Head teachers should allow imams, rabbis and priests to offer religious instruction to pupils in all state schools, teachers' leaders have said.This is a bad idea on so many levels that it's difficult to know where to start in criticizing it.
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) said the move would be a way to reunite divided communities. The NUT said parents had a right to have specific schooling in their own faith, if that was what they wanted. But having children taught at different faith-based schools had led to community breakdown in some areas.
Offering pupils some instruction in their own faith could reduce the demand for faith schools, said NUT General Secretary Steve Sinnott.
The idea that faith-based schools have led to community breakdown is a new one on me. I went to a faith school over thirty years ago, I don't remember anyone arguing back then that they were breaking down communities. What's changed?
And if parents have a right to "specific schooling in their own faith", that can't just mean imams, rabbis and priests, can it? What about Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Scientologists, Spiritualists, Shintoists, Baha'is, Taoists, Zoroastrians and the rest? The list goes on and on. (Do Satanists have children?) And what about the agnostics and the atheists - don't they have any rights here?
The British education system is overstretched and under-resourced, class sizes are a national scandal and literacy and numeracy are major problems. Money spent on religious teaching will divert resources away from infrastructure spending and the teaching of basic skills.
Is that a good idea? God, no.
