Sir, Thank you David Cameron for injecting some common sense into this issue (“Tory fudge on faith”, Jan 23).

If parents believe that attendance at a faith school is the best option for their child, why on earth should they not jump through whatever hoops are required to get them in? How is it anyone’s business except their own and the school’s? This is an option anyone is free to take, and if some atheists or agnostics are too proud or too stiff-necked to do it, that is their problem alone.

Nor is there any obvious reason why the school, or the church that runs it, should object. After all, from their viewpoint, children who don’t get much religious instruction at home arguably need the faith schools’ ethos more than those who do.

If any group objects, let it do a bit of research to find what makes the faith school popular, and then set up academies that provide it without the accompanying religion — if this can be done.

Michael W. Stone
Peterborough

Sir, The continuing furore over middle-class attempts to get into faith schools is more than a little silly. It is naive and ill-informed to assume that other socioeconomic classes are not up to the same machinations.

Viewing matters cynically, using religion to get into a school is open to all socio-economic classes. It is egalitarian and socially and racially inclusive. On the other hand, the traditional wheezes for manipulating entrance into good, non-faith state schools favour the well-off.

K. P. E. Lasok
London N7

Sir, If David Cameron supports parents who lie in order to do the best for their children’s education, it would presumably be equally moral for him to lie in order to achieve his political aim.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of faith school entry requirements, Cameron has surely done irreparable damage to the public's perception of his own integrity. Can we now be absolutely certain that he is always telling the truth or simply hiding it in order to gain power?

George Austin
Archdeacon Emeritus of York

Sir, To acquiesce to non-faith parents getting their children into faith-based schools is not a “Tory fudge on faith” but the action of streetwise parents. We need to face the facts that most Christian faith-based schools are in the top league of schools. The lesson surely from this is to promote benefi-cial, religious principles in secular schools. The implied hypocrisy of streetwise parents is no different from the large numbers of secularists who use churches for burial services.

Dr Keith Sanders
Tewkesbury, Glos

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