Archbishop Desmond Tutu paying a visit to the Archbishop Sumner Church of England Primary School in South London, February 2009 Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith  In Monday's Commons debate on education, a Scottish MP was challenged for daring to take part in a discussion about English schools. Lindsay Roy is a former headmaster from Fife, who might have worthwhile thoughts on how to educate children. But devolution means that politicians at Westminster have no voice on education in Scotland, so there is resentment when MPs from up there presume to speak on education down here.  Mr Roy was judged an interloper, and no more was heard from him. When it came time to vote, though, he was present and correct, as were most of the 37 other Labour MPs representing Scottish constituencies, who can be relied upon to help the Government get its English business through the Commons. The Scots didn't make the difference this time: the Children, Schools and Families Bill was given a Second Reading by a majority of 81. But their presence in the division lobbies highlighted one of the unresolved contradictions of devolution.  Scotland prides itself on its separate education system, which, thanks to the extra public spending it claims from the Treasury in London, lavishes more on its pupils than is spent on their counterparts south of the border. Educational horror stories familiar to parents in inner-city England elicit scant fellow feeling in Edinburgh.  What is little noticed, however, is that it is also a system that has institutionalised religious segregation to a degree unmatched in England and Wales. In Glasgow and the West, where Protestant and Catholic children are educated almost entirely separately, Scotland's state schools owe more to the sectarian traditions of Northern Ireland than the secular philosophy of Ed Balls and his allies. Indeed, were the Schools Secretary to suggest doing to faith schools in Scotland what he has encouraged in England, he would find his friendship with Gordon Brown ended faster than you could say "no surrender". Nothing could be more certain to outrage Scottish Labour's working-class heartlands than an attempt to pare down the Roman Catholic Church's long-established right to oversee its own affairs, in particular in the field of admissions.  That Mr Brown has been willing to tolerate a campaign against faith schools in England that he would not countenance in his own country is another reason for deploring what has been done since June 2007, when Mr Balls was given charge of the English education system. This newspaper published striking evidence earlier this week of the extent to which faith schools are suffering under the admissions rules he introduced in 2008. Over the past six months, more than 30 have been investigated by the Government's admissions adjudicator, and censured for doing what you would expect them to do: ensuring that their intake represents the faith they were founded to serve.  Some of the examples defy belief, in more ways than one. St Hilda's Church of England secondary in Liverpool was reprimanded for asking parents to "support" their children's attendance at Christian assembly because – wait for it – this breached the right of parents to keep their daughters out of RE lessons. A Catholic school on Merseyside and an Anglican school in Epsom were both taken to task for asking parents to sign forms supporting their Christian ethos, while some highly rated Sikh schools were upbraided for encouraging parents to take part in community activities, in case that discriminated against those unable to attend, perhaps because of work.  No wonder that the organisations that represent faith schools – of which there are almost 7,000 in England – are in despair. They feel besieged by a Government that is using its statutory powers to challenge their very reason for being: the right to make faith and a commitment to it the deciding factor in admissions. Cristina Odone had it right in these pages on Tuesday when she argued that to defend the rights of faith schools was to defend the right of parents to a school ethos that matches the one they promote at home.  Mr Balls was characteristically robust in reply. In a letter to The Daily Telegraph yesterday, he repeated what he had said in October: "I fully support and am committed to the role of faith schools in our education system." Yet it is easy to doubt his sincerity, given that in March, he set up a hue and cry against the "shocking" behaviour of faith schools which solicited donations from would-be parents, only to have his "evidence" discredited when it turned out the schools were Jewish and the "payments" were voluntary contributions to help with security costs. There was outrage among members of the Jewish community, in particular prominent Labour donors, and Mr Balls was said to have apologised in private.  For a Government that gives every impression of wanting to reverse the move towards increased independence for schools championed by Tony Blair and Lord Adonis with the academies programme, faith schools are an easy target. They are the low-hanging fruit, short of support in an increasingly secularised society, reviled by members of a liberal establishment who can use wealth and education to play the state system to their advantage, or opt out altogether. It isn't just Mr Balls who is after them: Nick Clegg, an avowed atheist, yesterday made the rather illiberal proposal that faith schools should be forced to teach that homosexuality is "normal and harmless".  The roots of this debate spread far wider. This is about freedom, about the right of schools to run their affairs independently, and the desire of parents to make choices about the environment their children are taught in. There may be only a few months left in this Government's time, but Mr Balls is advancing on all fronts: this latest Bill will reach deep beyond the front door, by introducing new regulations for home schooling; private schools are being driven out of business by social engineering dressed up as a new admissions regime; and control of academies is being handed back to local authorities, reversing the independence won at great cost – and in the teeth of opposition from Mr Brown – under Mr Blair.  English faith schools – whether Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh or C of E – are required to abide by the national curriculum. They cannot teach creationism or bomb-making. That is the proper limit to their freedom. But like their counterparts in Scotland, they should be free to determine their intake and their ethos without the help of Mr Brown or Mr Balls.  The Schools Secretary naturally resents the charge that his agenda for education is designed to position himself for the contest to succeed Mr Brown as Labour leader. But faith schools are the canaries in the educational coal mine. As Mr Blair put it in 2006: "It is about schools feeling ownership of their own future, the power and the responsibility that comes from being free to chart their own course, experiment, innovate, doing things differently: the decision-makers in their own destiny, not the recipients of a predestined formula laid down by government."  Mr Balls's model of a state that despises any challenge to its authority should have us all up in arms.
Ed Balls's drive to control the admissions policies of faith schools robs    parents of vital choices, says Benedict Brogan.