'Primary' refers to the level of education-- primary schools run from years 1 to 6, that is, from ages 5 to 11 or thereabouts, while secondary schools run from years 7 to 11 (or 13 if they include A-level students), that is, ages 11 to 16 (or 18).

'State' indicates that it's funded by the state-- usually supplemented by whatever it can get from the community, and religious schools often do better than secular ones in that regard. Although some British religious schools are public schools (that is, private, as in you have to pay), most are state schools. Compare, for example, this article from a couple of years ago on a Roman Catholic state primary.

ETA: British education cross-post!

A British friend of mine was talking about her primary school, which was Jewish and featured lots of instruction in Hebrew, et cetera. Nowadays, the population of the area having changed, the student body is like 50% Moslem.

Ah. Thanks. Interesting. I guess I'd kind of assumed that religious schools there were run like religious schools here, totally separate from the state-run schools.

Are there ever any sort of conflicts between state curriculum requirements and the religious teachings of the school? Like, when I was in high school, it was a New Jersey education requirement that health class had to include lessons on various forms of birth control, how they worked and how to use them and stuff like that. I'm sure the Catholic schools didn't teach that, but they didn't have to, since they were private.

Or, there are some Christian high schools in the US that don't teach evolution, but pretty much every state requires that the public high schools teach it. (Well, Kansas keeps wavering on that, and Georgia requires that the textbooks have a sticker on the front saying that evolution is a theory, not a fact, and that the material should be approached with an open mind, or something like that. But most states are still teaching actual science.)

Back in the neolithic days when I was in school in the UK...well, the requirements of a school were to prepare its students to take what are now GCSR exams. When I took them, they were O and A and S level exams, and there were many different boards with each having their own syllabi.

If I didn't take an O level in anything religious, I never got the idea that the government cared what I was taught--Fay, Am-Chau--is that a correct impression?

Hil, remember that in the UK we still have an established church-- the Queen is the head of Church as well as State, and Bishops sit in the House of Lords. Most religious state schools are Church of England, with Roman Catholic second and a scattering of Jewish and Muslim places. The concept of church-state division is not really recognised here, at least in the structure of the system.

We now have the National Curriculum which lays down what state schools have to teach in key subjects-- which I think means only science, maths, and English. (For example, the religious education programme is "non-statutory"; it's also possible for parents to take thier children out of RE lessons.) The various exam boards do have different requirements, but they all fall within the demands of the National Cirriculum, as I understand it. I believe all UK state schools teach evolution (and my father is a science teacher in a C of E secondary school, so I think I'd have heard if they'd stopped).

It's interesting that country with a state church seems to have much less angst over religion than the U.S., which declares freedom of religion. Then again, England seems a bit more psychially stable than the U.S. anyway. I wonder if that's because England doesn't fuss so much about overt weirdness.

I wouldn't say we were free of angst over religion, Connie. For example, we've recently had/are still having an important public debate about the right to wear religious symbols-- sparked off by two key cases: a woman who worked for British Airways and was not permitted to wear a cross on show while in uniform, and another woman who was a classroom assistant who was asked not to wear a Muslim veil which covered her mouth while at work. There's a strong freedom of religion tradition, but there is debate about the outward expression of religion.

Shaw often argued that having an established church was an important factor in keeping England (the term he used) free from religious domination. Establishment, he claimed, made it an essentially secular institution, which as an arm of the state would not have great secular power compared to other departments, but which as a primarily secular power would no longer have the moral leadership an independent church has. A lot of that argument depends on the form of establishment. It obviously does not apply to theocracy, where the state is an arm of the church rather than the other way around.

Too much of the U.S. these days is an unspoken theocracy.

The history of religion in the U.S. is particularly interesting for me because I've got several Colonial ancestors who bucked the system by being unapologetic Quakers in Puritan colonies when it was illegal not to attend Puritan services.

History, she is cool.

Word, Connie.