No trade-off between parent choice and democratic citizenship: a comparison of 9^th grade pupils in Danish Muslim and state schools

Abstract

The public funding or even toleration of religious minority schools, particularly Muslim faith schools, is controversial in West European countries. Political theorists often posit that parents’ right to choose these schools conflicts with the equally or more important societal concerns with child autonomy and civic integration or education to liberal-democratic citizenship. Yet, few empirical studies have addressed the issue and findings are mixed. Using unique survey and administrative data on ninth grade pupils in Danish Muslim schools compared to Muslims in state schools, the study finds no indication of lower levels of civic integration in terms of national belonging, social trust and outgroup prejudice, or liberal democratic orientation, indeed Muslim schools seem to do a little better. Different explanations for this are possible, and the findings may not be generalizable to other national contexts, but they do cast some doubt on present political hostility towards the schools.

Keywords:

• Muslim schools
• faith schools
• integration
• citizenship
• Denmark

Disclosure statement

The authors have no potential competing interest to report.

Notes

1 See https://ams-uk.org/muslim-schools-in-uk/.

2 For background about the Danish free schools historically see https://www.friskolerne.dk/fileadmin/filer/Dansk_Friskoleforening/Billeder_og_video/Eng_version/thefreedanishschooltradition.pdf

3 We call the Muslim schools ‘free schools’ in line with common parlance, and because they identify with the Danish free school movement and joined its organisation Friskolerne.

4 In Britain, Muslim faith schools – including privately funded – were criticised in the Cantle report (Cantle 2004), by the chief inspector of Schools in an early speech (Bell 2005), and in recent media debates, culminating in the 2014 ‘Trojan horse’ affair. Increasingly detailed regulation and inspection by Ofsted of independent schools has taken place since 2014, e.g. concerning Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development of pupils (SMSC) (Department for Education 2019). Regulation of the Danish schools was tightened in 2002, 2005 and 2010, with increasing political attention, further regulation and monitoring from 2017 (Olsen 2015; Kofoed-Pihl 2021).

5 Some Danish Muslim schools have designated citizenship education modules, unlike common schools.

6 The religious composition of countries is extracted from Pew Research Center, https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projection-table/2010/percent/all/

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was financially supported by the Danish Rockwool Foundation as part of the project When Do Children of Immigrants Thrive? How Schooling and Politics Affect Civic and Educational Outcomes, 2016–2021. No grant no.