Voluntary Aided Schools

No doubt because of the final line (rather close to home for the staff and for many readers, as reference to such institutions always is), the following letter was not published in The Observer, and so is posted here instead:

John Chubb falls into the old trap of assuming that there exists some sort of "neutral" or "objective" secular and/or atheistic position. In fact, there is nothing neutral or objective about rejecting religion, or God, or both. Just read anything published by, for example, the National Secular Society, or the British Humanist Association, or the Rationalist Press Association. It is very far indeed from neutrality, or from objectivity in this sense. Anyone who has ever heard the secular and atheistic educational establishment in full cry will know exactly what I mean.

In fact, there is a very strong case for making all schools voluntary aided, so as to require the forces of secularism and atheism to find the sorts of partners or sponsors for their position that the rest of us have to find, rather than relying wholly on the public purse, the purse of a public which is seventy-two per cent Christian according to the last census. This should not be a problem, since the National Secular Society's list of Honorary Associates shows that it is the best-connected voluntary organisation in the English-speaking world, and so presumably one of the richest in Britain. Philip Pullman, Richard Dawkins, David Starkey, et al cannot be short of a bob or two for schools.

But then, how many secular public schools are there? Case closed, I feel.