Unholy Statistics: British Humanist Society and Schools

The British Humanist Association has published a report on faith schools, 'Unholy Mess', claiming that As many as hundreds of thousands of children have been unlawfully denied access to religiously selective state schools in England

That's a big claim, there are 4700 Church of England state schools alone, with over 1 million children attending them. According to the BHA "almost all of (them) are failing to comply" with the official Schools Admission Code. 

Ok, just imagine this. A village of 4700 people. 70 people are interviewed. Some of them don't even live in the village, but are from a similar village down the road. If 43 of them had a significant weight problem, would you deduce that 'almost all' of the people in the village are fat?

Church of England schools were only 1/3 of the schools in the 43, yet the results are extrapolated to every CofE school, primary and secondary.  There are clearly some practices which need sorting out, but it looks very much as though the evidence has been interpreted to fit the BHAs agenda. 

The BHA's solution is not to recommend that the schools get in line with standard admissions criteria, but that they be scrapped completely. As a VW owner, I'm just glad they're not in the used car market, or they'd be calling for 1.2m German motors to be melted down tomorrow.

Update: a couple of responses
 Reverend Nigel Genders, the Church of England’s chief education officer, said: “We would strongly refute any suggestion that our schools have a near universal noncompliance with the code. The OSA annual report tells a very different story to this over-exaggerated report, which equates small administrative errors or minuscule technicalities with major systemic failure. If schools were able to focus more time on getting on running their schools, rather than responding to these sorts of campaigns, children would be better served.

“The majority of Church of England schools do not prioritise their places on the basis of church attendance, and most of those that do still make places available for children in the school’s immediate community. Our secondary schools have an average of 10 per cent selection by religious criteria – this is based on church attendance only. We also have as many pupils on free school meals as the national average, some much higher."

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: "We want every child to have access to the best education possible, and where there is evidence a school does not have fair and transparent admissions arrangements, swift action will be taken.

"We will consider the findings of BHA's report carefully. All of the objections they have listed have now been resolved."

i.e. all the issues can be sorted within the current system, rather than by scrapping it.  

The Blessing of Service

...strangely, we ourselves are being blessed. Individuals whose lives had been relatively comfortable, discover that by offering mercy and grace to someone who has lived on the edge of life, they themselves receive mercy and grace. Communities which had been caught up in minor internal squabbles, forget their differences in the face of a greater challenge. And denominations are together discovering a common mission in the service of Christ.   

from this account of how churches are involved in helping refugees in E and SE Europe. 

A Question for General Synod Candidates

I've just posted the following to the 'e-hustings' for our diocese, for the candidates for the new General Synod of the CofE

The Church of England is currently losing 10-15% of its adult members every decade, the figures for youth and children are worse. Projected full-time clergy numbers are 5,000, in a system designed to work with 3 times that number. What is the role of General Synod in a) promoting growth in parish churches and b) restructuring the national and local church before the CofE collapses under its own weight?

Background info
Attendance: recent, long-term
Clergy numbers.

Justin Welby is grasping more nettles than most of his predecessors put together, so I'm hopeful that we have the leadership in the CofE to engage with these issues. But we can't afford to faff about the way we did with women bishops. We have to have a Synod that makes engaging with these issues its top priority.

I'll be very interested to see what the answers are....

Northern Power Failure

1700 jobs are to go in Redcar, with the closure of the Teeside steel works. The response from the government is a 'taskforce' and a 'steel summit'. I can see the long grass from here. It doesn't help that there isn't a single Conservative MP in the urban NE of England. Biblical justice sees power being excercised on behalf of the vulnerable, not simply wielded by the strong. A 'Northern Powerhouse' worth the name wouldn't let Redcar go to the wall.

Preaching/Communication - not 1 thing but 5 things.

"It is one thing to say something
quite another to have it listened to
a distinct third to have it understood
a different matter again to have it remembered
and a frequently unattainable fifth to have it put into practice"
(Paul Edwards 'The Practical Preacher')

On not speaking/singing in church

A further thought on the Jeremy Corbyn/national anthem 'incident'. Each time I take a baptism service, I make a point of saying that if we come to some words in the service people don't agree with, that they should feel free not to say them. There are already plenty of people who don't join in the songs anyway, and I don't want people to feel compromised, that they're being asked to say things they don't really believe. 2 things prompted this:

 - Sitting down for a pint after one christening with a godparent who informed me he was an atheist. Work that one out.

 - Getting a trenchant email from someone who'd attended a baptism at our church and accused me of brainwashing people and imposing religion on them. (As an aside, the Anglican church has such an effective record of brainwashing that 90% of people who attended Sunday school aren't adult members of any church, so that's gone well. And my personal record in brainwashing is so stunning that 99.8% of baptism guests never return).

I don't want a repeat of the email, but more importantly I'd like people to think about what's actually being said and to speak with integrity. So guests at a baptism are encouraged to choose the Corbyn option: supporting the family and the occasion in a respectful way, without feeling they have to join in with words they don't agree with.

National Anthem Shocker

appalling, if they won't sing the National Anthem how dare they represent our country? Almost as bad as the woman on the left in this photo.

Why I no longer go to sporting events

discovered on Facebook, clever. People do have genuine reasons for leaving/not being part of a church, but most of them aren't the ones on this list.