The Green report: grammar schools for CofE clergy

 I have just in the last couple of days identified why it is that what  I think I know about the Green Report is bugging me. I should say, at the outset, that temperamentally I'm a reformer: I tend to think that things we have inherited are likely to have come to serve vested interests and to have succombed to Lord Acton's dictum about the corrupting potential of power else they become outflanked by human corruption. Therefore most human institutions are likely to need reform on a regular basis. The churches are not exceptions. The training and selection of church leaders is not exempted. That said, not all reform is good reform: sometimes reform further exacerbates problems or is itself illustrative of Lord Acton's Dictum.

So, I do not doubt that the Church of England's selection and training of so-called senior leaders needs to be looked at. Heck, I've even written about things that imply just that suggestion.

What I find myself concerned about is that what is proposed is a kind of grammar school system. The grammar school system selected a small number of children at age 11 to be sent for a more academic (potentially university facing) education, while the rest were assumed to be fit only for trades and educated accordingly. Now the problems with this system were many. One was that the number of places at a grammar school did not necessarily reflect the number of kids who might genuinely be university-capable leading to a situation where the talent pool might be bigger than the places offered -or potentially (but I suspect rarely) vice versa. So capable people were left behind. Sometimes these were people who, in the fulness of time, actually could have greater 'promise' than those selected at the relatively arbitrary age of 11.

Which brings on a second problem: differential development. That is to say that a number of children /young people don't develop intellectually in step with chronological age. A third and related issue is that many do not do well with the way that the test attempts to measure potential or may not be all rounders or may not be temperamentally suited to the kind of environment that the schools are. However, they may be people who are very well suited to all kinds of demanding roles requiring insight and intelligence.

And it looks to me like the Green report is inventing, in a sense, grammar schools for clergy with just these sorts of difficulties translated into an ecclesiastical key. The assumption of the kind of role wanted creates a narrower than necessary 'test' for entry. The restriction doesn't allow for the development of the whole population (of church leaders) in fair ways that recognise differences in development or even contextual wisdom.

To put it more practically: the system could end up selecting people who turn out not to be suitable but whose selection would then deprive others of the opportunities. It could end up missing people who should be serving by that kind of wider leadership but who don't appear to fit the criteria but in fact are the right sort of people for what God is trying to do with the church next. It might ignore people who mature into potential for the role later (but who won't be spotted because when they were 'taking their 11plus' they didn't look promising).

Worst of all, the selection process seems to be likely to produce a self-replicating 'elite'. It puts the cart before the horse: the process should be driven by a process of discerning the vocations of the whole people of God in order to get a sense of God's call to us as a whole church. We are then in a position to recognise and support the development of appropriate leadership (and evolution of structures, btw) which may well not be just like what has gone before or even what we think using a overly secular mindset (1). I think that the CofE already has a bias problem in discernment (towards certain kinds of educational and class backgrounds (and I don't actually expect women bishops to change this dimension of bias), this seems set to further institutionalise the bias to the prominent, the well-connected and the fortunately-circumstanced. I fear that all too often the apparent impression of a safe pair of hands in upper class social occasions is the main determiner of prima facie suitability.

We need the equivalent of a comprehensive school: where there is a much more fluid approach to setting, context, development and, yes, vocation. As we start to look to develop training more contextually, so that should apply to so-called senior appointments: we should expect that they would have a ministry development process which equips them as they go. Perhaps the most important quality would be a humility to learn and to work in teams. Everything else should be open to all church leaders according to inclination and need. And who knows, some God-borne surprises my result.

An open letter to advocates of the Green Report | Theore0
I think that some of the comments in the Church Times letters page support my concerns, though none of them use the image of grammar schools to tie together the concerns.

(1) I actually think that God sometimes speaks through the secular, but that there are some things where secular approaches can mislead us. I fear this may be one.