The point is, it will be funded by you and I. And every other tax payer. And if the CoE become the state's largest provider of education as they plan to (seemingly with government backing), it might not be as easy as simply saying "well, I won't send my children there". What if the next nearest school is also a faith academy? Even if it's not, why should the taxpayer pay for such nonsense to be taught in our schools when belief in a deity is at an all time low. Just 3.6% of the population say that they attend a church once a month or more, and yet the church could be in a position of great influence if these proposals go ahead.



The other issue, of course, is that they're probably unlikely to preach this sort of sh*t at the open day, they'll wait until they have people enrolled their children before the full horror becomes known.

By you and me, please. Not by you and I. Did you get your C at GCSE English?

Did they get taught evolution?



This doesn't surprise when, at schools like Eton, it's compulsory to have a faith.

If my future children are ever required to have "a faith" to get into a school, I'll just produce the documentation that verifies them as Sith apprentices.

Yes they did.



Although the head at the primary school discouraged them celebrating Halloween and listening to John Lennon's "Imagine".



On the other hand when I was at a secular primary school the teachers there discouraged us from growing our hair over our collars and wearing cowbells to school in the summer of love (1967, not some cheap imitation).

My son went to a church school (because it was the best available, so I'm another hypocrite

). After the first day he came home and said he didn't like it and didn't want to go back. We asked him what was wrong and he said 'they have a dead bloke nailed on the wall', which was a full size model of Jesus on the cross.

The key question you all need to be asking is WHY faith schools are generally the best in any area?

If WE all need to be asking that, you obviously know the answer. What is it?

That's for YOU to ask YOURSELVES and decide.

For the same reason that all schools with a selection policy are generally the best in any area - because as part of the selection process, even an undisclosed part of the selection process, they can select the more academically inclined, leaving the less able to be picked up by the non-selective schools - you may as well ask why grammar schools invariably had better academic results than secondary schools.

Is that really true of, say. Muslim schools? Jewish schools? etc?