Adam Swift, Matthew Clayton and Andrew Mason from Politics and International Studies have been awarded a $460k grant by the Chicago-based Spencer Foundation to study faith schools.

These schools raise a number of challenging philosophical and practical questions. Do parents have a right to raise their children as members of their preferred religion, of a sort that can be translated into a right to send them to a school that instructs them in it? Do children have a right to autonomy that precludes instilling in them religious beliefs and throws into question the legitimacy of faith schooling? Do these schools foster intolerance or instead provide pupils with an invaluable moral grounding? Should they receive public funding or merely be tolerated as part of the private sector? To what extent, and in what ways, should they be regulated, for example with respect to admissions and curriculum? Swift, Clayton and Mason will address these issues in a way that combines both rigorous philosophical analysis and empirical studies in order to bridge the gap between policy and principle.

In Britain, recent policy developments around academies and free schools, together with worries about multiculturalism and social cohesion, have brought issues around government involvement in faith schooling to the centre of public debate. That debate has typically generated more heat than light. The aim is to contribute to, and improve, that debate by offering a philosophically serious and empirically informed perspective on the key regulatory questions, with implications for societies beyond the UK.