Provides an accessible overview of the debates, issues and practicalities of faith-based education. It sets out the challenges and opportunities of different approaches to faith schools and addresses the choices faced by parents.

Until fairly recently the separation of pupils according to religion was felt to be compatible with a comprehensive education. That consensus no longer holds and there is a strong positive lobby either to absorb faith schools altogether within the state system or at least to dilute their membership ensuring they include children from other faiths, or no faith at all. This book addresses the current concerns, questions and interest surrounding the legitimacy, support and intended expansion of faith schools. Divided into five sections, it includes chapters on: * the legal frameworks for faith schools and the rights of the child * faith-based schools in the UK, Northern Ireland, France and the USA * the impact of faith schools on pupil performance * faith schools, religious education and citizenship * political and research issues. Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict? is of interest to educators, policymakers, researchers and students of education, religion and sociology.

'This is an important contribution. It issues its own challenges: to the faith providers to articulate both their own starting points, and the ways in which their distinctive contribution is beneficial for the state of the nation; and to opponents to provide hard evidence for what they most fear about faith schools.' - British Journal of Religious Education 'With the renewed interest, internationally, in the role of faith and the planned expansion in the United Kingdon of faith-based secondary schools, this collection of articles in timely.' - International Journal of Children's Spirituality