The Department for Education (DfE) has named three religiously selective schools on its shortlist of schools that are in the running for this year’s Pupil Premium Award, despite the fact that all three they take far fewer children eligible for free school meals than they should given the local area they are situated in. The Fair Admissions Campaign (FAC) has criticised the shortlist and highlighted once again the appalling record of religiously selective schools in serving poorer families in their communities.
The pupil premium was introduced in 2011 to provide additional funding to state-funded schools so as to improve the attainment of pupils from poorer backgrounds, and the awards were set up to celebrate schools that make best use of this funding to ‘help disadvantaged young people reach their potential’. However, they only take into account the performance of the pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds who are in attendance at the school, and not the number of children from disadvantaged backgrounds that the school actually admits. Therefore a school could be highly socio-economically selective and still perform strongly.
In line with figures produced by the FAC showing that religiously selective schools are, across the country as a whole, overwhelmingly less inclusive of children from poorer backgrounds than schools that don’t religiously select, the three religiously selective secondary schools on the shortlist were found to take an average of 12 percentage points fewer children eligible for free school meals (FSM) than would be representative of their local area. This compares to the broadly representative figures for the schools on the list that don’t religiously select, which on average actually take 2 per cent more children eligible for FSM than are in their area.
| School name | Religious selection | School FSM eligibility | Local area FSM eligibility | Percentage difference |
| La Retraite RC Girls’ School | All places | 13.6% | 32.09% | -18.49% |
| Ripley St Thomas CofE Academy | All places | 4% | 13.38% | -9.38% |
| St Wilfrid’s RC College | All places | 13.9% | 22.38% | -8.48% |
| Healing Science Academy | None | 5.9% | 8.22% | -2.32% |
| Great Torrington School | None | 10.1% | 10.28% | -0.18% |
| Caroline Chisholm School | None | 3.1% | 3.86% | -0.85% |
| Maiden Erlegh School | None | 4.4% | 4.30% | +0.1% |
| St Albans Girls’ School | None | 6.9% | 3.96% | +2.94% |
| Selly Park | None | 38.9% | 25.23% | +13.7% |
Richy Thompson of the British Humanist Association commented, ‘It’s amazing that out of all the schools in the country, the Department for Education has chosen to praise three religiously selective schools for the support they give to disadvantaged pupils, while ignoring the fact that all three of them take far fewer children from disadvantaged backgrounds than they should given the areas they’re in.
‘The Government urgently needs to review the criteria by which the Pupil Premium Awards are judged, and we can only hope that shortlisting these schools will not serve to disincentivise other schools from taking steps to become more inclusive in the future.’
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, Chair of the Accord Coalition, commented, ‘It is now well-documented that religious selection almost always acts a proxy for socio-economic selection, so it is astonishing that these three schools are on this shortlist. The Government should be encouraging schools that demonstrate inclusivity, rather than legitimising discrimination. This award has become a wasted opportunity to do that.’
Notes
For further comment or information, please contact Jay Harman on 0207 324 3078 or info@fairadmissions.org.uk.
See the FAC’s map showing religious and socio-economic selection in English secondary schools: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/map/
Read the FAC’s news item ‘Groundbreaking new research maps the segregating impact of faith school admissions’: https://fairadmissions.org.uk/groundbreaking-new-research-maps-the-segregating-impact-of-faith-school-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 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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