Faith in Education: The Role of the Churches in Education: A Response to the Dearing Report on Church Schools in the Third Millennium

Church schools are so popular that they are oversubscribed. Parents appreciate them both for their moral ethos and their better-than average exam results. The report of the Archbishops’ Council (the Dearing Report) has recommended the creation of another hundred Church of England secondary schools to meet the demand. The contributors to this collection of essays – which began as a submission to Lord Dearing's inquiry – all welcome the findings of the Report, with its emphasis on moral values and strong leadership. However, whilst church schools perform, on average, better than local education authority schools, there are still enormous variations in standards. Many church schools fail their students just as local authority schools do. Students perform, on average, well below expectations, particularly in the higher age ranges. This is because church schools have all too often followed received educational opinion, instead of striving to achieve high standards.