The Times has an interview with Richard Dawkins ahead of tonight’s documentary on ‘faith’ schools. There is sympathy for parents who piggy-back on the social selection of ‘faith’ schools, but the solution must be to equalise the system.

Richard Dawkins, the UK’s most prominent atheist, will today call on Ofsted to force faith schools to bring religious education into the national curriculum.

Professor Dawkins said that the move would be the first step in ending what he calls the “wicked” practice of inculcating children with religious belief, as he steps up his campaign against religious education with a film that calls for the abolition of faith schools.

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He told The Times that his visit to Madani High School, an Islamic school in Leicester, revealed the educational dangers of faith schooling. “When I talked to a handful of girls and to their science teacher I was really shocked to discover that every single one of them rejected evolution because when in doubt they would always put the Koran ahead of science.”

Professor Dawkins said that the end of faith-based education would mean “religion would be taught in a comparative way according to a national curriculum, not indoctrination”.

Continues (behind a paywall): http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article2690948.ece

Andrew Copson from the British Humanist Association will appear in the documentary. The British Humanist Association campaigns against ‘faith’ schools and their various privileges in teaching, employment and admissions. They are raising money to fund and resource their ‘Faith’ Schools officer for another year of dedicated campaigning on religion and schools. SeeFaith Schools: Just Say No.