A "modest" proposal from yesterday's (London) Times.
Jim Carroll

FAITH SCHOOLS ARE DIVISIVE. LET'S GET RID OF THEM
A state education should celebrate all religions equally. Churches, synagogues and mosques can teach the devout
When I was a teenager I was fascinated by the Jewish boarding school a few fields away from our house. The local children barely ever saw any orthodox pupils leave their citadel. Occasionally they would ask us to buy them pork scratchings at the local garage, which they would eat illicitly by the river.
Theirs was a different world. Girls and boys didn't swim together. They couldn't even turn on a light bulb on Saturdays; they performed no Shakespeare because he was considered antisemitic; and they had hours of Hebrew each week.
Still I rather wanted to go there: it had amazing sports and music facilities and was only five minutes from home. But I couldn't because, my parents explained, I wasn't Jewish. Instead I went to a school a bus ride away, which was once run by Anglican nuns but now catered for every denomination. We had the occasional church service with a few beautiful hymns, there was an option to be confirmed and pupils could wear discreet crosses or headscarves. My friends were Church of England, Plymouth Brethren, Catholic and Jewish. We learnt about every faith and I went to bar mitzvahs as well as confirmations. It showed me a wide and tolerant world.
So I have always felt uneasy about fervently religious schools. They seem to teach exactly the opposite of what education should be about — to give pupils all the facts and allow them to discover their beliefs for themselves. The issue resurfaced when my husband was a governor of our local school which had a large
If we had Muslim or Catholic NHS hospitals there'd be an outcry
number of pupils from Morocco. An imam was trying to stop the pupils from drawing pictures or playing sport together. The head teacher was desperate and Christian parents began to complain that their children were being excluded. The local authority eventually intervened and the imam, who was in Britain illegally, was deported.
Twenty years later I feel even more strongly that that there is something disquieting about faith schools. We. accept them because they often achieve great results and have good discipline, something that has been missing from the British state education system recently. There are so few excellent schools, the argument goes, that we must protect those that excel, however they do it.
This is partly why the schools caught up in the Trojan Horse row, which were secular but prioritised Islam, were allowed to continue without much scrutiny — their grades were generally good.
It is also partly why, I suspect, Tony Blair, David Cameron and Michael Gove have all chosen faith schools for their children. They like the ethos and the results.
But it is an anomaly to allow publicly funded schools to choose their intake, overtly or covertly, on religious background only. No other state-funded institution is exempt from the Equality Act. There would be an outcry if there were exclusively Jewish, Catholic or Muslim NHS hospitals.
The French with their new charter for secularism in schools have been too aggressive, banning the wearing of hijabs and crosses and preventing discussion of religion. But in America, a more religious country than Britain, they have a system set up 50 years ago whereby schools cannot proselytise or promote one religion, but children's differing faiths are celebrated and accepted.
In Britain we could do the same. Nearly 16 per cent of children attend schools that select on religious identity. Instead of encouraging more faith schools as the Department for Education is now doing, we should gradually phase out religious selection in state-funded
No creed should make girls, gays or non¬believers feel inferior
establishments. High morals and good discipline shouldn't be the preserve of the devout.
There is no reason why schools that are not faith-based cannot be every bit as good as those that are. Part of the reason that faith schools excel is because their exclusive entry precludes many children from more disadvantaged backgrounds. Church of England schools admit 10 per cent fewer pupils eligible for free school meals than live in their catchment area, RC schools admit 24 per cent fewer, Muslim schools 25 per cent and Jewish schools 61 per cent.
I want my children to enjoy discovering Hinduism and Jainism as
well as the stories from the Koran and the Bible —they are all now part of Britain's broader culture.
In our fragmented society schools can be one of the few ways to bring people of differing cultures together and encourage inclusiveness. In Northern Ireland, where schools have long been divided on religious grounds, the effects have been coruscating. We need to teach children empathy, tolerance, respect for others and the importance of a cohesive society where everyone's beliefs and views are valued as long as they don't impinge on others. The best place for this is at school. Girls, gays or non-believers should not be made to feel inferior by any creed. Education should be the enemy of rabid extremism because it should encourage children to question and think for themselves.
Devout parents can still teach their children at home about their own beliefs; they can enrol their children at Sunday classes, hold Shabbat dinners or take the family to their mosque.
But schools should abide by the words of Thomas Paine, the philosopher who argued against institutionalised religion more than 200 years ago: "The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren and to do good is my religion."