The elephant in the room.

It's funny how often you hear a report on the TV or read an article in the papers, and think that those reporting have missed or ignored the fundamental question. Headline report in my paper yesterday was about how more and more parents are joining churches, not out of any personal belief, but simply as a means of getting their children into church schools. The tenor of the report was how this was exacerbating divisions in society, and whether the answer was to get rid of "faith" schools altogether. For me, the question which was not asked but should have been was how come so many of the best and most oversubscribed schools in the country are faith schools - what do they have that makes them so successful? Should we be looking to identify that and seeing whether it is something which can be applied to other less successful schools, rather than even considering the possibility of getting rid of them?