several older members of my church remember the days when the local CofE school they attended labelled them ‘heathens’ and treated them as such, denying them privileges their Anglican fellow-pupils had.