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  • just to add, I think church schools should be abolished before generic private schools.

    I don't think the general population would be willing to have an appreciable rise in council tax to facilitate this if implemented all of a sudden.

    Faith schools are part funded (10%-25%) by the church/synagogue/etc that they are linked to. The children they educate would still need to go to a school so if this funding disappears the Government have to make up the difference or they have to find new schools in the same area (which generally there aren't).

    Also, many of the faith schools are on land not owned by the local authority. There would be a huge real estate bill to buy it to run a non-faith school on the same site.

    The government are dealing with this (slowly) in that any new faith school being built is capped at a maximum of 50% faith entry. I can see this slowly being increased over time to eventually separate faith and school. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_50%25_Rule)

    (Disclosure: My daughter goes to a faith school so I'm not entirely impartial, however as an atheist myself [my wife does the religion bit] I'm often surprised at what people seem to think goes on in a faith school. There is no creationism being taught.)

  • I think the best way is just to make it illegal to only accept students based on faith and make religious events optional. The church can still pay for it all if they want but refusing to accept kids from families that don't go to the local church is only going to perpetuate the cycle.

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