The Emmanuel Schools Foundation

The Emmanuel Schools Foundation controls three state-funded academies in the North East of England (Emmanuel Academy - The Kings Academy - Trinity Academy) and aims to set up another four, primarily with public money. The foundation is controlled by a wealthy philanthropist and successfull businessman, Sir Peter Vardy, who made his money through the Reg Vardy Group (car dealers).

He is almost universally believed to accept creationism but his public position on it is ambiguous and contradictory - we believe that the ambiguity is nothing more than a public relations ploy in the face of very adverse publicity. Continued at:

The Emmanuel Schools Foundation and
Creationism in Vardy schools

"The current row dates back to last spring, when the Guardian revealed that the Gateshead school's evangelical Christian teachers were undermining the scientific teaching of biology because they did not believe in evolution. Undeterred by that row, John Burn, the foundation's chief academic adviser and former head of the Gateshead school, repeated last week his old assertion that the "competing accounts" of creation (six days by God or billions of years by evolution) were both based on faith. They would both be presented to pupils, who would "be left to take a view of it themselves". What is wrong with that? Something fundamental, which does not involve censorship or the right to free speech: the importance of teaching children the differences between fact and opinion." More