Comment 8 by mr_DNA :

"My answer would be a secular school system, but I am not British."

Its a bit complex in the UK. We have faith schools who receive state funding and we have secular state schools. Unfortunately, the state schools are not performing as well as the faith schools. Instead of attempting to fix the state schools the government wants to introduce faith schools to improve the quality of schooling. This puts parents like me in a difficult position. Do we accept an inferior state school ( there are some excellent state schools but they are usually massively oversubscribed ) or sit on our consciences and try and get our kids into a faith school. I have done the latter by sending my daughter to a Church of England. To be fair, they do not insist you are Christian to attend so I don't literally need to lie about not being an atheist to get her in, I just need to keep my mouth shut to keep the peace. its an invidious position and I do resent having to do this in order to give my child the best start in life. To be honest though I don't worry too much about the CofE or Catholic schools. At least I know they will be tolerant of my stance and won't be introducing a creationist agenda into the science room. Also I don't think it is part of my parental duties to tell her what to think ( as opposed to most religious parents) so this way she can get used to interacting with faith heads whilst getting the other side of the argument from me. I know of many atheists whose children have rebelled against their views and become wiccas are pagans because they don't want organised religion but feel they need spirituality in their life.

Academic achievement on standardized tests are hardly an argument for faith schools, and against secular schools. If all the faith schools were suddenly converted to secular schools, I guarantee that the students in said school would do just as well if not better than before.

Isn't that just an argument for selfishness? "To hell with progress, as long as my kid gets to attend the better school!"