Schools ‘fail to fight extremism’

SECULAR schools are failing to provide children with a system of values to prevent them being led into extremism, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.

Pupils are not made to feel they are part of a community, leaving them open to radicalisation, he said in a House of Lords debate. Justin Welby said: “We live in a country where an overarching story, which is the framework for explaining life, has more or less disap- peared. We have a world of unguided and competing narratives, where the only common factor is the inviolability of personal choice, which means that for schools that are not of a religious character, confidence in any personal sense of ultimate values has diminished.

“Utilitarianism rules, and skills move from being talents held for the common good, which we are entrusted with as benefits for all, to being personal possessions for our advantage.”