Understanding public attitudes in Britain towards faith schools

This paper provides a detailed analysis of different aspects of public attitudes towards faith schools in Britain. It examines two questions relating to government policy on this issue and two questions that ask about the perceived outcomes of this type of school. After discussing existing public opinion on this issue it uses data from the British Social Attitudes Survey 2007 to analyse the bivariate relationships between attitudes towards faith schools and religious characteristics. It then assesses the relative impact of religious characteristics on public attitudes when estimating logistic regression models that simultaneously examine for the effects of other explanatory variables. These include demographic characteristics, socio-economic status, party-political affiliation and ideological beliefs. The main findings are that religious characteristics, especially attendance at religious services and perceived religiosity, have a strong impact in all four model estimations, while previous or current attendance at a private school by a household member and ideological beliefs also play a role.