Attitudes to new academy faith schools

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Siobhan McAndrew

The Academies Act 2010 is well underway, having received its Second Reading in the House of Commons on Monday 19 July, and with Education Select Committee days due this week.

A number of private and state religious schools have indicated interest in becoming state-funded academies, among about 1500 schools overall so far. For comparative purposes, the January 2009 Schools Census suggested there were 17,064 state primaries and 3,361 state secondaries in England.

The full list of schools indicating interest is available at the Department for Education website, and is updated intermittently. The list does not indicate directly which are schools ‘of a religious character’ – the British Humanist Association estimates that it is ‘over 300’.

The BHA has suggested that schools with a nominal faith tradition (such as Anglican primary schools without a strong faith ethos) will have no provision to change religious character to ‘none’ when becoming academies, even if the Governing Body were in favour.

However, non-faith schools will be able to adopt a religious character when becoming academies – perhaps under the influence of governors or potential sponsors – and this may lead to a proliferation of new faith schools. Its additional concern is that academies with a strong faith character will be freed from National Curriculum strictures, specifically with regard to the teaching of creationism and sex and reproduction.

The BHA commissioned a poll on public attitudes to the religious character of future academies, available here.

67% of respondents thought faith academies should be required to teach about other beliefs including non-religious beliefs. 23% did not, and 11% of respondents didn’t know.

The survey also asked,

‘If an academy were set up by a religious organisation, would you be very, quite, not very or not at all concerned that public money may be used to promote a particular religion or belief?’

35% were very concerned, 36% quite concerned, 16% not very concerned, 5% not at all concerned, and 7% didn’t know.

The survey was conducted 9-11 July 2010, by online interview, with 2000 respondents. The full polling report will be shortly available at http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/media-centre.php

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Religion and Politics Among British Asians

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The British general election may have come and gone, but detailed results of the opinion polls conducted during the campaign are still becoming available. One such with religious interest is the ICM poll for the BBC Asian Network, conducted by telephone between 26 March and 4 April 2010 among a representative sample of Asian people aged 18 and over in Great Britain. The data tabulations are available at:

http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/pdfs/2010_april_BBC_asian_poll.pdf

The questions all related to political matters, with the results disaggregated by religious affiliation. The sample included 263 Muslims, 138 Hindus, 39 Sikhs and 51 of other religions. Although these sub-groups are still quite small, the numbers are appreciably greater than are to be found in comparable polls among the entire British electorate which were fielded during the general election campaign.

Some of the more interesting findings from a religious perspective include the following:

  • 70% of all Asians said that their religion would not influence their decision about which party to vote for. The proportion was highest among Hindus (84%) and Sikhs (81%). It was lowest for Muslims (60%), 11% of whom said that their faith would play a major part in determining their voting and 24% a little.
  • 41% of Muslims said the Labour Party best comprehends Asian issues, compared with 6% selecting the Conservatives and 13% the Liberal Democrats. Hindus were far more positive about the Conservatives (23%), although 37% of them still thought that Labour has the best understanding of Asian issues.
  • Party honours were more even when the question turned to which of the party leaders respondents would most like to invite over for a curry. Although Gordon Brown was out in front (nominated by 33% of Muslims and 36% of Hindus), David Cameron was not far behind (27% and 32% respectively).
  • Muslims were primarily exercised about the economy, health, education and foreign policy (including the war in Afghanistan). Each of these four issues was identified as important by 17% or 18% of Muslims. For Hindus and Sikhs the economy was twice as significant and foreign policy of virtually no interest.
  • Asylum and immigration were a preoccupation for just 4% of all Asians, although 56% supported a tougher government line in future, the figure ranging from 47% for Muslims to 66% for Hindus and 75% for Sikhs.
  • Muslims (47%) were less optimistic than Hindus (31%) or Sikhs (38%) about the prospect of Britain ever having an Asian prime minister. However, one-fifth of them (about the same proportion of all Asians) thought there might be one within 20 years.

