There's been lots of discussion about whether Lib Dems should support state funded schooling via institutions that have a religious guiding philosophy, let's put it that way, since Nick Clegg, self-proclaimed atheist, seemed to offer such schooling support recently (see the links at the bottom for the discussion elsewhere).

Some caveats here. I was brought up in quite a religious family. All my grandparents were "Gospel Hall Brethren"; a small Scottish anti-clerical sect. My family were frequently ex-patriates in Africa. The first school I really remember was in Nairobi. I don't remember it being "faith based" but looking at its website now I see it was scarily so - they even quote "spare the rod and spoil the child" and so on! Though I don't remember having chapel or any other kind of worship.

When we returned to the UK I got a scholarship to a Woodard prep school and thence to a Woodard public school. Nathaniel Woodard was a nineteenth century Church of England clergyman who established a network of relatively low cost boarding schools aimed at educating the sons (and daughters to his credit) of other clergy and professional middle classes. They both had a strong religious tradition. I was in the choir at both. Listen to Carols from Kings and I've done every treble and tenor solo on the entire disc (and I was better at it!).

About the time of my O levels I eschewed religion and became an atheist. Though missing chapel was not an option, it was just one of those social occasions that public schools like to go in for. And I never stopped enjoying the music and ceremony. Ten years and a long story later, I became a Catholic, and nearly joined the religious community at a well known top Catholic public school and monastery. Whilst what some of you may call "indoctrination" was more obvious there - my Anglican school had one priest, this one had nearly a hundred at its disposal - in fact it tended to take a discursive tone. I remain a Catholic, though their recent admissions policy has hardened my attitude towards them a little - still, I suppose that's what forgiveness is all about!

Anyway, back to the point. Nearly all the schooling available in this country before the 20th century was established by religious charities and with a religious ethos. We cannot just write it all off completely. But when we say "religious ethos" we're not talking Madrassas here. And I actually think that you can't really be a "good atheist" unless you've first heard what it is you're objecting to!

However there's one point about the current arrangements I feel I need to defend. People have been saying that one answer is to ensure that even faith schools must have an open admissions policy within their catchment. The catch, if you pardon the pun, is that these institutions do not really have a catchment area in the same sense as other state schools. The churches put in their relatively small amount of funding in order to provide a facility for all their members in a given area.

For example, in Oxford we used to have a joint Anglican-Catholic school. Upon reorganization a few years ago that was closed and the Catholics decided that since there wasn't an alternative in the whole of Oxfordshire they would go it alone. But their calculation of what they could put in is based on serving the needs of all the Catholics in Oxfordshire, or this part of the Archdiocese at least. I don't think you can have it both ways - you cannot insist on them taking all comers locally and serve the needs of all their adherents in a bigger area.

What will be quite interesting is next year the Anglicans, who decided that they could not justify another school on their own in Oxford, will become the lead partners in a new "academy" in the city - replacing a supposedly "failing" secular state school. They have vowed that no faith based selection will be permitted, which begs the question why they want to be the lead partner. But whatever their reasons, they will, like other schools they sponsor, have the ability to appoint people to the governing body. In fact, unlike their existing non-academy schools, they will have more autonomy, and yet it will not be a "faith based school" in the sense others are talking about.

Still. Of course for me the answer is easy. If the state did not actually deliver education using our money, it wouldn't be a problem, would it? No doubt there would again be some religious charities offering low cost or free education (though nothing like there once was owing to the relative impoverishment of the churches since the 19th century) but also people would have a greater choice of education for their children and not be reliant on whatever happened to be there provided by the state. What we need to do is not to provide education itself, but to ensure that people have the financial wherewithal to make those choices.

Anyway, I think the point is that I don't think it's done me any harm. In fact it may have made it easier for me to understand what I was doing when avowing myself an atheist to have a grounding in what I was deciding not to believe in. Chapel services were of course an overt sign of that religiosity, but were in fact social occasions when more fun was had seeing how much you could get away with in terms of whispering, mangling hymns and generally messing about. And if education was a genuine choice and we were not coerced into paying for others' faiths to have a special privilege at public expense, why worry too much?