ABSTRACT
The White Paper Schools Achieving Success (DfES 2001a) called for the expansion of faith-based education in England and Wales. The conditions set out were financially generous and sought only a contribution of 10 per cent from governing bodies in the development of their schools. At the same time, the White Paper called for a new approach to admissions policies in faith-based schools, seeking a goal of inclusiveness by setting a target of 20 per cent non-faith pupils in the school’s composition. In so doing the government could be said to be responding positively to the religiously plural and ethnically diverse population which constitutes our society in the twentyfirst century. On the other hand, those who seek inclusivity as the overriding characteristic of state-supported education argue that a continuation of the nineteenth-century historic settlement between the Christian churches and state-supported education is itself the major cause of increased sectarianism and social fragmentation in our multi-faith but secular society.
