Fundamentalist Exams on par with A-levels?

Faith schools educate around a quarter of our children, yet we hear little about their social effects. I attended Church of England schools as a child, and why they were undoubtedly good schools, with hindsight I can see that religious content was forced down our throats on a daily basis from the age of four. Aside from classes in religious education, we sang hymns in assemblies, essentially forced to praise God on a daily basis as the more committed teachers picked out and reprimanded any child not singing loudly enough.

'Brain-washing' is an emotive term to use, but it makes me deeply uncomfortable that in the 21st century we still allow children to be indoctrinated in faith by state schools. Freedom of religion is a misnomer in this debate - true freedom would involve removing institutionalized preaching and allowing free-thinking adults to make up their own minds about what to believe; something that the five-year-old child, told by his teachers to "Sing Hosannah" if he wants to go to heaven, isn't yet able to do.

A point that needs to be made more often is that religious schools suppress freedom of religion.