A startling new report published today has revealed that the Church of England (CofE) is failing to encourage its state schools to be inclusive of all children, irrespective of religion or belief, despite claims to the contrary. It is mis-selling its schools to the public.

The Church claims to have an admissions policy that is not religiously discriminatory but, in reality, the guidance its offers schools does not demand (or in the large majority of case even encourage) the adoption of non-religiously selective admission criteria.

‘Mixed Signals: The discrepancy between what the Church preaches and what it practises about religious selection at its state-funded schools‘ has been produced by the Accord Coalition for Inclusive Education on behalf of the Fair Admissions Campaign (FAC). Church of England dioceses are the Church bodies with special legal responsibility for issuing their schools with guidance regarding religious selection in admissions. The report finds that:

• for the last two and a half years, national Church officials have repeatedly and publicly framed their schools as ones that do not seek to serve Christians ahead of other local families
• many Church of England schools that set their own admission arrangements continue to operate a religiously selective policy, while national Church guidance fails to recommend schools refrain from religious selection
• only 1 in 8 Church of England dioceses advise their state funded schools to not select pupils by faith
• many schools (and 50% of the secondary schools) in even these notionally inclusive dioceses still operate a religiously selective admissions policy
• a further 1 in 4 dioceses advise their schools to reserve some places by faith, meaning these schools are being actively prevented from operating an inclusive admission policy
• overall, admissions guidance from Church bodies upholds autonomy of schools to determine how they select pupils and does not guide schools towards being religiously inclusive

The report calls for national Church authorities to issue new guidance that makes clear where authority over setting faith based admissions lies, and which requires dioceses and schools to move away from religious selection.

Fair Admissions Campaign Steering Group member and Chair of the Accord Coalition for Inclusive Education, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said ‘Most people in Britain – including a majority of people of faith – do not want state funded schools to religiously select or divide pupils. Church of England officials appear to be responding to these widespread concerns by stressing the inclusivity of their schools, but in most instances they are not telling their schools to be more inclusive. The Church should practice what it preaches.

‘This mis-match between words and reality is misleading, encourages social segregation and undermines the position of those in the Church wanting CofE schools to be non-discriminatory. We urge Church authorities to guide their schools on a path away from division, towards greater inclusivity’.

The Fair Admissions Campaign shared its findings with the Rev Stephen Terry, who campaigns for all Church of England schools to be open and accessible to children and families from other backgrounds. He said ‘To select on grounds of faith is discriminatory and validates a wider culture that says it is okay for state funded schools to segregate children by this means. To do so threatens the reputation of the Church, and is seen by many, inside and outside the Church as potentially hindering the growth of integration and cohesion in our society.

‘Some CofE schools do not religiously discriminate, and thus provide positive examples for others, but very many still do. Much clearer leadership is urgently required for progress to be made in establishing the open and tolerant society that the vast majority of our nation wishes to see.’

Last year the Accord Coalition commissioned an opinion poll conducted by Populus which found 72.2% of the public agreed that ‘state funded schools, including state funded faith schools, should not be allowed to select or discriminate against prospective pupils on religious grounds in their admissions policy’. 14.8% of respondents disagreed, meaning faith discrimination was opposed by a ratio of almost five to one. Anglicans were found to oppose religious discrimination in pupil admissions by 69% to 17% (by a ratio of 4 to 1).

Notes
The FAC’s report ‘Mixed Signals: The discrepancy between what the Church preaches and what it practises about religious selection at its state-funded schools’ can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/mixedsignalsreport.

Contact details
For further comment or for interview, please contact Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain on 07770 722 893 or at rabromain@aol.com, and the Rev Stephen Terry on 07900 013471 or at
stephenterry49@gmail.com.

For further information about the report, contact the Accord Coalition Coordinator Paul Pettinger at paul@accordcoalition.org.uk on 020 7324 3071.

