Education

If you go to the Think Humanism site, there’s a quiz to test your knowledge of Darwin and his work. We’ll be celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth on 12th February this year. Anyone who’s interested in marking the event in Suffolk, please get in touch.

The kids started a new (non-denominational) school today. And my first fight with the school is this afternoon. The school is supporting the Samaritan's Purse shoebox operation, where children fill shoeboxes with toys etc for children in eastern Europe and Africa...and then the evangelical literature is added before they're distributed.

Am very cross indeed. I've sourced an alternative - another Christian organisation but one which doesn't put anything into the boxes and doesn't send out propaganda. I'm currently compiling a dossier for the Headteacher, with whom I expect to have an interesting discussion real soon.

Staff pay and conditions could be under threat at an Ipswich school if a decision is finalised to turn it into a church-run academy.

As revealed in The Evening Star, students at Holywells High spoke out against the possibility of the running of their school being handed over to the Church of England in September.

The students' concerns are now shared by trade unions, who today revealed their opposition to academies' abilities to operate outside the parliamentary approved School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document.

You may have donated to the Atheist Bus Campaign. The BHA needs help with its anti-faith schools campaign too. Donate via the Just Giving website.

6th-formers at Holywells High School, which is threated by a Church take-over, have vowed to campaign against the plans. Good for them! Read more in the Evening Star.

The Ipswich Advertiser reports:

A BITTER tug-of- war has broken out today [17 October 2008] over the future of one of Ipswich's most high-profile schools.

Despite improving GCSE rates and opposition from staff, Holywells High School could become a church-sponsored academy.

Although no final decision has been made and a full consultation is yet to take place, sources at multicultural Holywells High have hit out at a proposal to convert the school into an academy, saying they have been put under pressure by Suffolk County Council to become a faith school.

We will do whatever we can to support those who oppose the take-over of Holywells School by the Church. If you have any information, please get in touch.

Pity the poor faith schools. According to a pamphlet published today by the Centre for Policy Studies, penned by Cristina Odone, they are under threat as never before from "a government … aligning itself with a stridently secularist lobby". Few apart from than Odone can have noticed this dangerous development.