The Rt Rev Colin Fletcher
Bishop of Dorchester, acting Bishop of Oxford

ONCE again, schools will be central to the political agenda over the coming weeks and months.

What everyone, of all the political parties, is agreed on is that we want the very best education for our children and grandchildren.

Where the divisions occur, of course, is how that can be achieved most successfully and what education is about anyway.

Clearly one answer to that question lies in SATS, GCSEs, A-Levels and the like.

When I was a governor for some years of a secondary school – now an academy – it was wonderful to see more children achieving academically than they ever had done before.

But education is about more than exams: it’s about the whole person, mind, body and spirit.

The Church of England has been committed to providing that sort of education for centuries.

I recently took part in the 500th anniversary celebrations of teaching in English (as opposed to Latin) at Childrey School, near Wantage.

More recently still, I was out at Leafield School marking the 175th anniversary of its foundation.

Time and again our village schools were founded by the local vicar for the benefit of all the people living in that community.

Very often too they had a particular concern for the poor and those who were missing out on the basic skills of reading and writing.

Even if the needs differ today, it still gives me immense joy to read the Ofsted reports on our many Church of England schools and academies. They are still providing a rounded education for the children in their care, and parents recognise that.

They are also still working, in the large majority of cases, as schools for the whole community, not focused on a particular section of that community of a single faith.

Which is why I get annoyed, as has happened in the letters page of The Times recently when Church of England schools are called ‘faith schools’. There are some schools which focus very specifically on the children of one faith community – and I would not want to stop them doing that.

The majority of our schools, as former Bishop of Oxford the Rt Rev John Pritchard pointed out time and again in the House of Lords, are there for the whole community.

And my hope, whatever the latest changes will bring, is that we will continue to be doing that, for the benefit of all for many years to come.