Few things are guaranteed to provoke stronger reactions from parents than the difficulty of getting places in good state schools. Add religion into the mix and you have a heady cocktail. No surprise then that “faith schools” has become a subject of perennial debate. The highly polarised positions taken on issues relating to religious identity have exacerbated social divisions and made it more difficult for us to live in an inclusive manner.

Part of the problem with knowing what to do with faith schools is the politicisation of the evidence. Campaign groups collect dossiers of research and “data banks of independent evidence.” There is, of course, no reason why such groups shouldn’t be able to grind their axes in a way that suits their interests. Nonetheless, “independent evidence” should be handled with care because the facts are rarely straightforward or uncontestable and rarely, if ever, speak for themselves – they are invariably selected and interpreted.

Those who advance the case for faith schools draw on one set of research (mainly related to academic results); while the other side point to data which suggests that the institutions exacerbate social divisions. There’s lots of heat, but almost no light for ordinary parents and children. To try and tackle this, the religion and society think tank Theos has compiled a summary and analysis of existing research looking at some of the key political questions such as: Are faith schools racially divisive? Are they elitist? Do faith schools have material effects?

The summary relates only to voluntary-controlled and voluntary-aided schools, as there is not yet sufficient research in academies or free schools. The findings, tentative as they are, indicate that faith schools are neither a silver bullet for academic attainment nor a strong driver of division. A faith-based education isn’t magic; it does not undo the effects of wider social and economic disadvantage. Indeed, for those that have a degree of power over their own admissions criteria, it seems that socio-economic “sorting” rather than the “faith factor” may be the main factor in higher achievement in education.Nor, however, are they, as some critics make them, overly mono-cultural or sites of social division of tension. On the contrary, they tend to draw from ethnic minorities as much – in some cases more, in other cases less – as ordinary community schools.

In so many respects, faith schools are just schools. Too often they are either falsely valorised or wrongly demonised – perhaps because we are increasingly inclined to play out our anxieties about difference, diversity and cohesion through this prism. The fact is, however, the debate fails to do justice to the diverse, complex and constantly shifting landscape of faith-based education, where there is real variety in practice. Speaking about faith schools as a monolithic block is misleading. So – surprise, surprise – assertions that changes in arrangements around faith schools would be a magic fix for the problem of pressures on oversubscribed schools or social cohesion are far too bold.

That is not to say there are no areas where change is needed. As mentioned above, wherever schools act as their own admissions authorities (as many of the voluntary-aided faith schools do) there is evidence of a degree of socio-economic sorting. Accordingly, the report recommends that these schools reassess their admissions policies to ensure they are not unfairly privileging the better off. The history of church schools, as they were before the term “faith schools” came into use during the late 1990s, reveals a concern for the poorest in society. This is being betrayed, however unintentionally, by admissions policies that disadvantage the poorest. Similarly, while faith schools have an understandable concern for maintaining their religious ethos, they have not yet done the necessary work in describing exactly what that is nor in how it can be maintained, without relying on restrictive admissions processes.

Ultimately, the faith schools debate isn’t just about schools at all. It’s about something much more wide reaching. We are seeing not just clashing visions of the purpose of education, but different understandings of how we conceive of our shared spaces and institutions in an era of deepening difference. When opponents of faith schools criticise them because they are socially divisive, exclusive, and have no positive benefits on children, they are generalising and pushing the evidence beyond what it can legitimately bear.

Conversely, when defenders of faith schools justify their existence with pragmatic arguments from higher academic attainment, they leave themselves vulnerable to criticism – because the reason for this currently looks to be related to admissions procedures – but also fail to lay out a principled case for the value of an education with a religious ethos in a plural society. A “grey washed” education system, where religious, cultural and philosophical differences are downplayed because that, it is claimed, seems the only way to avoid outright conflict, would not only be unattractive, but would also fail to reflect an increasingly diverse future. It would be better if we could find ways to balance equality and difference – both sides of this debate have some work to do.

Elizabeth Oldfield

This article originally appeared in Prospect 

Image from woodleywonderworks from flickr.com under the Creative Commons Licence.