Church Schools Preparing Adolescents for Living in a Religiously Diverse Society: An Empirical Enquiry in England and Wales

Abstract

The Young People's Attitudes to Religious Diversity Project was established to compare the attitudes of students (13- to 15-years of age) educated within the state-maintained sector in church schools (Catholic, Anglican, joint Anglican and Catholic) and in schools without a religious foundation. Data provided by 5,402 students recruited from England, Wales, and London who self-identified as either “no religion” or as Christian demonstrated that, after controlling for individual differences in personality and in religiosity, students attending church schools hold neither a more positive nor a less positive attitude toward religious diversity, compared with students attending schools without a religious foundation.

Notes

Young People's Attitudes to Religious Diversity Project (AHRC Reference: AH/G014035/1) is a large-scale mixed methods research project investigating the attitudes of 13- to 16-year-old students across the United Kingdom. Students from a variety of socioeconomic, cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds from different parts of England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, with the addition of London as a special case, took part in the study. Professor Robert Jackson was principal investigator and Professor Leslie J Francis was co-investigator. Together they led a team of qualitative and quantitative researchers based in the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, within the Institute of Education at the University of Warwick. The project was part of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme, and ran from 2009–12.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leslie J. Francis

Leslie J. Francis teaches at the University of Warwick

Andrew Village

Andrew Village at the University of York St John in the United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]