Talk:Faith school

If this section is going to be in the article then there really ought to be a section balancing this listing positive benefits of faith schools, such as their above average academic performance and questions relating to the ethos. At present there is an enormous section detailing problems with faith schools but none of the advantages, which really smacks of bias in the article. Correctus2kX (talk) 23:36, 8 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

The figures given in the article for the number of Faith Schools seems not to fit with the official figures on the Gov website. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/maintained-faith-schools for 2010. I don't have time to check but it seems quite a wide variance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:4B:6F39:C367:5490:C249:648A:36F0 (talk) 18:58, 7 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

So who thinks faith schools are a good idea? It's not obvious from this article, which makes it appear a little skewed in one direction. 132.185.240.121 (talk)

Agreed. There needs to be an explanation of the history and rationale of faith schools as well as evidence for their success compared to secular state schools. Hood23 (talk) 16:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Couldn't the term be considered derogatory by many of the private communities who run these schools ? For instance, Catholic and Anglican schools do teach all required subjects and do not merely engage in indoctrination as some of its critics have alleged. Individuals who run the schools will typically identify with the particular community instead of the associated faith and its dogmas. While it is true that some Islamic and Jewish schools are controlled by fundamentalist members of those respective religions, these fundamentalist schools are a rather insignificant minority and cannot really be put on the same level as standard community schools. ADM (talk) 06:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

I don't think the term faith school is controversial. There is a need for a term broader than church school, and this is the one that is actually used by government, the media and faith groups themselves. Additionally the mainstream churches have good political reasons not to emphasise the differences between the schools of different faiths. Duncan Keith (talk) 20:16, 27 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes faith school is an agreed educational term, although I agree that the general public's understanding of it's definition may not include state-funded CofE or Catholic schools. This question is important when you look at recent polls which suggest that 65% of the public would like to see an end to all faith schools and this statistic is being used to lobby the Government to achieve this. Do the public really understand the definition? The line has never been this clearly drawn in British education - The education system in the UK has it's roots in 19th century church schools - the 20th century represented a fairly uncontroversial partnership between church and state, where the "faith" label was largely unnoticed. Only in the past 20 years has this new antagonism towards church schools really emerged. Perhaps it is the emergence of the "new faith schools" eg faith sponsored academies, has stirred up the secularists. To my mind it's by using the term "faith schools" that the secularists are causing the division that they say they are trying to prevent. This new demarcation is to me is akin to the rebranding of state enterprise before it is sold off a la British Telecom. But that's just my rant - the term "faith schools" is still the convention and the appropriate title for this article! Chris Shore (talk) 11:14, 1 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I put a line from the lead in a separate section because it would fit better there. I also added a who template and a POV tag, because there are some problems with the sources. The source is a controversial book by Richard Lynn, IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Either there should be a note that this is a controversial work or it should be removed in favour of better sourced criticism.
Which brings me to another part, that is the need to improve this section. It might be a good idea to refer to articles like children and religion, criticism of religion and similar articles. Several of the New Atheists have voiced criticism of faith-based schools, which may well be worth including. Does anybody have some suggestions (or wants to contest my edit)? Darth Viller (talk) 11:41, 14 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins objects to faith-based education as he regards it as indoctrinating "tiny children in the religion of their parents, and to slap religious labels on them". He in particular criticised Emmanuel College for allegedly teaching Young Earth Creationism. (Source: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 333-339)

Something like that seems more factual to me. Any comments, objections, recommendations? Darth Viller (talk) 12:12, 14 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Lee McLoughlin is obviously (like me) opposed to Faith Schools, but citing web pages which are more generally anti-religion does not amount to criticism (or even any facts) about the schools themselves. I shall remove the POV one more time, then if he insists I shall abandon this web page. I have previously suggested an article "religious schools" because "faith school" is recently invented British term which is not synonymous with US parochial schools or educational practice in other countries. Thus comparing measures about various foreign countries and their religions does not have any direct implications for these schools.Chemical Engineer (talk) 20:31, 14 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I agree that in the current format the POV tag is unnecessary. There is something to say for such an article, too. Also, please note that I placed the tag there because I didn't want to delete his criticism; therefore I moved it to a separate section and tagged it for having controversial sources. Darth Viller (talk) 13:55, 15 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Any criticism should be correctly cited and directly related to the subject, as in your Dawkins example, not unsupported assertions or cited unspecific anti-religion examples. There has also been a lot of praise for faith schools from politicians and others, so an encyclopedia should report both or neither side.Chemical Engineer (talk) 15:32, 15 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

The article states that there were 12 Muslim schools in 2011. In fact, there were over 150 (and are 156 today). This figure is from a lengthy report on Muslim schools which I wrote before 2011 ('Music, Chess and Other Sins', Denis MacEoin). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Denis MacEoin (talk • contribs) 00:36, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

