On the front page of The Times today there is an article stating that the Labour MPs have taken a break from worrying about their leader to instead focus upon the faith schooling system. About time too, I say.

Apparently Balls announced recently that the Brown administration was not ideologically tied to the daft idea of using taxpayer’s money to indoctrinate children, which is rather a relief, really. Unfortunately mixed signals seem to be being emitted as he also suggested later om that they were planning to dramatically expand their number.

So why exactly is this? If there is no “Idealogical” {whatever their understanding that is} affiliation in the Brownite Cabinet what is causing them to promote the idea of the state effectively funding a Church outfit focusing solely upon children? Simple: figures.

Like all the rest of the New Labour project the Browns are blind without statistics and numbers, which is not necessarily a poor state to be in but proves unquestionably hazardous if you have no idea what you are looking at.

Which is the case here: you could look at the stats showing that state schools without faith do worse than those with it and say “Aha, it is the religion that makes the schools do better!” And be wrong. The most likely explanation is not the one nebulously connected to religion {which is a curious argument at best, are we to understand that God’s blessings upon these institutions has a tangible effect? That someone the closeness to organised religion creates organised children?} but rather something which has been demonstrated thoroughly: selection.

If you allow a school to choose the pupils it receives the outcome is remarkably predictable. They will choose the best and will thrive. It would be remarkable if they did anything else. Wonderful for that school, isn’t it? Not so wonderful for the school which has had all the talent siphoned away and is left with children who range from severely deprived to mediocre.

This is an old argument that only the Tories are bothering to continue, the Comprehensive system is supposed to dominate now. But faith schools are allowed to continue this grand cherry-pick.

This is the point where advocates complain that this is a grotesque misrepresentation: that the schools are indeed permitted selection {to maintain identity} but that this is strictly limited to the faith of the children.

The most obvious response to this is the Dawkinsian one: to automatically assign children the faith of their parents is absurd. They are not extensions of parental belief but instead autonomous, if immature, beings. To attempt to classify their religion by whether they have had water splashed on their forehead, had their foreskin sliced and ripped off or been dragged off regularly to the church/mosque/synagogue is simply preposterous. This shows nothing but how the parents have treated them.

But, pragmatically speaking, the statistics remain, do they not? There is an objectively distinguishable difference, one with copious exceptions but still a fair rule. Faith schools do better. But then, so did Grammar Schools.

Of course, the situation is more nuanced than then: the selection process of grammatics allowed them to choose their girls and boys on purely academic acumen, while faith schools, as we have found, have to make choices on parenting styles.

Although it pains me to have to say this, seeing as how positive my view of humanity generally is and how I do my best to ward off the corrosive cynicism that gnaws into most pursuers of matters political, the problem with this argument is this: parents lie.

The phenomenon of the “Year Five Epiphany” is a phenomenon that only the most naive could try to explain away. The fact that the Church ignored it altogether in their response to the article is telling. Effectively parents leave out the baptism when it is performed usually and suddenly experience a miraculous change of faith just in time for the baby to be deemed eligible for admittance into the high-powered academic institution of their choice.

Or at least that is the kindest explanation. The one which is more likely is a good deal more harsh and revolves around the phrase “Rampant opportunism”, so I shall refrain from making it explicit.

Various institutions have cottoned on to this method and have introduced more draconian methods: some have forced parents to make the ceremony occur within the first year of life, while in the London Oratory {guess which former Prime Minister and recent convert sent his child there? Despite living on entirely the other side of London…?} the Catholic “Ethos” is so strictly enforced that an interview is required for both the child and the parents to ensure that they are theologically suitable. both demands the baptism have occurred within six weeks of birth {in adherence with the same “Magisterium” that declares every drop of semen spilt outside of a vagina belonging to somebody both married to you and wishing to procreate with you sinfully spilt} , but also formerly had a long-standing policy that required an interview of both child and parent. This absurd measure {harsher even than that of highly selective private schools} was reverted only last year when outlawed by the government. Other schools have been less rigidly draconian but all have made efforts to deny access to those children that have parents of inappropriate beliefs.

This, however, is not enough to stem the tide. What is an hour or so on a Sunday in exchange for avoiding a hefty bill for sending your children private? What is lying through your teeth to a polite headmaster for a few minutes if your child is spared the strife of secular state schooling? What is outright deception, dishonesty and dishonour if you need not buy a £2.3m house on sale in an affluent catchment area?

Not nearly enough to reconsider.

Parents want the very best for their children, this is something that is inevitable and that the government could never hope and should never desire to change. But as long as that remains unaltered the system will be filled by the offspring of agnostic, atheist and long-timed lapsed parents who are in the know about such matters. And these, conveniently, are the ones which sociologists identify as those most likely to pass on the cultural capital required for scholastic success.

Which makes this the academic equivalent of the nurses who redefined a trolley as a bed to transform patients waiting in hospital corridors into patients placed where they belong simply by taking of the wheels. Middle-class parents infiltrate these institutions, send there children who will achieve and inflate their Ofsted ratings. What else would you expect?

Now that the alleged faith-based superiority of these institutions has been refuted there are two matters left: the alternative and the harm that they cause.

The latter is clear: the claim made by today’s Times leader that faith schools encourage “Diversity” is nothing other than a mockery of reality. They instead serve to isolate “Communities” and segregate our youth.

This matters less for Christians, especially due to the aforesaid infiltrators, but for smaller groups the results can be disastrous: a child of Muslim parents can be insulated from the decadent kuffar by those “Of his own kind” and overseen by an Imam, while a Jew of religious parentage driven to the school gates need never so much as encounter a goy for his entire childhood.

What hope is there for true, total integration when this is the state that people are raised in? When you have rarely, if ever, encountered children of other backgrounds and certainly not enjoyed them as your peers then what will the consequences be to your connection with mainstream society? What hope have we of quelling bigotry when a substantial proportion of minority of the young are forced to capitulate to some grotesque extension of the “Birds of a feather” maxim?

These questions have not been asked, let alone answered, by the high-rankers yet. That the lower-league players are kicking up a fuss and showing a desire to shout them to the rafters is promising and I certainly hope that the “Debate” suggested manages to materialise, unlike the plethora of other occasions such an event has been suggested and then never occured.

As there is an alternative, one which would be seen as radical by some but truly supports the entirely moderate proposition of secularism: the state should give its money to institutions devoid of religious background and them only. Those that wish to continue existence and previously relied upon the taxpayer may switch to Private and become like the school which I attend {at which, hilariously, there are around five-seven actual genuine Catholics with a basic understanding of Church teaching which they mostly accept in my year. At most.} or else will cease to exist.

This is no tragedy as any arrangement which required the money of the public to subsidy a religious institution is inherently illegitimate, especially so if its intention was to preserve itself through influencing the developing minds of children.

If this was to occur it is likely that the state schools would improve immensely: the intelligent children which they have been deprived of would be returned to them and their standards would rise accordingly.

Alternatively parents would continue to attempt exploitation of the catchment area instead and house prices would sky-rocket and our economy at very least stablise, or quite possibly expand.

Either way the move would be entirely beneficial and prove immensely helpful to our nation’s children, by bringing them together rather than enclosing them apart. This is, largely, what already happens in Scandinavian nations and the results have been superb. The alternative is keeping them apart and thus segregating on the grounds of parental religious practice, as was practiced extensively and thoroughly in Northern Ireland.

The preferable course should be instantaneously obvious.