Church of England looks to being ‘largest sponsor and provider of secondary education’ as BHA calls for dismantlement of the grip of Church on state

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has said that the government’s Academies programme presents an opportunity for the Church of England (CofE) to play an increasingly important role in state education, with the Church ‘quite conceivably [to] become the largest sponsor and provider of secondary education in this country.’ The British Humanist Association (BHA) has said that such a change would ‘surely lead to further societal division along religious lines’ and has called for dismantlement of the grip of the Church on the state.The Archbishop made his comments on 22 September at