I have tried to set up a structure for a proper neutral encyclopedic article.Chemical Engineer (talk) 19:50, 19 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

This section needs some material.Autarch (talk) 13:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

Of course it does. I just put the heading in because it needs it. It is a particularly important section because of the issues between the Catholic and Protestant communities and their separate schooling. I am not particularly knowledgeable in this area, so will leave it to someone who is. You are welcome to make a start.Chemical Engineer (talk) 17:32, 23 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

I was not aware that all state schools in England had to carry out Christian worship. Is this correct, or am I reading it wrong? My school never had any preayers in assembly etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DPTM (talk • contribs) 14:16, 4 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

It's a legal requirement, but the majority don't actually do it, most parents don't want it, and Ofsted don't bother checking for compliance. Iapetus (talk) 15:53, 31 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Surely faith schools exist in places other than the United Kingdom? We have them here in Canada. Torontonian1 (talk) 15:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Of course they do. We have them in Australia too. Jimp 01:33, 1 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

It is proposed that The 50% Rule should be a section in this article. It is only relevant within the context of this article, i.e. state-funded religious schools in the UK since 2010, so there is no need for a separate page. In addition, there are many 50% rules (i.e. "at least half") in many fields. Existing links can easily be made to a section of an article. Chemical Engineer (talk) 15:50, 1 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

I am the author of The 50% Rule and I strongly disagree with the proposed merger. The proposer says that the 50% Rule article is only relevant within the context of the Faith School article, but that is not a substantive reason to merge it. Wikipedia's guidance on merging says that it should be avoided if: 1. The resulting article would be too long or "clunky", 2. The separate topics could be expanded into longer standalone (but cross-linked) articles, 3. The topics are discrete subjects warranting their own articles, even though they might be short. The first two of these points are directly relevant in this case. The Faith School article is already quite long, with 48 references of its own, and if this merger took place then it would be doubled in length, with up to 62 further references added. The Faith School article is also broad in scope, dealing with the high level subject of UK faith schools and linking to a number of more detailed sub-topics such as "Voluntary Aided" and "Voluntary Controlled" and "Catholic Education Service". The detail provided in the 'The 50% Rule' article makes it clear that it is also a substantial and noteworthy sub-topic in its own right, which warrants it having its own page, albeit cross-linked to the Faith School article.Slaaamdunch (talk) 15:24, 2 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

It would still not be particularly large: there are many longer. I do not see that it is separately notable or has any value on its own.Chemical Engineer (talk)

It passes the notability test as a sub-topic in its own right, as demonstrated by the large number of external references included. The sub-topic is covered in depth and would be too detailed for the much more high-level Faith Schools topic. It's "value" can be measured by the respectable number of page views that it is getting - more than 1500 since it was created 4 months ago. The proposer's concerns may arise from their assumption that nobody would be coming to Wikipedia to search for "The 50% Rule" by name, but that is not an issue because many people are still navigating to the page via sub-topic links and also from search engines. Slaaamdunch (talk) 13:44, 4 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

The proposer also makes the point that "there are many 50% rules", which is true, but irrelevant because Wikipedia provides a disambiguation function for dealing with that if authors want to create other pages with the same name. There are many precedents for this in Wikipedia.Slaaamdunch (talk) 15:37, 2 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

There are situations in which a someone typing in will usually be expecting a particular well-known version of a topic, but may be directed to others. I think it is doubtful that an international audience would be looking for this rather than its application in financial strategies, social benefits, legal situations etc, so that this one should be the primary article with others relegated to disambiguation. A "50 % rule" disambiguation page with supporting articles would be useful. Chemical Engineer (talk) 16:11, 2 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

There are currently no other Wikipedia topics called "The 50% rule". There are pages for "The 50th Law" and "50 + 1 Rule" and "Fifty move rule", all of which might be regarded as problematic using Chemical Engineer's logic. However, so long as the introduction to each of these potentially ambiguously named topics clearly states the context then they are not problematic until someone wishes to create a new topic with the same name - at that point a disambiguation page would need to be created.Slaaamdunch (talk) 13:44, 4 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

I have now renamed The 50% Rule page, adding some text to disambiguate it. Perhaps this will address the proposer's concerns sufficiently for the merger proposal to be withdrawn. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slaaamdunch (talk • contribs) 15:01, 4 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose merging Pragmatically- WP:PROPORTION. Logically, faith schools (the entity) have been a historic problem in the UK- one that was was nearly solved in the historic compromise of the 1944 Education Act. The 50% rule is a major correction to a flawed policy and as such, just one act in the drama (event). ClemRutter (talk) 11:22, 6 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

More than 30 days have passed since the merger proposal, and there appears to be no clearconsensus on it. I suggest the discussion should now be closed and the merger tags removed. If someone objects we can ask a neutral editor to do that. However if nobody objects within the next 3 days then I will do it.Slaaamdunch (talk) 22:36, 3 February 2018 (UTC)Reply