Deborah Orr: Let's not do away with faith schools
It is not as if any of the young bombers had been educated at a Muslim school, private or public
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Your support makes all the difference.My first sight of the Red Hand of Ulster, in my own real life, not on a printed newspaper page or on a billowing marching banner, came when a girl called Mary brought a pendant into school. What an ugly thing it was, with the horrible hand enamelled on to a white diamond-shaped background, from which hung a fringe of goldie-looking chains. The other girls clamoured to look at the object, and mostly seemed impressed by it. A naive little girl, I remember being baffled by what it stood for, oblivious to its meaning, beyond the fact that it was powerful and threatening.
I vaguely knew that this thing was connected to the Orange marches, when parades would process through the streets, with a young man at the front twirling a baton, followed by a marching band and by beautiful flags, mostly portraying King Billy on horseback, and celebrating the Orange Lodges, which were secret places where men went. Sometimes we watched the marches, for they were flamboyant. But their atmosphere was always edgy rather then exciting.
These marches, I knew again only sketchily, were connected to the ancient feud that seemed to count for such a lot in my world - between the Catholics and the Protestants, who acted out their differences in football, in fighting, in chapel versus church and by sending their children to segregated schools.
It was about this time that I realised how the whole thing, in the west of Scotland, mirrored Ireland and the "troubles", and how much this faraway struggle dominated our lives. Yet here we were at our supposedly multi-denominational school, all Protestants, staring curiously at an ugly symbol of an ugly sort of hate. The Catholics were all educated across the road, at an identical school, built simultaneously, to serve the children of the newly built suburb we lived in. The church and the chapel, were similarly positioned, paired like dance partners but very much on opposite sides of the street.
The same thing goes on today, the same buildings, the same homes, the same families, even though Scottish sectarianism has calmed down quite a bit now. Very few people place the same cultural significance on the sort of Christian you are any longer. But still parents, and others, seem to prefer the segregation of their children from the tenderest of ages.
One of the most shocking examples of how big an issue this can become emerged early this decade when Irish parents were escorting their children to a segregated school through crowds of spitting and jeering neighbours. Horrified, I wrote in this newspaper that segregated state education should come to an end, because it institutionalises hateful sectarianism and involves the state in religious proselytising. I could not have been more sincere or certain in my convictions. A couple of days later, having read all the correspondence that the article provoked, I had changed my mind. All of the persuasive letters came from people involved in educating Catholic children, who expressed how persecuted my call to sweep away their institutions made them feel. Vulnerable already, and feeling like a hated minority, such suggestions felt to them like plans to annihilate their beliefs.
It is entirely understandable that there are calls now for Tony Blair's plans to encourage the formation of more Muslim schools in the state sector to be scrapped. Yet though I don't agree with the ethos of state-sector faith schools, I understand that to start demanding such a reversal of policy now would be folly. It is not, after all, as if any of the young bombers had been educated at a Muslim school, either private or public. All four had been taught in secular state schools.
Anyway, it is not among the handful of Muslim state schools that the problem lies. On the contrary, there are two academically successful state Muslim secondaries operating in the north of England. A state school in London - not a Muslim school, but one with a predominantly Muslim student body - has been turned round by its Muslim headmistress from failing school to beacon school in less than a decade. All of these schools have been deemed by Ofsted to be teaching their charges extremely well about the duties and responsibilities of life in a multi-faith society. It would be plain weird to discount these successes at this time.
But in the private sector there is a huge discrepancy between different Muslim schools. Some have done every bit as well on all counts as the state schools that have been praised highly by Ofsted. But in one, a school which did worse academically than virtually any other in Britain with 9 per cent of pupils getting five good GCSE passes, there are fears that the children are indeed being fed little but anti-Western propaganda.
It is here that the liberal dilemma, which Britain is finally facing up to, lies. What is the point of being discriminatory by declaring that because some private individuals are choosing dodgy private institutions to teach their children in, then the state sector suddenly has to be revolutionised? Whatever the arguments against faith schools, phasing them out cannot be based on a knee-jerk reaction to the crimes of an extremist minority. No good could come of such a motivation.
The idea that as many Muslim schools as possible should be brought into the state sector, all the better to isolate such anomalous institutions, is sound and is the compromise solution that the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary appear still to favour. Their critics say this is because they are religious, as if this is a form of corruption. But it was religious institutions that first championed the education of the masses, and the tradition of religious teaching in Britain is practical and cultural as much as spiritual.
At the same time, and this goes for all faith schools not just Muslim ones, the rules do need to be changed. Much has been written lately about how "multiculturalism" ought to involve give as well as take. This is no more true than in schools. It is appalling that a child can be barred from any state school on the grounds that his parents don't adhere to a certain religion, especially when those parents happens to have no choice at all about their taxes funding such schools.
I firmly believe state schools should be allowed to adopt and teach a particular religious ethos if they can demonstrate that doing so would serve the needs of their local community. But what they should not be allowed to do - or even, when you think about it, want to do - is select and reject their pupils on those grounds. Faith schools should be obliged to strive to reflect the social, cultural and the religious mix of the community they serve. Any child should be eligible to avail himself of that service.
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