Religion in the Schools
The White Paper outlining the proposals to be embodied in the coming Education Bill may be published at any moment now. Probably the largest single issue it will deal with will be religion in the primary schools and the future of the dual system. Meanwhile, a committee of the Nuffield College Social Reconstruction Survey
has issued opportunely in a sixpenny pamphlet (Oxford University Press) a statement on the whole question of religious education in primary schools. Numbering as it does among its members such authorities as the Master of Balliol," Sir Richard Livingstone and Sir Cyril Norwood, it clearly has no need to solicit attention for its views. They carry their own incontestable weight. It is there- fore of considerable importance that the committee will be content with nothing short of the acquisition of all non-provided, i.e., denominational, schools by the State and the complete abolition of the dual system. A number of conditions are attached, among them the provision that the use of school buildings " strictly outside school hours" be granted where needed for denominational teaching subject to conditions approved by the Local Education Authority. Whether the Government is prepared for a step so courageous its White Paper will disclose. At present, some 22 per cent. of the children receiving primary education are in Church of England schools, and even under the moderate proposals approved by the National Society and the Church Assembly much more than half the Church schools are likely to be transferred voluntarily to the Local Education Authorities in any case. There is little to be said for the retention of few survivors.
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