by Dr Mark Pike

I was surprised to read your headline in last week's Times Educational Supplement (TES) ‘Christian schools fail test of tolerance' and doubt if these statistics fairly represent the reality of life in most Christian schools which have a duty to teach children tolerance based on Christ's Golden Rule, ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.' (Luke 6:31). Maybe some people in our secular society are less tolerant of Christian schools than they should be? Perhaps they fail to appreciate and respect the perspective of believers who see faith as integral to learning? After all, the culture of a largely secular society exerts a pervasive influence on the way most of us think about matters like schooling. Arguably, Christian schools that teach children the Golden Rule should be considered a vital part of the educational sector in a diverse and truly tolerant society.

Dr Mark Pike
Principal Lecturer in Education at Plymouth University

The Times Educational Supplement (TES) front page headline ‘Christian Schools Fail Test of Tolerance' (21 January 2005) ought to win a prize for misrepresentation, though TES shares in a near universal confusion. The media have interpreted David Bell as making the claim that faith schools are failing to produce good citizens, are not teaching tolerance, and are a threat to the national identity. In fact Bell admits that his inspectors never assessed anything of the sort. All they did was assess how well schools are delivering the content of the NC citizenship curriculum (independent schools, incidentally, are not bound to that content). He cites no evidence of a link – good, bad, or indifferent – between content and outcome. Our experience is that Christian schools are doing a fine job of nurturing good citizenship and tolerance. Indeed Ofsted's own school reports back that conclusion. In contrast, an Ofsted survey of 14-16 year olds studying citizenship found that more than 50% of them either did not know what citizenship education is, or could offer no examples of what they had learned. Worse still, 40% of pupils ‘in the north' were opposed to learning about Britain's cultural diversity! It is inexplicable why Bell chose to target faith schools, or Muslim schools in particular.

Christian schools strongly support the aim of good citizenship and tolerance. They are less than happy with the NC curriculum, because it marginalizes faith and the role of faith communities. David Bell worries about religious segregation; we are concerned about the far greater problem of secular segregation. Graham Haydon made the relevant point more than a decade ago:

‘If any school can do the job of preparing people to participate in the democratic, plural, and not exclusively secular polity, it will to that extent be fulfilling an important role. And in this respect, religious schools may be better placed to carry out such a preparation than the average secular school ... it is only the secular school which can expose its pupils to one sort of thinking only; and the possibility of this should be seen as a risk rather than a merit of such schools.' (Journal of Philosophy of Education, 28 (1), 1994, page 73)

Ofsted and the TES may regard secularism as neutral; to many of us in the faith communities it is another, and often oppressive and intolerant, sectarian position, as David Bell's inconscionable attack has made only too clear.

Dr Arthur Jones
Education Consultant and ACT Director

Posted on 28 January 2005