Should Respect have a discussion about faith schools? Yes, because it is an important issue both for government, which is using them as a tool of policy (choice, diversity, values, etc) and for many teachers, parents, students and communities, in various ways, including their relation to ethnic segregation and racial discrimination.

There is growing evidence of the negative effects of ethnic segregation caused by church schools (Northern Ireland is a case in point), with the emerging demand by Muslims and other religions for equal treatment in terms of state funding, and with the role of faith schools (and of religion more generally) in the Blair project (all in the context of the rise of wider fundamentalisms of Islam and the Christian right in the US).

Should Respect have a position on faith schools? Not necessarily. It depends on how much agreement there is on it within Respect. If it proves seriously divisive we should acknowledge that there is no consensus or clear majority view, while continuing to encourage debate.

The position of classical Marxism was expressed by Engels’ comments on the Erfurt Programme of German Social Democracy: “Complete separation of the Church from the state. All religious communities without exception are to be treated by the state as private associations. They are to be deprived of any support from public funds and of al influence on public schools.” He added in brackets: “They cannot be prohibited from forming their own schools out of their own funds and teaching their own nonsense in them!”

A secular state school system has been achieved in a number of countries. However, its achievement has been the result of specific major social and political struggles, whether in the USA in the 19th century or India in the 20th. In many other countries church schools receive state funding, including England and many others in Western Europe.

In the period when the current compromise between church and state was arrived at in England, in the decades around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the struggle was over control of the school boards (which preceded Local education Authorities). In these socialists were prominent in the militant opposition to church control.

Since then the compromise of state-funded and regulated church schools, consolidated in the 1944 Act, has been largely accepted, at least in the sense that it has not been a priority for socialists to campaign against (in contrast with the central role of the principle of secularism in the French context). In England today one-third of all state schools are Christian (22% Church of England, 10% Catholic ­ and 5 Muslim schools).

Today there are I suppose two main positions on the left (three if you include a diplomatic silence). One is to call for an end to denominational schools (and religious assemblies etc). It can take sustenance from a recent Guardian survey (23 August 2005) in which 64% agreed that “the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind.” However, it remains just an abstract propaganda slogan in the absence of any strategy to operationalise it.

A compromise second position, which can serve as a step towards the first, is to attempt to draw a line and say “no more faith schools”. The problem is that this invites charges of discrimination from Muslims and others who argue that thousands of church schools continue to be funded. This demand seems to me only to be tenable if it is accompanied by a vigorous campaign against existing church schools - i.e. “no more faith schools as a first step towards abolishing them all.”

However, the big problem with the “abolish faith schools” position is that it risks provoking a damaging split within the working class, including large sections of the Muslim and African-Caribbean populations which support faith schools, and among whom the abolition of state faith schools and the secularisation of education would probably lead to a big growth in cheap private faith schools subsidised and run by religious bodies, thus institutionalising the division further.

I want to put another position forward for discussion. I take the question of unity of the class as my starting point. Michael Löwy, in an article in International Viewpoint 368 (June 2005) refers to Lenin’s position that the struggle against religion needs to be subordinated to the needs of the concrete class struggle ­ the need for working class unity. At present faith schools create divisions within the class insofar as they create segregation along religious and ethic lines, which is growing at least in some areas (and sometimes class divisions, where Church schools act as mechanisms of social selection).

Class divisions also run through religions. It is wrong to simply equate religion with reaction and secularism with progressivism. Religion, as both symbolic space and material institutions, is traversed by class interests, including progressive interests in both their Christian and Muslim forms. In both cases religion can be the expression of utopian emancipatory hope. This doesn't mean idealising what actually happens today in most faith schools, but it does mean recognising that they are a space whose class character is not totally determined by ruling class forms of ideology.

It also means distinguishing between those who control the Church of England and Catholic school systems at the top, closely integrated into the state, and the social composition of the communities the schools serve.

Many serve poor working class areas, including black and minority ethnic and Irish, and of course this is especially true of Islamic schools. Classical Marxism only considered religion from the viewpoint of the relationships of European societies to their own traditional religions. It did not take into account the religions of oppressed peoples in the imperialist countries as a consequence of immigration from the ex-colonised countries, of whom the largest number in Europe are Muslim and poor.

The logic of the “unity of the class” principle applied to schooling is that the overriding aim should be to get all children and young people into the same school.

This is of course the principle which underpins our commitment to comprehensive education and the “common school”. How can we best achieve this not in some ideal situation but in the situation we face today, where there is a clear demand among a section of the working class and the most oppressed for religion in schools? I think the key here is to distinguish between control of state schools by religious bodies and religious observance within them.

To achieve the “common school” we should be prepared to make whatever compromises are needed. What compromises are needed depends on the political situation and tactical analysis aimed at maximising support and minimising opposition. But I’d envisage a deal which essentially says to religious authorities "give up your control of the schools and in exchange you will be allowed to continue to have religious worship and faith-based lessons as options within school time for those who want them", while insisting that the mainstream common curriculum and pedagogy is secular. Of course this has problems, and some believers will not find it acceptable. But the decisive question is, what policy can mobilise the maximum support needed to create a movement for the common school?

Finally, the separation of control of the school as an institution from the "content" of the school should be seen also in the context, at least as regards secondary schooling, of the rights of school students. I am in favour of a compulsory common core curriculum, but I’m also in favour of the rights of students to choose additional optional subjects and indeed activities (just as they are in universities and should be in FE colleges), which would include the right to, for example, hold political meetings, to invite speakers, in short to make use of the facilities for their own purposes (within certain limits) ­ including the right to engage in religious activities, including worship and taught lessons, and equally the right to challenge religious ideas.

In my view the common school with democratic citizenship rights for students provides the best context, indeed I’d say it is the precondition, for being able to engage in the long educational/political process of challenging reactionary religious ideologies.

Richard Hatcher
28 September 2005