About the Accord Coalition
The Accord Coalition was launched in 2008 and brings together religious and non-religious organisations who want state funded schools to be made open and suitable to all, regardless of people or their family’s religious or non-religious beliefs. It campaigns to end religious discrimination in school staffing and admissions, and for all state funded schools to provide PSHE, as well as assemblies and Religious Education that boost mutual understanding and teach about the broad range of beliefs in our increasingly diverse society. http://accordcoalition.org.uk/

The Fair Admissions Campaign
The FAC wants all state-funded schools in England and Wales to be open equally to all children, without regard to religion or belief. The Campaign is supported by a wide coalition of individuals and national and local organisations. We hold diverse views on whether or not the state should fund faith schools. But we all believe that faith-based discrimination in access to schools that are funded by the taxpayer is wrong in principle and a cause of religious, ethnic, and socio-economic segregation, all of which are harmful to community cohesion. It is time it stopped.

Supporters of the campaign include the British Humanist Association, Professor Ted Cantleand the iCoCo Foundation, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the Campaign for State Education, the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, the Christian think tank Ekklesia, the Hindu Academy, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrat Education Association, Liberal Youth, the Local Schools Network, Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign, the Runnymede Trust, the Socialist Educational Association, and the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.

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A major new survey of recent research relating to the use of religious selection in faith school admissions has failed to identify any evidence supporting the Government’s proposed move to end limits on religious selection by free schools.

The report, published by the Fair Admissions Campaign, sets out the full range of evidence, information, and research on religious selection in schools admissions. Drawing on data and analysis from the last 15 years, the study explores the impact that religious discrimination in school admissions has had and continues to have on key issues such as social integration, community cohesion, pupil attainment, parental choice, and equality.

It comes in the midst of proposals announced by the Government last autumn which would see an end to the 50% cap on religious selection, which currently requires all new and existing religious free schools to leave at least half of their places equally open to local children, irrespective of religion or belief. Research published since the announcement has been overwhelming in its condemnation:

• An August 2017 study commissioned by the Department for Education revealing that ‘attitudes were more positive and, as would be expected, mixing was more frequent in mixed than segregated schools…mixed schools do result in more social mixing between ethnic groups over time, and mixing is reliably associated with more positive views of the outgroup’
• A March 2017 report by the Sutton Trust concluding that lifting the 50% cap is ‘likely to make [faith schools] even more unrepresentative of their local areas, reducing the number of good places available to pupils across the socio-economic spectrum. The admissions process for faith schools should instead be opened up so that their admissions are fairer and begin to reflect their local population.’
• A November 2016 report from the Education Policy Institute which finds that the proposal is ‘unlikely to yield school places that are of a significantly higher quality than that offered by non-faith schools…[and] there is a risk that these small gains would come at the price of increased social segregation.’
• A September 2016 analysis of official School Census data revealed that Christian schools that select 100% of their places on the basis of religion are far less diverse than those which select either none or only half of their pupils on the basis of religion. The analysis concludes that if the 50% cap was rolled out to all state schools rather than repealed, ‘tens or even hundreds of thousands of non-white pupils would gain access to their local schools where they haven’t had access before’.

Particularly interesting is the attention drawn to the various polls that have been conducted over the last few years, demonstrating that religious selection is hugely unpopular among the population as a whole. Indeed, a poll published by the Accord Coalition in July 2017 found that four out of five people want to keep the 50% cap, including a sizeable majority of every religious group, and other polling suggests around three-quarters want to scrap faith-based admissions entirely. A number of high-profile figures have also condemned the Government’s proposals, including Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, Ofsted Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman, and Conservative ‘Father of the House’ Ken Clarke MP.

Commenting on the report’s release, Chair of the Accord Coalition for Inclusive Education, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain commented, ‘This is an incredibly important and timely survey, and one that highlights the unacceptable face of schools admissions, with a number of faith schools using discriminatory criteria that are religiously questionable and socially divisive. The Government should urgently reconsider its proposals to increase such division in the education system in light of these findings.’  

Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson added, ‘Discussions about faith schools and religious selection are often unhelpfully coloured by personal anecdote and fixed allegiance, so what this report aims to do is provide a “one-stop-shop” of reliable information in this area. We hope this will encourage a more informed debate, and more informed policy-making too.’

Notes

For further information, please contact the Fair Admissions Campaign on 020 7324 3078 or email info@fairadmissions.org.uk.

The report is available at: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/2017-08-29-FINAL-Religious-Selection-Research-Survey.pdf

The Fair Admissions Campaign wants all state-funded schools in England and Wales to be open equally to all children, without regard to religion or belief. The Campaign is supported by a wide coalition of individuals and national and local organisations. We hold diverse views on whether or not the state should fund faith schools. But we all believe that faith-based discrimination in access to schools that are funded by the taxpayer is wrong in principle and a cause of religious, ethnic, and socio-economic segregation, all of which are harmful to community cohesion. It is time it stopped.

