Government plans more faith schools

THE GOVERNMENT announced on Friday morning that it will respond to the growing need for school places in England and Wales by allowing a limited expansion of grammar schools and faith schools.

The Conservative Party has long regarded itself as committed to upholding the class system in the UK. While it does pay lip service to equality, this is often reduced to allowing a minor amount of social mobility rather than striving for equality.

This approach can be seen clearly in the Tory policy on grammar schools. The Tories would like to see more of these schools, which concentrate on teaching the academically able pupils and which label up to 80% of children “failures” at the age of 11. They try to mitigate their policy by introducing schemes which allow a small number of pupils from poorer families to be given places in grammar schools – allowing the divisive system to continue while claiming that they are being fair.

This approach has also guided the recent announcement.

Grammar schools
Theresa May had said that she would introduce more grammar schools in England and Wales in order to appeal to Tory voters. However, she did not command a majority in Parliament for the policy and it had to be scrapped. She is now going ahead with “plan B”: allowing existing grammar schools to increase in size – if they can show that they encourage “disadvantaged” (poorer) children to be admitted.

Schemes to do this could include taking in a small number of children with lower standards of achievement than is generally required but who are assessed as having aptitude and potential to follow an academic education. Whether the grammar schools would provide the additional support to these pupils – or whether they will struggle to keep up – remains to be seen.

Faith schools
The Government will encourage Councils and religious groups to form partnerships which would set up faith-based schools. These schools would be classed as “voluntary aided” and part of the state sector and would, therefore, be allowed to require all their pupils to come from the appropriate faith.

Recently, some faith-based free schools have been set up – but these are only permitted to choose 50% of their intake on religious grounds. Before the last General Election, the Tories pledged to remove that cap – but they appear to have ditched their promise.

The funds to establish the new voluntary aided faith schools would be taken from the budget earmarked to start new free schools. Many of the free schools have been set up by groups of predominantly white and middle class parents – and there could be a backlash if funds seen as having been allocated to them are portrayed as being set aside for Muslims (even though not all new faith schools would be for Muslim children).

[Adverts]

Opposition
The proposals have, not surprisingly, been praised by the Grammar School Heads’ Association – which worked with the Department for Education in developing them. The shadowy Campaign for Real Education commended the plans for allowing more grammar schools on the grounds that current grammar schools are dominated by middle class children because there aren’t enough grammar schools to allow able working class pupils in – a backhanded acknowledgement that grammar schools are inherently discriminatory. Otherwise, few have welcomed the new plans.

Few Tory MPs have rushed to praise the proposals as they appear to backtrack on key Tory pledges that appealed to voters. Sitting Tory MPs lose out on the policies and from the fact that the Party is not sticking to its election pledges.

Education trade unions have pointed out that most schools are suffering from under-funding – and the Government’s proposals do not address this, the most serious issue in education today.

The Local Government Association regretted the focus was only on creating schools which were selective – on academic or faith grounds – and called for Councils to assess what schools were needed in their area and to open them.

Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, Angela Rayner, said, “The continued obsession with grammar schools will do nothing for the vast majority of children, and it is absurd for ministers to push ahead with plans to expand them when the evidence is clear that they do nothing to improve social mobility.”

The future
Overall, these new proposals will make the UK education system more complicated but not necessarily better – for pupils, teachers or employers. The Government has not yet indicated how long it will take to pass any new legislation required or when it would expect to see the new schools built and ready to admit pupils. The only guarantee at the moment is that whenever the new schools do become available, they are likely to be as underfunded as existing schools.

•Read more about it:
Theresa May dithers on university funding
Students: better off with Labour

[Adverts]