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X Factor fills vacuum left by God in schools, says head

This article is more than 15 years old

State schools are increasingly "embarrassed" to talk about God, leaving a moral vacuum which has been filled by celebrity culture and the X Factor, a leading independent school head said yesterday.

Tim Hastie-Smith, chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC) which represents 250 private schools, said: "The retreat of God from education has left a moral and spiritual vacuum and the breakdown of any shared value system. In our schools we have the freedom, if we choose, to fight that malaise. Not by retreating from society but engaging with the big questions in a mature and reasoned way, offering possible answers and challenges rather than the passing fads of an X-Factor culture."

Separately, he told journalists that faith gives schools "structure", adding: "In large parts of the education system God has become an embarrassment."

Hastie-Smith, headmaster of Dean Close School, Cheltenham, also said schools were being smothered by red tape and government dictates and should be given the freedom to set their own curriculum and appoint staff that private schools and academies enjoy.

Addressing the HMC's annual conference in London, he said: "The independent sector has held firm over the years to the belief that education, if it is to achieve true excellence and if it is to be tailored to the needs of the individual child, should be free of government control."

He claimed that the argument for independence had been won with the government's and opposition parties' support for academies. He went on: "Now that we have won that argument the challenge is to press government to give real and lasting independence to the state sector, to support and encourage where we can the spread of independence, and to continue to demonstrate the enduring importance of independent education, which is one of this country's most valuable resources.

"Free from political control, free from the red tape and dictates which can smother our colleagues in most of the maintained sector; and with that freedom and independence comes a responsibility that we must inevitably take on, because others won't."

This month Hastie-Smith announced plans to leave his present post to become principal of a new academy in Kettering.

Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said Hastie-Smith should engage "critically with aspects of the flawed government agenda, including academies".

The HMC has commissioned research from Buckingham University academic Alan Smithers, due to be published tomorrow, which will set out the contribution private schools make to the economy and education system. It will argue that the independent sector is responsible for keeping the UK near the top of the international educational league tables.

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