Supporters of the campaign include the Accord Coalition, the Humanists UK, Professor Ted Cantle and the iCoCo Foundation, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the Campaign for State Education, the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, the Christian think tank Ekklesia, the Hindu Academy, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrat Education Association, Liberal Youth, the Local Schools Network, Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign, the Runnymede Trust, the Socialist Educational Association, and the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.

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The use of religious selection in state school admissions significantly reduces the chance of parents being offered their first choice school, new research by the Fair Admissions Campaign (FAC) has revealed.

Following the publication of the Government’s official school preference data last week, the FAC compared the proportion of parents in each local authority who were offered their first choice secondary school to the proportion of secondary places in each local authority that are subject to religious selection. The analysis found that, on average, parents living in local authorities with a high proportion of religiously selective schools were far less likely to be offered their first choice than parents in areas with relatively fewer religiously selective schools.

In fact, for every 1% increase in the proportion of secondary school places subject to religious selection, there is a 4.2% increase in parents missing out on their first choice secondary school.

The findings reinforce concerns that the Government’s proposal to drop the so-called 50% cap on religious selection and allow new and existing religious free schools to select all of their places on the basis of religion will have a hugely detrimental impact on the education system. Since the proposals were announced by the Prime Minister in September last year, a spate of research has been produced demonstrating that the 50% cap has significantly boosted both integration and social mobility in schools, and that removing it is likely to lead to more ethnically and socially segregated schools.

Now that the FAC’s analysis has also revealed that the proposal would reduce the access of local parents to their preferred schools, the Government is likely to face fresh questions as to why it is pursuing a policy so obviously detrimental to parents and children.

Fair Admissions Campaign spokesperson Richy Thompson commented, ‘The Government is proposing to lift the cap on religious selection in school admissions in the name of meeting parental demand, but today’s findings demonstrate that precisely the opposite will occur. This research has nothing to say about the pros and cons of faith schools in general, only about whether or not our education system is set up so as to allow for the fair access of local parents to their preferred schools. This is the principle on which our entire school admissions system should be based, but unfortunately the evidence is very clear that religious discrimination detracts significantly both from fair and equal access and from parental choice.

‘Faith schools, like all other state-funded schools, are paid for by everyone and should be open to everyone. The fact that the Government is proposing to spend more public money on schools that are not open to all and which reduce local access is unconscionable, and makes a mockery of the “Schools that work for everyone” slogan with which the policy was launched. Religiously selective schools are not schools that work for everyone, they are schools that discriminate, divide, and turn away local children at the gate.’

Notes

For further comment or information please contact the Fair Admissions Campaign on info@fairadmissions.org.uk or 0207 324 3078.

See full details of the FAC’s research: https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017-06-20-Impact-of-religious-selection-on-parental-choice.pdf

Graph showing impact of religious selection on chance of parents securing their first choice secondary school (by local authority):

See the FAC’s previous news item ‘Pupils access to local schools blighted by religious selection, Mayor of London’s annual education report reveals’: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/pupils-access-to-local-schools-blighted-by-religious-selection-mayor-of-londons-annual-education-report-reveals/

See the FAC’s briefing on recent research on faith schools and religious selection: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-06-16-Briefing-recent-research-on-‘faith’-schools-and-religious-selection.pdf

Read the FAC’s news item ‘Government published plans to allow full religious discrimination in schools admissions: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/government-publishes-plans-to-allow-full-religious-discrimination-in-schools-admissions/

The Fair Admissions Campaign wants all state-funded schools in England and Wales to be open equally to all children, without regard to religion or belief. The Campaign is supported by a wide coalition of individuals and national and local organisations. We hold diverse views on whether or not the state should fund faith schools. But we all believe that faith-based discrimination in access to schools that are funded by the taxpayer is wrong in principle and a cause of religious, ethnic, and socio-economic segregation, all of which are harmful to community cohesion. It is time it stopped.

