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Taxpayers' cash should not be used to fund faith schools, say voters.\u00a0Labour wants talks on teaching of religion as poll shows 58% of the public urge abolition or axing of state funds<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above headline in The Guardian <\/a>intrigued me so I thought I would take a look at the actual questions asked. The survey was carried out by a company called Opinium <\/a>on behalf of The Observer.<\/em> On Twitter I tried to find out what questions were actually asked; interesting Richard Adams, Education Editor at the Guardian did not know, but said he would do some digging. I eventually found a pdf <\/a>of the survey results on Opinium\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

In the interests of full disclosure I am a Christian with two children, one of whom is pre-school and the other attends a non-faith primary school. I did not attend a faith school myself. I\u2019m not that interested in faith schools per se, but headlines such as the above invariably lead to debates about the relationships between religion and society that I feel duty bound to take an interest in.<\/p>\n

The reason I\u2019ve written this post is that I am very interested in questionnaire design. Questionnaire design is harder than most people think, but one would have thought a company which does surveys in its day to day work would be quite good at designing questionnaires. This one is so lousy I can only think it was politically motivated. It fact it is so bad I\u2019m not entirely clear what the political motivation might have been.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start from the very beginning and take a look at Question 1. Respondents are asked to choose the opinion which is most like their own\u2014note carefully -- not their opinion but the one that \u201cbest describes\u201d their view of faith schools.
\nThere are only three possible opinions plus a \u2018Don\u2019t know\/ No opinion\u2019 option.<\/p>\n

The three available opinions are:<\/p>\n

1. I have no objection to faith schools existing and being funded by the state
\n2. I have no objection to faith schools existing but they should not be funded by the state (i.e. private schools may be faith schools but not state schools)
\n3. Faith schools should be banned entirely<\/p>\n

The best describes bit might be some sort of attempt to meaningfully take into account some of the nuances involved in such arguments but how views such as the following, which I suspect are widespread, fit into these three options.<\/p>\n

1. I have no objection to faith schools existing and being funded by the state as long as they are only Christian\/ CofE\/ Catholic\/ Muslim etc. (delete as appropriate)
\n2. I have no objection to faith schools existing and being funded by the state as long as they are NOT Christian\/ CofE\/ Catholic\/ Muslim etc. (delete as appropriate)
\n3. I agree with faith schools but don\u2019t agree with private faith schools because I don\u2019t agree that there should be private schools.
\n4. I agree with faith schools as long as they don\u2019t take their faith aspect too seriously.
\n5. I think all schools should be faith schools.
\n6. I agree with taxpayer funded faith schools as long as it\u2019s not a really weird religion like\u2026<\/p>\n

As 1 and 2 above indicate there is really no such thing as a faith school, merely schools which are in one way or another connected to a specific faith, religion or belief system. Faith schools vary of course within faiths \u2014Oasis academies, CoE voluntary aided village primary schools and \u2018fundamentalist\u2019 Christian private schools could all be described as Christian faith schools but they are certainly not the same in their ethos.<\/p>\n

Question 5: In your view, how serious a risk is there of some predominantly Muslim schools encouraging their pupils to adopt extremist views?<\/p>\n

1.Very serious
\n2.Quite serious
\n3.Not very serious
\n4.Not at all serious
\n5.Don\u2019t know\/ no opinion<\/p>\n

The only specific religion mentioned in the survey is Islam. I\u2019m not sure how one could answer this question in any meaningful way. This is in the context of the recent \u2018Trojan Horse\u2019 <\/a>controversy of course, the full facts of which have not really emerged. The \u2018Trojan Horse\u2019 schools are not faith schools, or Muslim schools, but schools in which most children (and their parents) identify as Muslims. Overall 74% of those questioned thought there was a serious risk (i.e. very serious or quite serious), but what do we mean by extremist views? Extremists, however defined do not need extremist schools to incubate their views and activities. A lot of teachers would probably feel they are being credited as having far more influence on young people than they actually have.<\/p>\n

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