The conundrum of religious schools in twenty-first-century Europe

In this paper Merry examines in detail the continued – and curious – popularity of religious schools in an otherwise ‘secular’ twenty-first century Europe. To do this he considers a number of motivations underwriting the decision to place one's child in a religious school and delineates what are likely the best empirically supported explanations for the continued dominant position of Protestant and Catholic schools. He then argues that institutional racism is an explanatory variable that empirical researchers typically avoid, though it informs both parental assessments of school quality as well as selective mechanisms many mainstream religious schools use to function as domains of exclusion. He then distinguishes between religious schools in a dominant position from those serving disadvantaged minorities and argues that the latter are able to play a crucially important function other schools only rarely provide and hence that vulnerable minorities may have reason to value.