Religious bias

I have just read an article in the Guardian newspaper and I am not surprised to read that faith schools are siphoning the cream of the bunch for themselves and why shouldn’t they? They obviously want the best results from their students and the rewards it can bring by obtaining higher ratings in the league tables.

Despite evidence that this form of unfair selective process leads to school entrances not being reflective of the communities in which the school sits the leaders of religious schools will deny any ill practices.

I have a friend who is a very religious man and is on the board of governors at the faith school his children have all attended and he will passionately defend his belief in the benefits he believes schools such as this can bring. He will not openly admit it but he also believes that his school benefits from a below average intake of children from socially poorer families.

This is the same school that another friend of mine is so desperate to get her child into she is willing to attend Sunday morning service at her adopted catholic church. She is in essence pretending to be catholic in order to improve her daughter’s chances of being accepted into the school.

She is not the first parent to ‘change’ religion or convert just before the end of one academic period in their child’s life and neither will she be the last if the practice of selective discrimination is allowed to continue. If all schools were equal and religion were kept out of schools it would prevent some of these prejudges from preventing all our children from receiving the education they rightly deserve.