The main "religiously oppressed" people in the UK are kids who happen to be the wrong religion for their local school

In the months since the May 2010 election and the formation of the ConDem government, it has often seemed like every day is "silly season" in the media. There are a number of Tories - both ministers and backbenchers - who specialise in trotting out loony right-wing theories taken directly from the US Christian right, eugenicists, far-right libertarians and other unsavoury sources. One of the worst offenders is Lady Warsi, who yesterday said that "militant secularisation" was taking hold of society.

On the face of it, this is a statement so ludicrous that it is hard to take seriously. Warsi's argument appears to be based on two recent court rulings:

1. Bideford Council, which was told it can't hold prayers as a formal part of council meetings (councillors are of course free to hold prayers before the meetings start should they so wish);
2. the Christian B&B owners who weren't allowed to turn away a gay couple.

It's hard to see either of these judgements as evidence for secularisation, militant or otherwise. In the Bideford Council case, it is very hard to see what prayers have to do with council business. In the case of the Christian B&B owners, if the judgement had gone the other way it would have been tantamount to a ruling that anti-gay Christians should be exempt from laws outlawing discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. If that were allowed to stand, one might as well say that Nick Griffin should be exempt from laws outlawing discrimination on the grounds of race. But this has nothing to do with religion versus secularism. It's to do with whether the law should be applied consistently or not. Lady Warsi appears to be suggesting that anti-discrimination legislation amounts to "militant secularisation"; the corollary of this argument is that we can only have "religious freedom" if we allow the oppression of gay people, ethnic minorities, women, or other groups. In which case... give me militant secularisation over religious freedom every day.

There is one area in which an element of our society is discriminated against on a regular basis: school choice. But, as Dr Evan Harris (the greatest Lib Dem leader we never had) pointed out on Channel 4 News last night, it is children from non-religious families (and the "wrong" religions) who are discriminated against, not children from the "correct" religious families. A faith school - for example, a C of E school - can refuse an application from a child whose parents are of a different faith, or no faith, solely based on that reason. This is blatant religious discrimination of a type outlawed in most other areas of public services and the private market. For example, a supermarket can't refuse to serve you on the grounds you're an atheist. An employer can't refuse to employ you on the grounds you're from the wrong religion (except, I think, in the case of teachers at faith schools - once again, blatant discrimination). If I have a criticism to make of the National Secular Society, it's that they are picking the wrong targets. Prayers at council meetings is a niche issue at best. Discrimination in the school sector affects millions of children, and could probably be stopped via a test case if a school was taken to court (and if necessary to the European Court of Human Rights). Having said that, disclaimer: my legal knowledge is pretty much zero so I could be talking complete rubbish here.

As things stand, the Mickey Gove education reforms are going to hand over huge chunks of the school system to religious organisations, making an already big problem worse. If I have kids in the next few years, home schooling - or one of the "progressive" schools like Steiner - may be the only viable option. At this point I'd say "God help us" but that would just be playing into Lady Warsi's hands.

Calling Boris on his B.S.

One of my favourite pastimes when on a bit of a posting roll is to take issue with Telegraph columnists. Normally I pick the easiest target - the risible Simon Heffer - but today it's time to put Boris Johnson in the firing line.

Poor old Boris. He won the mayoral election last year on a wave of anti-Labour sentiment - since when he's achieved pretty much nothing of value whilst, in the media, his old nemesis Ken Livingstone stays one step ahead of him at every turn.

To compensate for the manifest failure of his day job, Boris ups the ante with his side-job as a Telegraph columnist. Some days this can be mildly amusing: today it resulted in the biggest slice of bullshit on education policy I've seen in years. It makes even the likes of Andrew Adonis (now thankfully moved to the transport brief where he can probably do less damage) look relatively sane.

Boris has noticed the minor bust-up in the Labour party over the possible selection of Georgia Gould, daughter of New Labour architect Philip Gould, for the (normally) safe Labour seat of Erith and Thamesmead, and used it as a stick to beat Labour supporters with over the party's education reforms. Or in fact, every education reform of the last 50 years (all of which were either introduced or supported by the Conservatives, but never mind). Apparently Labour education policy is responsible for nepotism in the selection procedure for Labour election candidates. A bit confused by the logic of the argument? So am I.

Johnson cites evidence that children who were born to middle-class parents in 1970 had a much bigger advantage over children of working class parents than equivalent children born in 1958. And yes, research using studies of children born in 1958 and 1970 shows that does seem to have been the case. But when were those kids born in 1970 growing up and entering the labour market? The 1980s and 1990s. A period in which the Thatcher and Major governments presided over the biggest increase in inequality in this country's history.

