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An injustice we pay for
• IT was good to see a parent calling the bluff of the Rev Stephen Coles (Trust in God, but play by the school games ‘rules’, August 17).
Mr Coles had blamed “middle-class parents” for playing the system in order to dominate the admissions to “coveted” church schools. The unnamed parent made it clear he was only playing by the rules the church had set down, and therefore it was the church’s fault he had to be dishonest and manipulative to get his child into a school funded by all of us through our taxes.
It is time the Church and the government took some responsibility for the injustice meted out to parents by religious schools. It seems incredible that, in these days of equality and human rights, the churches are still permitted to practise such blatant religious discrimination, using state money to do it.
The Church of England operates something like a third of all schools in our education system, and in some of those schools the religious entry requirements are so stringent that only by lying and cheating can the average parent get past them.
Being forced to go to church against one’s natural conscience and inclination (as the parent who wrote last week was obliged to do) is also, surely, a breach of human rights. Yet this is often what the church requires in order for parents to gain access to schools they’ve already paid for through their tax contributions.
It is nothing short of scandalous. No wonder these schools perform so well in the league tables when they are populated by children from supportive, affluent families prepared to put in extra time at the school as well as church in order to get the education they want for their child.
It is a self-perpetuating cycle of privilege begetting privilege – and we all have to pay for it. And that’s before we get to the racially divisive elements of these schools. The time for a thorough rethink of this whole unjust system is long overdue.
TERRY SANDERSON
President, National Secular Society
Red Lion Square, WC1
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