Education
Should Religious Schools Be Abolished?
LNAT Section B · Model essay
The essay prompt
It has been argued that the state should close down faith schools because no government should permit the institutional indoctrination of children. Discuss whether religious schools should be abolished.
The stance
On balance, state-funded religious schools should be abolished, because the same state cannot remain neutral, protect children's developing autonomy and hold communities together while privileging one faith inside the school it funds; but the case is for ending state sponsorship and faith-based admissions, not for criminalising private religious education, and it must be made on children's rights rather than hostility to belief.
The case for
A neutral state cannot fund a school that privileges one faith
Public education is paid for by everyone and should belong to everyone. When the state funds, designates and inspects a school built around one religion, it stops being impartial between worldviews and signals that one faith deserves a special institutional place. Neutrality is not hostility to belief; it is refusing to put the machinery of the state behind any single creed. In England roughly a third of state-funded schools are faith schools, so this is not a marginal anomaly but the structure of the system.
The case against
Parents have a recognised right to direct their children's education
Article 2 of Protocol 1 to the ECHR obliges the state to respect parents' wish to educate their children in line with their own religious and philosophical convictions, and Article 9 protects freedom of religion. Many parents value the moral framework and community a faith school provides. Abolishing state faith schools overrides a settled liberty, and a liberal state should hesitate before telling families their convictions may not shape where their children learn.
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