Thank you for you careful and civil response, DMcG. It's good to see that at least one person, maybe two, can disagree without making snide and uncalled-for remarks! Much to disagree with still, however.

"In many cases, but by no means all, faith schools are seen by large numbers of people as better. And that is a matter of evidence in the form of the extent to which they are over-subscribed."

I don't take over-subscribed to be much of a measure of anything. What parents, governors and even Ofsted inspectors perceive is usually at odds with what actually goes on in schools. Successive governments have encouraged a sickening atmosphere of competition by publishing league tables, which are just about the worst measure of whether a school is giving children a worthwhile, happy and edifying experience. You appear to have been suckered into that ethos, unfortunately. There is widespread cheating in key stage testing that is connived in by teachers, head teachers and school governors. When you know it goes on, you either join in or you suffer. As for over-subscribed being a measure, well most boy band gigs are over-subscribed within seconds of the tickets going on sale. As our merkin cousins might say, go figure.

"The words people use to describe why they choose the school tend to be words like ethos and discipline. And better discipline gives less class disruption which helps better teaching. So many non-religious parents regard that as a price worth paying. Now, let us imagine that was not in the school, so that it became effectively a non-faith school. Would that improve things? Well, the best assumption we can make is that it would become very similar to all the existing non-faith schools, which are precisely the ones less favoured if a parent chose a faith school. So the best assumption we could make is that yes, the school would be worse without it."

I find that to be getting more and more convoluted by the sentence. I can't argue that good discipline and a positive ethos are not good things, but I'm failing to see how on earth you can connect those things to religion.

"so let me summarise that as the straight response you are seeking: I, and many other including a lot of non-believers, believe that might be a price worth paying."

You are unconsciously conflating two very distinct groups of people here under the banner "non-religious." There are those who detest religion of any kind and who would not on principle send a child to a faith school. Then there are the couldn't-care-lessers about religion. I know that church attendances are dire and I don't think that we are exactly overrun by militant atheists either, so let's be outrageous and estimate that the vast majority of people couldn't give a stuff. In that case, I think that very few people come into your category of thinking that faith schools are "a price worth paying". Whether it's a faith school or not doesn't really come into their thinking at all, does it? They want the school with the local good name, and principles don't come into it.

"I am not being glib about that. It has dangers and I am well aware of that. Nor am I saying 'indoctrination' is acceptable in general. We are well aware of how that has been used over the 20th century to enable no end of horrors. But 'indoctrination' is a loaded word and should not really be used for just for teaching people ideas you personally disagree with or you eventually find yourself in company with pete's claims that people are indoctrinated with a belief in evolutionism (I know, I know)...)"

Well let's take a look. Your religion is wholly predicated on your belief in God. You have no evidence for a God, you've never seen him, and all you have is ancient writings often of dubious provenance, the edicts of holy men, your ceremonies and traditions, the say-so of several demented witnesses who spoke to the Virgin or saw a statue moving and the confused writings of theologians. On top of that, your main man is supposed to have been the product of a virgin birth, who could raise the dead, turn water into wine and come back from the dead. You are so certain of all this that all your prayers and hymns assert the literal truth of it all. Now all this is what teachers tell children, from the age of five upward, in religious instruction classes. There will probably be a crucifix on the classroom wall depicting a scene of obscene violence that probably never happened, and there will certainly be the chanting of some of those prayers and the singing of hymns. You think that it's all right to do this to children regardless of their age and regardless of the truth, which is that most of what you're telling them is actually not the case. But you think that this is better that telling them the actual unvarnished truth, that there are severe doubts about all of it. You think that avoiding the real truth will help them to lead better lives and see deeper truths. Well excuse me for thinking that it all adds up to indoctrination. When we see other belief systems making similarly-unsupportable assertions we call it radicalisation. Ok, it's easier to get out of Christianity, but that's a pretty threadbare reason for commending that approach.

"As to the validity of the evidence on over-subscription, I find it a bit astonishing that you think the majority of non-religious parents are prepared to pick schools they know are damaging for their children just so they can name-drop the school at the local golf club. Yes, such people exist, but my anecdotal evidence is that many more non-religious people put themselves through years of attending a church they don't believe in and what-not precisely because they believe it is best for the child."

Well, view all that from within the context of ruthless competition among schools, and the fact that most non-religious people don't give a monkey's, and it all looks a little less principled and virtuous.

"And I think the schools on the whole work better than the secular alternative, and that's essentially thanks to the religious ethos."

Unsupportable.

" We have outcomes in the forms of league tables and academic results that could also be statistically correlated. "

What with? These assessments are fatally corrupted by poor and often dishonest marking (in order to get your kid into the desired attainment level), inconsistent teacher preparation, extremely poor moderation (that was the bane of my life), coaching and prompting during the tests. All anecdotal, of course. It's in everyone's interest to connive and in no-one's to blow the whistle. Maybe it's too corny for words to say it, but maybe you just have to have been there. Just like me.