Common School or Common System?

Abstract

There is tension in any educational system between the promotion of social cohesion through common schooling and the respect for the rights of communities for an education which supports their distinctive cultures and values. Such distinctive cultures and values usually are — but need not be in increasingly secular societies — of a religious nature. This tension has been historically resolved in Britain by the state funding of schools, which are governed by trustees from religious affiliations but within a national framework of standards, admissions arrangements, curriculum and quality control.