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The National Secular Society have produced a concise and easily sharable briefing setting out the major issues with faith schools, and how you can support the campaign.
MYTH: "Faith schools give parents greater choice" Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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MYTH: "Faith schools achieve better results" Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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MYTH: "Faith schools are better at teaching children morals" Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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MYTH: "Faith schools are necessary to protect parents' religious freedom" Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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MYTH: "Faith schools don't do any harm – why not just let them be?" Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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MYTH: "We are a Christian country, so therefore it is only right that we have Christian schools that teach our Christian values" Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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MYTH: "Children can just opt out of religious activities at faith schools" Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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MYTH: "Church schools are for everyone. Church schools aren't faith schools." Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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MYTH: "Faith schools help to relieve the burden on the state by funding our children's education" Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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Faith school myth MYTH: "We're stuck with them" Get the facts with our faith school myth buster.
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- 58% of the adult population oppose faith schools and only 30% say they have "no objection" to faith schools being funded by the state.
Source: Opinium (2014) - Only one third of adults in Britain approve of state funding for faith schools. Nearly half actively disapprove, and the rest say they 'don't know'.
Source: YouGov/Westminster Faith Debates | Related: Opinion poll shows big opposition to faith schools (2013) - 59% of teachers in England support an end to new faith schools and 51% support ending state funding for faith schools.
Source: TeacherTapp (2019) | Related: Teachers increasingly oppose faith schools and the discrimination they cause - Religious and non-religious teachers in non-faith schools in England both feel comfortable discussing religion (76% of both groups agree that they are comfortable). Figures diverge in faith schools, where 69% of non-religious and 85% of religious teachers feel comfortable discussing religion.
Source: TeacherTapp (2019) | Related: Teachers increasingly oppose faith schools and the discrimination they cause - 75% of non-religious teachers in non-faith schools in England would prefer not to teach in a faith school. Of non-religious teachers in faith schools 46% would prefer working in a non-faith school. Among religious teachers 23% in non-faith schools prefer working in a non-faith school.
Source: TeacherTapp (2019) | Related: Teachers increasingly oppose faith schools and the discrimination they cause - Only a quarter of people in Britain who might have a school-age child say they would send him or her to a faith school.
Source: YouGov/Westminster Faith Debates | Related: Opinion poll shows big opposition to faith schools (2013) - People say that academic standards matter most in choosing a school. 70% said they would choose a school on the basis of its academic standard; 23% said they would choose on basis of ethical standards; 5% said they would choose on the basis of giving a "grounding in faith tradition"; and only 3% for "transmission of belief about God".
Source: YouGov - There is no evidence that religious ethos contributes to academic achievement in schools.
Source: Institute for Public Policy Research| Related: "No evidence" that denominational schools are academically superior, study finds (2017) - Primary faith schools are more ethnically segregated than schools of no faith.
Source: Challenge, SchoolDash and the iCoCo Foundation| Related: Report confirms deep ethnic divisions in English faith schools (2017) - Faith schools tend to be more socio-economically exclusive than non-faith schools. Comprehensive secondary schools with no religious character admit 11% more pupils eligible for free school meals than live in their local areas. Comprehensive Church of England secondaries admit 10% fewer; Roman Catholic secondaries 24% fewer; Jewish secondaries 61% fewer; and Muslim secondaries 25% fewer.
Source: Fair Admissions Campaign | Related: New research reveals socio-economic segregation impact of faith schools (2013) - 69% of people in Northern Ireland support integrated education.
Source: Sky Data | Related: NSS calls for school integration in NI amid religious polarisation - Between January 2000 and January 2017 the proportion of faith schools increased steadily, from 35% to 37% of primaries and from 16% to 19% of secondaries.
Source: House of Commons Library
According to research in a 2018 report by the National Secular Society (The Choice Delusion):
- Almost three in ten families across England live in areas where most or all of the closest primary schools are faith schools. There is significant regional variation and the problem is more prevalent in rural areas. However, even in urban areas around one in four families live in areas with high or extreme restrictions.
- In 43.4% of rural areas restrictions on non-faith school choice are categorised as "high" or "extreme". In fact, 53% of rural primary schools are faith-based.
- 20.6% (7,727) of those who missed out on their first choice of a non-faith primary school in September 2018 were assigned a faith school. This includes 1,398 people who had made all their preferences (typically five) for a non-faith school.