The fifty most socio-economically selective state secondary comprehensives in England have been revealed in new research today, published by the Fair Admissions Campaign. The new research ranks schools according to how unrepresentative they are of their local areas in the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM). The list is overwhelmingly dominated by religiously selective schools, exposing sharply the segregating effects of faith-based admissions criteria. The Campaign has called on these schools to urgently review their admissions policies, and for the Government to take more steps to curb such actions.

Following on from similar findings published last month, today’s research compares the figures for each school to those of its Middle Super Output Area (MSOA), a geographical area roughly equivalent in size to the intake of a secondary school. It compares schools’ populations to the pupils living in their MSOAs, as recorded in the National Pupil Database.

Of the 100 worst offending comprehensives on the basis of FSM, 69 have admissions criteria that are religiously selective – including 18 of the worst offending 20. Including grammar schools, 51 of the top 100 are religiously selective, or 11 of the top 20. For comparison, 16% of all secondary schools are religiously selective.

Examining the admissions criteria of the twenty worst offending schools on the basis of FSM, almost all of them are extremely complex, and a number seem very likely to breach the School Admissions Code, which all schools are required by law to follow. Prominent schools in the worst offending twenty comprehensives on FSM include the London Oratory School (which is ninth), where 6.6% of pupils require Free School Meals, compared to 38.7% in its local area. It now has to rewrite its admissions policy after the Schools Adjudicator ruled last month that its current criteria break the Code in ten different places. The sixteenth school on the list, The Coventry Blue Coat Church of England School and Music College, was also similarly ordered to rewrite its criteria after they were found to be too complex. The Campaign’s full analysis can be found below.

Click to read about the top 20 most unrepresentative state comprehensive schools in terms of Free School Meals

Click to show a table of the full top 50

Professor Ted Cantle CBE of the iCoCo Foundation commented, ‘It is especially disappointing that such serious questions are being raised about the way in which schools that profess a religious ethos provide for their communities. As they receive public funds it is really up to them to constantly demonstrate that they are being fair and even handed and are following following the Admissions Code in both the letter and spirit intended. If full and public disclosures are not forthcoming to clearly demonstrate that all questions are being positively addressed, the Secretary of State should ask Ofsted to intervene.’

Pavan Dhaliwal, Head of Public Affairs at the British Humanist Association, commented, ‘The state schools in England that are most likely to exclude the poor are religious schools. These findings make clear that there are a number of schools, overwhelmingly many of which are faith schools, whose intakes are completely unrepresentative of their local areas. A quick glance at the faith schools’ admissions policies makes it apparent that all sorts of extreme engineering is going on, often in breach of the School Admissions Code. All these schools are institutions funded by the state to provide a utility to their local communities. That they have distorted this mission and become so unrepresentative is a disservice to those excluded and also those admitted. We urge the Government to remove state schools’ power to discriminate on religious grounds: it is bad for pupils and bad for our society. It creates religious and racial division, but it also creates sharp socio-economic division.’

Jeremy Rodell, spokesperson for the Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign, commented, ‘In Richmond we have seen some really clear-cut examples of faith-based discrimination leading directly to the social mix at one school being very different to the mix at its neighbours and in the local area. Of course, all parents want – and should demand – high quality schools for their children. But these are state schools which are supposed to provide good quality schooling for everyone in their local communities. Faith-based selection is inherently unfair because it means some parents have a wider choice of state school than others. And its use to enable back-door social selection is indefensible both on the grounds of community cohesion, and on ethical grounds, especially as many faith schools were founded to provide education for the under-privileged.’

Notes

For further comment please contact BHA Head of Public Affairs Pavan Dhaliwal on 07738 435 059, Accord Coalition Chair Jonathan Romain on 07770 722 893 or email info@fairadmissions.org.uk.

Read Jonathan Romain’s article in today’s The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10322520/Its-time-for-fair-selection-policies-for-all-schools.html

Visit the Fair Admissions Campaign’s website: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/

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 British Humanist Association, 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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As the new school year starts and new schools open, thousands more children and parents are subjected to religiously restricted admissions criteria in order to gain admittance to their local state school. The Fair Admissions Campaign has calculated that 5,788 religiously restricted places are opening at brand new schools this term, and it is likely that other schools with religious admissions criteria are also expanding their numbers. The Campaign has expressed regret at the news.

17 new Free Schools are opening with religiously restricted admissions criteria, including three Church of England, one Roman Catholic, one Greek Orthodox, three other Christian, three Jewish, three Muslim and three Sikh schools. Free Schools are not permitted to select more than half of their pupils on the basis of faith, but between them it is estimated that once they are filled these schools will have 4,598 places that are subject to religious admissions criteria.

In addition, St Richard Reynolds Catholic College, a new Voluntary Aided secondary school in the London Borough of Richmond, will have 1,190 restricted places. Last year it was the subject of the first ever legal challenge against a new school because of religious selection.

