Transforming Education?

This Sunday marks a new initiative at St Mary’s. We will be holding the first of our Sunday Forums from 12noon-1pm in the Old Library. The purpose of the Sunday Forum is to question ideas and provoke debate. There is a long history of providing a platform for debates about religion, politics and ethics at the University Church. Often debates and discussion take place during the week at our lectures, workshops, and events such as Moot. But we are also aware that many people travel some distance to come to St Mary’s and, with work and family commitments, it is not always easy to get to St Mary’s again in the course of the week. By placing the Sunday Forum immediately after our main Sunday morning service, we hope that you will feel able to stay on to participate in our discussion.

To mark this new venture, we are hosting a panel discussion on ’Transforming Education? The Future of Church Schools’. For centuries, the Church of England has been involved in the provision of education. Indeed, the National Society was founded in 1811 to provide schools for the children of the poor. The simple objective of Joshua Watson and the other founders was to establish a Church of England school in every parish in the country and to ensure that education was freely accessible to the poorest in society and there was a commitment to serve all parishioners regardless of their faith background. By 1851, there were 12,000 such schools across England and Wales. It was not until the 1870 Education Act and the establishment of Board Schools that central and local government became increasingly involved in supporting schools out of public taxation. Local education authorities were formed in 1902. With the 1944 Education Act, church schools were incorporated into the publicly funded state system.

Today, there are 5,700 schools in England and 200 in Wales. In recent years, the landscape has changed dramatically - with a succession of educational reforms by Labour and Conservative governments: e.g. academies, free schools. The Rt Revd Stephen Conway, the Bishop of Ely and the current Chair of the National Society, will lead a discussion about the impact of these changes and the way in which the Church of England is seeking to hold onto the original vision of the founders of the National Society. Fiona Craig, the Acting Director of Education in the Diocese of Oxford, will talk about developments more locally. There are 1,000 church schools within the Diocese of Oxford alone, a huge proportion of the total number of church schools in the country. The Revd Rachel Weir, a school Chaplain in the independent sector, will talk about her experience working as a priest within education inhabiting the space between the sacred and the secular. I hope that all of this should make for a stimulating discussion and debate.