Overall, the survey provides no strong evidence for a distinctively Asian religious vote. Only among Muslims does religion impinge to a limited extent on politics, and this seems disproportionately to be a function of their concerns about British foreign policy in Afghanistan, the military involvement there (as in Iraq beforehand) being seen to be in some senses a war on Islam.

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Christians and the Irreligious Compared

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Clive D. Field

One of the interesting by-products of the ICM Research poll of 10-11 March 2010 on religion in public life is the insight which it provides into some of the differences between professing Christians and those of no religion (the sub-samples for other religious groups are too small for effective analysis).

The full data will be found in Table 8 at:

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/survey_on_bishops_icm.pdf

However, here are a few of the headlines:

  • Christians are only slightly more likely to be women than are those of no religion, perhaps indicating that the gender bias toward religiosity is fading
  • Christians are more likely to be aged 45 and over and those of no religion under 45 years of age – indeed, among the 18-34s the irreligious actually outnumber Christians
  • Those with no religion are found proportionately more among non-manual than manual workers, somewhat contrary to long-standing assertions of the alienation of the working class from Christianity
  • There are proportionately more irreligious in South-East England than in any other region, underlying the collapse of Anglicanism in its traditional heartland
  • Christians are less likely to be working full-time than those of no religion, and more likely to be retired
  • Christians are more likely to be owner-occupiers than the irreligious
  • The irreligious have a somewhat above-average number of foreign holidays each year, with Christians below the norm
  • Significantly more irreligious have access to the internet at home and/or at work than do Christians
  • The irreligious are more likely to hold a first or higher university degree or equivalent than are Christians
  • The irreligious are more likely to be single and less likely to be married or cohabiting than Christians
  • The irreligious are more likely to have children under 18 in their households than Christians

Many of these differences are, of course, a reflection of the respective age profiles of Christians and those of no religion.

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Religion in Public Life – Another Poll

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Clive D. Field

You can really tell that a general election is in the offing, and possibly even that Britain is emerging from recession. Certainly, there seems a greater willingness these days for lobbyists to afford the expense of testing public opinion on a range of topics, and religion is one of the beneficiaries. We have already noted a couple of new politico-religion polls, on integrity and religion of MPs (see our post of 12 February) and religion and politics (21 February). Now comes a new survey on Parliament and public life.

This latest poll was conducted by ICM Research among a representative sample of 1,007 Britons aged 18 and over, contacted by telephone on 10-11 March 2010. It was commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust in support of the Power2010 initiative, designed to give everybody a say in how democracy works.

The poll findings were published by Ekklesia, the religion and society think tank which is one of the partners in Power2010, on 15 March. See its three news postings at:

http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/11512

http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/11513

http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/11514

The full data tabulations will be found at:

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/survey_on_bishops_icm.pdf

The poll picks up some of the issues noted in the British Religion in Numbers news post of 15 March on reform of the House of Lords. Only 33% of ICM’s respondents believed it important for Church of England bishops to have a role in the Lords, against 48% who thought it unimportant. The highest proportion in favour of the episcopal presence was among those aged 65 and over (40%) and the lowest (20%) in Scotland, where the Church of Scotland rather than the Church of England is the established religion.

In a separate question, 74% of Britons said that it was wrong for some Church of England bishops to be given an automatic seat in the House of Lords, with 21% thinking it right (and no more than 25% in any demographic sub-group). Asked more generally about the role which religion should play in public life, 43% of respondents said that it was important and 41% that it was unimportant, with no major differences by demographics.  

The poll results were disaggregated by religious affiliation. Unfortunately, in a sample of this size, only the breaks by Christian and those of no religion can be considered significant (for example, only 24 Muslims were interviewed). Not unexpectedly, those with no religion were less sympathetic to the bishops and to the role of organized religion in public life than were professing Christians.

The poll supplements an online personalized letter-writing campaign launched by Power2010 on 11 March, encouraging people to contact one of the 26 bishops sitting in the current House of Lords, and seeking their support for a fundamental reform of the upper chamber. This has had a huge response, necessitating Power2010 to revise its target of letters upwards on several occasions. 31,000 email letters had been sent to the bishops by 12 March, 51,000 by 14 March and 59,655 as of the morning of 17 March.

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