I generalise I know but the parents of children at faith schools tend to be the better educated, the better off and know how to work the system to get their offspring a place. That is my main objection, it is unfair. My secondary objection is that in order to achieve the placement, parents will subject their children to, albeit light, religious indoctrination even though statistically they are unlikely to have a belief themselves.

Presumably because they perceive these schools to be better than average and consider that the light touch indoctrination in Catholicism that their children may receive there is a small price to pay for their children receiving a better education.

Abolishing faith schools would sling the baby out with the bathwater and get rid of a swathe of good schools and Accord seems to know it.

Surely the question that Accord (and perhaps freethinkeruk) ought to be addressing is why it is that faith schools, taken as a group, are perceived to provide a better education. Once they have discovered the answer to that question they could argue rather less hypocritically for the replacement of faith schools with secular or pluralistic schools which recreate the same ethos by different means.

(Until that time opponents of faith schools can console themselves with the thought that a solid historical understanding of any of the major faiths which run schools in this country will open up the dominant source of metaphor and reference in the Western literary canon)

‘Acts of God’ is (was) a phrase used in the main, by insurance companies, as a get out clause from paying out for lightening strikes and other exceptional but natural events. I believe this has now fallen into disuse.

Sure people dress up in uniforms and wear badges to indicate affiliation to it, and there is plenty of headed paper being sent round people’s houses that come from so-called state agencies. But if that were grounds for belief in an entity, then God has plenty of supposed affiliates and evidence of existence! I suppose some might argue that the state exists at least legally, but then so do “acts of God” which rather implies an entity.

So I would be happy to dispose of “faith schools” so long as we agreed to stop having these so-called “state schools” too. How much of a free thinker are you:)?

By their nature faith schools seek to instill a belief in something outside of any proven existance and then call that education! All schools should be secular (as in France) and if parents wish to pass on a belief in the super natural then they can do so out of school time. As a first step I would like to see State funding stopped and ultimately faith schools banned.

Err, how is that supposed to convince anyone?

Is there an age at which religion becomes safe to learn? Just wondering…

Condemning apologists for our lack of success as malign do-nothings is largely inaccurate and it is counter-productive – you imply reactionary policies will solve the problems caused by current policy when they themselves the product of reaction to previous problems.

failing as an economy AND a society? Bloody hell, talk about doom mongering. If you think things are that bad, why not emigrate instead of moaning?

If AC Grayling’s anti-clericalism is as trenchant as all that wouldn’t he be better off trying to improve secular schools so that parents do not feel obliged to send their kids to schools sponsored by faiths they do not share. Or is that a bit too much like hard work? Much easier shear the troublesome religious aspects away from existing good schools and hope that the quality of the school is unrelated to the religious character.

Many here would surely counsel caution when criticising failing schools lest the criticism make it still harder for the school to improve. I fail to see that it makes more sense to excoriate excellent schools over issues not directly related to education.

(I am of course aware that not all faith schools are excellent – but since we are talking here about improving the access that those of other faiths have to religious schools I think it is reasonable to assume that this group is mostly concerned with the ones that are)