Supporters of the campaign include the Accord Coalition, the Humanists UK, Professor Ted Cantle and the iCoCo Foundation, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the Campaign for State Education, the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, the Christian think tank Ekklesia, the Hindu Academy, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrat Education Association, Liberal Youth, the Local Schools Network, Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign, the Runnymede Trust, the Socialist Educational Association, and the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.

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The Catholic Education Service (CES) has climbed down on its bid to overturn a decision by the school admissions tribunal, which found that the religious selection test used by Catholic schools is ‘unfair and arbitrary’. The Fair Admissions Campaign (FAC), which along with Humanists UK was responsible in 2015 for revealing that virtually every religiously selective school in England has been breaking the law, welcomed the news.

In November last year the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) ruled that the admission arrangements of a number of Catholic schools in England are unlawful due to their use of the Certificate of Catholic Practice. The Certificate, which was introduced by the CES in 2016, is used to verify whether or not a pupil is from a practising Catholic family, and to subsequently give such pupils priority in admissions.

However, the certificate is not subject to any objective test, and simply requires the signature of a priest. The OSA judged this to be too arbitrary a test to comply with the School Admissions Code, which demands that all school admission arrangements be ‘reasonable, clear, objective, and procedurally fair’.

Following the OSA’s ruling, the CES together with the Diocese of Westminster were given permission to legally challenge the decision in the High Court. But after discussions with the OSA and the Department for Education, that challenge has now been dropped. This is as the CES has now clarified that, but for ‘exceptional circumstances’, a parent must have attended Mass on Sundays and holydays of obligations for at least five years in order to have their certificate approved by a priest. Despite five years being an extremely long time to have to be religiously practising to gain entry to a school, the OSA has indicated that use of the certificate is now likely to be considered ‘acceptable’ under the School Admissions Code, as this clarification has introduced objectivity into the Certificate’s assessment process.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE, Chair of the Accord Coalition for Inclusive Education, a founding member of the Fair Admissions Campaign, commented, ‘The Adjudicator’s insistence on objectivity and fairness in the admissions system is admirable, and we’re glad that their ruling against the Catholic Education Service will be upheld.’

‘It remains the case, however, that religiously selective admission arrangements are unfair by their very nature, and cause a great deal of harm regardless of how objective they are. Schools that are paid for by everybody should be open to everybody, and any system in which children are discriminated against on the basis of their assumed religion is not fit for purpose. We will go on encouraging both the Government and individual schools to do away with religious selection altogether and opt for a fully inclusive approach instead.’  

Notes

For further comment or information please contact the Fair Admissions Campaign on info@fairadmissions.org.uk or 0207 324 3078.

Read the Catholic Education Service’s clarification on the Certificate of Catholic Practice: https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Certificate-March-2017-FINAL-002.docx

Read the OSA’s decisions on the admission arrangements of:

St Paul’s Catholic College, Surrey: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/st-pauls-catholic-college

St Michael’s Catholic Primary Schools, Surrey: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/st-michaels-catholic-primary-school-surrey

Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Primary School, Surrey: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/our-lady-of-the-rosary-catholic-primary-school

St Ignatius Catholic Primary School, Surrey: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/st-ignatius-catholic-primary-school

St Richard Reynolds Catholic College, Richmond: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/st-richard-reynolds-catholic-college

Read the FAC news item ‘An Unholy Mess: new report reveals “near-universal noncompliance” with School Admissions Code among religiously selective state schools in England: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/an-unholy-mess-new-report-reveals-near-universal-noncompliance-with-school-admissions-code-among-state-faith-schools-in-england/

Read the full report: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/anunholymess/    

The Fair Admissions Campaign wants all state-funded schools in England and Wales to be open equally to all children, without regard to religion or belief. The Campaign is supported by a wide coalition of individuals and national and local organisations. We hold diverse views on whether or not the state should fund faith schools. But we all believe that faith-based discrimination in access to schools that are funded by the taxpayer is wrong in principle and a cause of religious, ethnic, and socio-economic segregation, all of which are harmful to community cohesion. It is time it stopped.

Supporters of the campaign include the Accord Coalition, the Humanists UK, Professor Ted Cantle and the iCoCo Foundation, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the Campaign for State Education, the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, the Christian think tank Ekklesia, the Hindu Academy, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrat Education Association, Liberal Youth, the Local Schools Network, Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign, the Runnymede Trust, the Socialist Educational Association, and the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.

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