Jeremy Rodell, spokesperson for the Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign, commented, ‘We have just issued a school-by-school analysis showing the way faith-based discrimination at primary level means non-churchgoing parents are denied choice when they are trying to find places for their children at existing local state-funded primaries. It seems perverse to make that worse by adding even more faith-based places to the system, both in our borough and around the county, especially when the government knows this type of discrimination is opposed by the public by more than four to one.’

Professor Ted Cantle CBE of the iCoCo Foundation commented, ‘Around one-quarter of schools in England are of a religious character and some of these are highly selective and segregate children on the basis of faith. We should be breaking down barriers and encouraging integration and understanding rather than making the problem worse. Schools should be part of the solution to prejudice and extremism, not part of the problem.’

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE, Chair of the Accord Coalition for Inclusive Education, commented, ‘At a time when school places are severely limited, it seems unfair that those from a particular faith can jump ahead of the queue in state-funded schools where all are supposed to be equal; it highlights the urgency of reassessing the way faith schools operate in society.’

Notes

See the figures for the amount of religious selection by newly opening Free Schools: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Amount-of-religious-selection-by-2013-Free-Schools.xlsx.

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The Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign (RISC) has this week published a new report on faith-based discrimination in primary school admissions in the London Borough of Richmond. The report reveals the significant impact that faith-based admissions to local church primary schools has on restricting the choices available to non-churchgoing parents and highlights geographical areas where problems around accessing schools are most severe. RISC is affiliated to the Fair Admissions Campaign, which it helped to co-launch in June.

The publication of the report has provided RISC with an opportunity to renew its call for inclusive admissions and to keep the issue high on the local political agenda and it comes hard on the heels of a recent story of a four year old in Twickenham with no school place at all. The report has been sent to local media, politicians, schools and Dioceses and it includes suggestions on how religiously selective schools can be made more inclusive by following other borough faith schools.

For example, several local faith schools (both Anglican and Roman Catholic) have placed a limit on the amount of pupils they select on religious grounds (the local Anglican Diocese recommends that its schools do not select more than 50% of pupils by faith) and some schools ensure that places allotted to children without recourse to religion are made a higher priority. Meanwhile, the newly opened St Mary’s Hampton Church of England primary has decided not to select any pupils by faith – it has embraced the fully open admissions policy that RISC has been calling for.

RISC spokesman, Jeremy Rodell said: ‘The report is a look at the facts about faith-based discrimination at local primary schools. A third of all primary places are at the sixteen local church schools. Thirteen of them were over-subscribed this year. The result was that, on average, 80% of their places were offered to children selected on the basis of their parents’ religious practice. At the same time, most of the community schools were also over-subscribed. The combined effect was that churchgoing parents had a much wider choice than anyone else, and some parents were not offered a Reception place at a reasonable distance from home. We think that’s unfair, especially as all the schools are state-funded.

‘Our suggestions for improvement are intended to make a constructive contribution to alleviating the pressure. They do not meet RISC’s ultimate aim of full inclusivity. But they are all simple steps school governing bodies can take if they choose to, without changing their schools’ status or ethos. We also hope that Richmond Council will acknowledge the general pressure on primary school places and actively encourage governing bodies to do the right thing.’

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The Fair Admissions Campaign is today publishing new top-level data showing the degree to which faith-based admissions criteria cause schools to be socio-economically unrepresentative of their local areas. The Campaign has compared the number of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) at every state funded school to their neighbourhoods, and seen how much these two figures diverge. The findings show that religious selection has a huge impact in causing schools to have fewer pupils requiring free school meals, with secondaries that select being much more segregated than those that don’t.

The very worst schools are massively unrepresentative of their local areas, with religiously selective secondary schools comprising 58 of the top 100 most offending schools, and 70 of the top 100 comprehensives. By comparison, only 15% of all secondaries religiously select. To give some examples, the London Oratory School in Hammersmith & Fulham takes 6.6% of pupils requiring Free School Meals, compared to 38.7% in its local area. Sacred Heart High School, also in Hammersmith & Fulham, takes 6.3% of pupils requiring FSM, compared to 45.8% in its area. Even more extreme is The Blue Coat CofE School in Oldham, taking 6.8% of pupils requiring FSM compared to 47.4% locally.

Nationally about 15% of secondary pupils and 18% of primary pupils are considered eligible for free school meals. However, an average Roman Catholic secondary school would have 4.7% fewer pupils than its local area – for example, if 15% of pupils in its area required FSM, it would likely have 11.3% of pupils requiring FSM. A Catholic primary would typically have 7.1% fewer pupils than its area.

It is also possible to observe the direct impact of religious selection on free school meals. Virtually all Catholic schools have fully religiously selective admissions criteria, but there is huge diversity within the Church of England sector, and the Fair Admissions Campaign has now researched the oversubscription criteria of all religious secondary schools and established the degree to which they allow selection. Looking at Church of England secondary schools that do not select at all, they typically have 0.2% more FSM pupils than their area. But looking at CofE secondaries that select 100% of their pupils, they typically have 3.9% fewer.

The local areas examined are known as Middle Super Output Areas (MSOAs), which comprise about 2,000-6,000 households – about the typical catchment area of a secondary school. Previous, similar research has instead focused on first half of post codes, but MSOAs are better because they are smaller and because post code data involves comparing the number of children at the different schools in a given area, as opposed to the number of children living in the area. From here, the difference between each school and its MSOA is calculated.

