ABSTRACT
Thirty years ago it might have been predicted that the involvement of the churches in schools, as in the education and training of teachers, had little future except to be part of a quaintly remaindered past. The logic would have been inescapable for legislators. The acid tides of secularisation were corroding the Christian heartlands of the nation. Education had no need of any religious hypothesis. The proportion of pupils being taught in church schools had fallen dramatically. Many Church Colleges of Education had already closed or been amalgamated out of distinctive existence. It was only a matter of time before a promised educational millennium would demonstrate that the nation had at last outgrown all talk of religious sponsorship.