So, largely speaking, it's the Tories' fault, not Labour's fault. Now we'd all love to know what's been happening to inequalities and class advantages since New Labour took office in 1997 - and if Boris had had some evidence on that, then he might have had some kind of coherent article, rather than stitched-up rantings. But sadly there are no cohort studies of kids born in the UK in the 1980s or 1990s. Why? Because the Tories decided the study of kids born in 1982 (i.e. 12 years after the 1970 study) was too expensive, and scrapped it. Indeed there wasn't another study of this type until the 'Millennium Cohort study' of kids born in 2000... under New Labour.

Johnson then adds insult to injury by calling for a return to academic selection - but completely fails to explain how this would benefit working class kids. I went to a grammar school and it was completely dominated by middle-class kids - many of whom had been to private sector primary schools where they were very heavily coached for the 11-plus. Selection is an act of desperation - condemning the vast majority of kids to a second (or third) class education so that you can focus on a small elite in the grammar schools. What we need in education is the opposite of selection - a completely inclusive system, with no-one able to buy a better quality education place than anyone else, and no opt-outs. The private sector itself is a selective system (by income) - so,
let's abolish the damn thing. ONE high-quality system for all is the way foward.

Boris Johnson is a fucking idiot on education policy. And he's a clown of a mayor.

Definitional trouble for Ed Balls

Now here's an interesting one: Ed Balls thinks lotteries are unfair.

I think that's, by definition, wrong (unless the lottery is rigged, of course). Arbitrary, yes. Unfair? No more than tossing a coin.

Whatever the arguments against lotteries, 'unfairness' sure ain't one of them.

What's really unfair, of course, is kids being admitted to one school rather than another based on where they live, how intelligent they appear to be in a test, or what religion their parents claim to practise.

But these things don't piss off Daily Mail readers as much as lotteries, so Ed Balls won't mention them, of course.

If this guy turns out to be the next leader of the Labour Party then they really are up shit creek without a paddle.

...and so does the Daily Telegraph

More absolute bollox on school choice lotteries from the Telegraph - 'children have lost out', apparently, because in the most popular schools, less kids got their first choice of school than last year, before the lottery system had been introduced in any local education authorities.

But that statistic is meaningless because it's entirely dependent on how many children applied for the school in each year! For example, if a school has 100 places per year, and last year 150 kids applied for a place, but this year 200 kids applied, then last year a third of the applicants would have been disappointed, whereas this year half of them were. But that's nothing to do with the lottery system - it's to do with the number of kids applying. And if a lottery system encourages parents who wouldn't have tried to get their kids into the best schools under the previous system to give the lottery a shot - what's wrong with that? Surely it's what the scheme is designed to do.

They'll be running a headline next saying 'National Lottery - the ticket-holders lose out'...

School choice lotteries: Dave misuses the English language

Well, today was the day when thousands of kids in England found out which school they were going to. An increasing number of local authorities are moving towards lotteries as a way of allocating school places after the government's new Admissions Code banned some (although not all) of the practices that schools had previously used to discriminate between applicants (interviews, questionnaires, etc.)

Dave Cameron thinks that the lottery system is 'unfair and inequitable' and pledges that the Tories will scrap it if they get elected.

Well, Dave, I've got news for you: the lottery might be many things, but by definition it can't be 'unfair' or 'inequitable'. (Assuming, of course, that it's not rigged.) In fact, it's the only fair system if schools are oversubscribed, unless we expand all the oversubscribed schools so that they can take all the extra pupils. (Which maybe we should do...)

What Dave means of course is that it's unfair because middle-class parents can't 'play the system' like they used to. And where will we be if the middle classes can't stitch up social outcomes? Egalitarian society? It doesn't bear thinking about. Never mind, there's always the private sector for the really well-off...

The lottery system is not perfect. For one thing, it's optional - not all local authorities have introduced it. For another, there are still forms of selection allowed under the new Admissions Code - e.g. by parental faith (in faith schools). So a kid could get into a school just because his or her parents happen to be religious nutters (or even, sensible religious people) - or, as this article by Times columnist Alice Miles from last year points out, because their parents are hypocrites who pretend to be religious just to get them into the school. Also, grammar schools are allowed to select by ability, and private schools according to any old criteria. So, plenty of reform still needed, but we can certainly do without the likes of Dave Cameron and Micky Gove denying the fundamentals of the English language. Jog on...