Comments

Members of the Fair Admissions Campaign’s steering group have responded to the latest findings. Pavan Dhaliwal, Head of Public Affairs at the British Humanist Association, commented ‘This new evidence makes it abundantly clear that religiously selective admissions criteria are directly responsible for a high degree of socio-economic selection by state funded schools. The most segregated schools invariably have overly complex selection criteria that require some serious thought, time and commitment to understand and comply with, and so by their very nature exclude people like the single parent working several jobs who simply doesn’t have the time to comply.

‘It is fundamentally wrong that a school we all pay for can turn away a child because their parents are of a different religion or of no religion, and it is even more outrageous that so many are doing so in a manner that excludes those from the poorest of families at the same time.’

Professor Ted Cantle CBE, author of the Cantle Report into the 2001 race riots and founder of the Institute of Community Cohesion, commented, ‘It is profoundly disappointing that so many faith schools seem to have lost sight of supporting the most needy in their local areas. In addition we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that socio-economic segregation in schools will reinforce ethnic segregation as minorities tend to be more disadvantaged, all of which means an even more divided society. There needs to be more monitoring of selection and enforcement of socially responsible policies.’

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE, Chair of the Accord Coalition, commented, ‘The findings show that many faith schools seem to have lost their way religiously, and instead of caring especially for the more under-privileged parts of society are concentrating on children from higher socio-economic backgrounds in order to boost their league table standing. It is time to re-examine whether schools that use faith to segregate children have any place in today’s educational system.’

Notes

For further comment please contact BHA Head of Public Affairs Pavan Dhaliwal on 07738 435 059, Accord Coalition coordinator Jonathan Romain on 07770 722 893 or email info@fairadmissions.org.uk.

The table below shows how different types of religious school compare to their local areas, both in an absolute sense (e.g. if a local area is 15% FSM, then a typical Catholic secondary would be 11.3%) and a proportional sense (e.g. a typical Catholic secondary would have 85% as many pupils requiring FSM as its area. Note that 85% of 15% is not 11.3%, but this just reflects the fact that Catholic schools are more likely than other schools to be in deprived areas). The underlying data derives from Government-published analyses of the national pupil database.

Click here to show the table

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 British Humanist Association, 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 Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) has rejected a complaint made by a local campaign group about Tudor Grange Academy in Solihull’s new admissions arrangements. The complaint was made by the Fair Admissions Campaign-affiliated Tudor Grange Admissions Policy campaign after the school, which is not a faith school, decided to give priority to children attending a Church of England primary school with religiously selective admissions policies situated some distance away. The local group and national Campaign have both expressed regret at the decision.

Tudor Primary Academy, St James is the Church primary which is to become a feeder school, and is also sponsored by the secondary. It currently has admissions policies which allow up to 100% of pupils to be selected on the basis of religion. However, since the complaint was made, the primary has determined to drop that criteria and have fully open admissions.

While the Schools Adjudicator found that the consultation on the new admissions criteria had a number of flaws, ultimately she also found that having the primary as a feeder school would not constitute unlawful indirect religious discrimination (which is illegal under the Equality Act 2010). This was because it was considered to be ‘a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, the aim being that ‘Tudor Grange Academy is the sponsor of the feeder school with the aim to ensure that the feeder school will improve so that the quality of education provided and the standards achieved by the pupils will improve.’

Speaking on behalf of the Tudor Grange campaign group, Jenny Woodruff commented, ‘We’re disappointed at the determination. We see this as a missed opportunity to clarify the professional standards needed for consultations to be fair and worthwhile. In terms of the Equality Act, we disagree with the Adjudicator’s assessment that Tudor Grange has a legitimate aim argument in using the admissions system to improve standards at St James. Our view remains that nominating St James as a feeder school would not improve standards at St James, but rather standards can be improved by sharing resources and skills which are in no way dependent on the admissions policy.’

The British Humanist Association (BHA), another supporter of the Fair Admissions Campaign, wrote to the school in February to express concern at the plans. BHA Head of Public Affairs Pavan Dhaliwal commented, ‘It’s disappointing that this ruling has been lost, and worrying to consider that schools without a religious character might also attempt to religiously discriminate in admissions. However the campaign around this proposal has scored a number of successes already: the school initially proposed to use two religiously selective feeder primaries, but has dropped one while the other has opened up its admissions. So the situation is much improved thanks to the hard work of local parents.

‘Local groups like this are a fantastic force for good in challenging religious selection in school admissions and ensuring a more inclusive system where no child is turned away because their parents are deemed to be of the wrong religion or of no religion. We are confident that this and other groups will keep the pressure up on schools in their neighbourhoods, as will the Fair Admissions Campaign.’

Notes

For further comment please contact BHA Education Campaigner Richy Thompson on 020 7324 3072 or email info@fairadmissions.org.uk.

Visit the Fair Admissions Campaign website at https://fairadmissions.org.uk/

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 British Humanist Association, 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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