State-funded Hindu and Sikh schools set to open in UK

Nevada (US), August 30 (ANI): Hinduism and Sikhism-centered schools are among the 24 pioneering state-funded "free schools" opening in the United Kingdom (UK) next month.

Krishna-Avanti Primary School in Leicester City will function in an "environment centred on loving service to Lord Krishna" and its vision includes: "Nurturing character and conduct consistent with Hindu virtues", "a balanced vegetarian diet and opportunities to practice yoga, meditation", etc.

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Meanwhile, distinguished Indo-American statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) on Tuesday, commended the efforts of these upcoming schools to pass on Indian spirituality, values, concepts and traditions to the next generations.

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According to the UK Department of Education, "Free Schools are non-profit making, independent, state-funded schools." Free schools are said to be inspired by the charter schools of USA and the Free School project of Sweden. Michael Gove is UK Secretary of State for Education. (ANI)

http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/238024

Read that last paragraph again.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7615539.stm (Interesting article that gives some of the pros and cons)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7118069.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/543512.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4686077.stm

This is part of the system that we've had since the 1944 Education Act, of 'voluntary aided schools', whereby certain schools are predominantly (typically 90%) funded by the state, and are subject to state regulations concerning the curriculum, but a religious body also influences the management of the school and can and typically does give preference in admissions policy to children of families from that religion..

Most such schools are Church of England; a fair number are Catholic; a smaller number are Jewish; a few are Muslim.

The Church of England and Catholic schools that I know personally are quite tolerant and well-run places, with quite a lot of ethnic and religious diversity among both staff and pupils, and little or no attempt to convert or discriminate against pupils of other faiths. However, this is obviously not always the case, and there are concerns that in some areas faith schools may contribute to de facto segregation of communities: particularly in areas where there is already a problem, e.g. where an immigrant group is voluntarily or otherwise set apart from the majority community, or most of all in Northern Ireland where there is a big divide between Protestants and Catholics, which at many times in the past amounted to virtual civil war.

Moreover, there are concerns about discrimination against non-members of the faith at admission (you may wonder why parents wish to send their children to a school of a faith that they don't hold, but in fact many faith schools achieve good exam results in the curriculum as a whole, and religious indoctrination is not always a strong feature). Such concerns are of course most commonly raised by secularists, but interestingly the Bishop of Oxford has expressed some such concerns:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13158380


The 'free schools' movement is a product of the present government, and has aroused concerns for reasons that mostly have nothing to do with religion; in fact most of these schools would be run by businesses or by groups of parents, and only a minority by religious institutions. But many people worry that, especially in these times of cuts, this is just a way to divert state education funding from the most disadvantaged groups of pupils to businesses which may have their own agenda, and groups of upper middle class families, who have the resources to start a school, but are far less in need of government help than those that will lose out

Do you see a similarity between the free schools and the charter schools in the US?

The almost exact equivalent of a charter school is an academy. Academies already existed before the present government; though the present government is trying to increase their number - indeed, they have invited *all* state schools to become academies, but so far not too many have taken up the invitation.

An academy means any school that is publicly funded by central government, but is not under local authority control. The majority of such schools so far were founded as typical state schools, but chose to opt out of local authority control.

Free schools are a particular subset of academies, which were never under local authority control to begin with, but were set up by groups of parents, teachers, businesses, charities, trusts, or religious and other voluntary groups. At present they cannot charge fees or make a profit; though some of us fear that this is a first step to partial privatization of state schools.

I think this shows some of the subtle differences between U.S. and U.K. laws; in the U.S. this is not possible and any religious school has to be 100% funded by private sources, often forcing them to charge tuition.

I wonder if the presence of Muslim schools angers certain people who are trying to drum up fears about "shariah" (while of course ignoring Jewish, Sikh, Hindu or whatever) schools