Taking religion out of our schools

This week we have seen senior government ministers arguing over allegations of extremism in state schools in Birmingham.

Whatever the differences of opinion between Home secretary Teresa May and Education secretary Michael Gove, it seems to me that the core of the problem is how religious studies are taught in our schools.

When I was a kid growing up in a small Shropshire village in the early 1970’s the choice of religious preferences for education extended to two. You either went to the Church of England school or you went to the Catholic school and no one made much fuss about it and certainly no-one ever bothered to ask what differences there were in the religious education we received.

Much has changed these days, particularly in large city areas where we have many different religions competing for the same time slot in the schools weekly schedule.

So my answer to the problem is simply to take the religious lessons out of the school day.

Rather than the children being taught in school, the lessons would be taught at the local church or religious centre. So for example of Wednesday afternoon at 2.30pm the children would leave the school and make their way to the lesson. After the lesson finishes the children would be picked up by their parents or make their own way home.

Parents would be free to make their own choices about which religion their children were taught.

This seems a very simple answer to what is really a problem of logistics, there are simply not enough hours in the week to satisfy all preferences.