In 2005 David Bell (Guardian 2005c), the then Chief Inspector for Schools, made a speech on citizenship in which he suggested that many faith schools needed to adapt their curricula to ensure that children ‘acquire an appreciation of and a respect for other cultures in a way that promotes tolerance and harmony’ and that ‘pupils should know the positives of a diverse community and its importance in a world where too many communities are fractured’. He expressed concern that ‘many young people are being educated in faith-based schools, with little appreciation of their wider responsibilities and obligations to British society’ (ibid.). Within the speech explicit reference was made to Muslim, Orthodox Jewish and Evangelical Christian schools.

David Bell’s remarks were interesting in that they were a public questioning of Government policy at a time when New Labour was promoting faith schools (Annette 2005; DfES 2005), but they were not novel, being part of a much wider, and ongoing, debate surrounding the place of faith in education, which in recent years has focused on the effect of faith schools on Community Cohesion. This book looks at one particular aspect of this debate around faith schools and Community Cohesion: the effect of faith schools on their students’ attitudes of tolerance.

Faith schools make up about one third of all state-maintained schools in England as well as being numerous in the independent sector, and as such are a significant provider of education. Schools of faiths other than Christianity have historically existed in England; Jewish schools , for instance, have been part of the maintained system since the inception of the Dual System in 1902 (Gates 2005). Since the wave of immigration in the 1960s, however, a greater number of faith schools catering to a variety of faiths have emerged. Most of these, due to well-documented issues over state funding, emerged in the independent sector (Ansari 2000; Walford 2001). Concerns about the increasingly secular nature of teaching within state schools meant that a number of New Christian or Evangelical Christian schools also began at this time (Baker and Freeman 2005; Everett 2006; Walford 1995, 2002) and the number of these schools continues to rise (Christian Schools’ Trust 2009).

At the time of writing there were about 4500 Anglican, 2000 Roman Catholic, 100 ‘Other Christian’, 2 Sikh, 37 Jewish, and 8 Muslim schools in the English state sector, to which a Hindu primary was just being added (Krishna-Avanti Primary School 2011; Times 2007). The majority of faith schools in the state sector are Voluntary Aided (VA) which means that 90% of the capital funding is provided by the state, with the rest coming from voluntary parental contributions or from the faith groups themselves. In VA schools the school site and buildings are owned by the faith group and the school is able to select pupils on the grounds of faith adherence, appoint staff on the basis of faith and appoint a majority of the governing body (DfE 2011). VA schools still have to follow the English National Curriculum and are inspected by Ofsted , but they are allowed to adopt their own RE curriculum, which may focus exclusively on their own faith. In addition there are other schools which come under the faith school label, such as Voluntary Controlled (VC) schools, and the situation is becoming ever more complex as a number of the new Academies and Free Schools are also being sponsored and run by faith groups or by groups with faith associations, such as Oasis or The United Learning Trust (Oasis 2011; United Learning Trust 2011).

Faith schools have historically been controversial within the English education system (Murphy 1971) and, as I discuss below, debates have intensified since the 1990s. Concerns over faith schools are quite wide-ranging, encompassing issues with admissions (Allen and West 2009; Schagen and Schagen 2001), autonomy (Callan 1985; MacMullen 2007; McLaughlin 1985) and segregation (Barker and Anderson 2005; Pring 2005) . Increasingly, questions have been raised about faith schools’ ability to promote Community Cohesion (Berkeley 2008; Ofsted 2009) and within that whether faith schools promote the same values as those of the wider society, among them tolerance (MacEoin 2009). Although there is an academic aspect to this debate which I discuss in greater detail in Chap. 2, much of it is played out in the public domain with faith schools being a popular topic in the media (for example Channel 4 2010; Guardian 2001b, 2006b). Various groups have also expressed concern over the negative impact that faith schools might be having on students’ attitudes of tolerance (British Humanist Association 2001; Guardian 2006a; National Secular Society 2008).

The nature of the concerns expressed by these critics in the media is often imprecise. What is being tolerated, or not tolerated, is rarely defined and where it is made explicit tolerance is usually seen as involving those of other faiths (Channel 4 2010; Guardian 2001a) , or occasionally particular groups such as homosexuals (Guardian 2008a; Hunt and Jensen 2007) . Why faith schools should be bad at promoting tolerance is often not explained in these criticisms. Frequently cited arguments are that faith schools segregate on grounds of faith (Guardian 2001b, 2008b) and that the schools indoctrinate (Channel 4 2010; Guardian 2006b). The desire of these schools to nurture a specific religious identity arouses, for some, concerns about the supposed narrowness or exclusivity of the beliefs, values and norms associated with that identity .

The criticisms of faith schools over their inability to promote tolerance, and by extension Community Cohesion, are strenuously denied by the schools, associated faith groups and some commentators (AMS 2009; Guardian 2005a; Immanuel Ministries 2005; Odone 2008). Those involved in faith schools generally see no contradiction between their task of religious nurturing (or the religious values they teach) and the promotion of tolerance (AMS 2009; Brine 2009) . In his review of the impact of Church of England faith schools on Community Cohesion, David Jesson (Church of England Archbishop’s Council Education Division 2009) found that a higher proportion of faith secondary schools were rated outstanding on Community Cohesion than was the case for community schools, although he found no difference at the primary level. He thus concluded that ‘Faith schools play an important and positive role in both promoting Community Cohesion and Equality of Opportunity whilst taking positive steps in eliminating discrimination’ (ibid., p. 6). In 2009, the London Diocesan Board for Schools presented similar findings highlighting the fact that 92% of their schools were judged by OFSTED as good or outstanding on Community Cohesion, compared with 60% of non-faith schools (London Diocesan Boa...