ABSTRACT
The context of our interest in faith schools is an ongoing concern with school differentiation and specialisation in recent United Kingdom (UK) government education policy. The issue we are addressing is not whether education policy should promote faith schools; our focus is the articulation of policy discourses and its relations with social and educational differentiation. Our aim in this chapter is to locate and discuss the place of faith schools within overall policies on standards, specialisation, excellence and parental choice. Our argument is that, in the context of a broadly neo-liberal agenda with enormous emphasis on generating assent to the system of state schooling by elaborating and maximising the possibilities of parental choice, there are clear policy tensions between the current New Labour equity agenda, expressed in terms of ‘zero tolerance’ for low standards overall, and the differentiating excellence market agenda. The outcomes of such ambiguous policy aims are likely to draw faith schools into the overall educational machinery of class formation. Our particular focus is that themes, concepts and perspectives drawing on social capital theory are deeply embedded in policy thinking and the accompanying legitimating rationales, for promoting both educational diversification and the benefits of faith schools. As a contribution to the ‘faith schools debate’ we do not claim to have produced an exhaustive analysis of the issues. At best our argument and our secondary analysis of some recently published information can only stand as indicative of the need for a more fully grounded investigation, especially around comparing the equity effects of education within and between faith and nonfaith communities.
