A November 2012 survey by ComRes for the Accord Coalition found 73% of British adults thought that ‘state funded schools should not be allowed to select or discriminate against prospective pupils on religious grounds in their admissions policy’. Only 18% thought that they should.

2011 research into the views of 5 to 11 year olds by the Children’s Commissioner found that ‘… only one in five (20%) children and young people felt that religion (a proxy for faith schools) should be used in admissions criteria and nearly two-thirds (64%) felt religion should not be part of school’s selection criteria (and 16% were unsure). The focus group participants also tended to hold strong views against selection on religious grounds, as; “you shouldn’t be judged on your religion, and everyone should be treated equally” (girl, Year 8). Various participants across the different focus groups described faith-based selection as “racist” and another described it as “discrimination” (girl, Year 10)’.

A September 2010 survey by YouGov for ITV gave British adults a list of eleven factors that ‘were important to you when choosing which school to send your child/children to’, and asked them to pick their top three. Only 9% of parents picked ‘religion of the school’.

Parents generally want the highest quality education possible for their children. So if one school in a neighbourhood happens to have better results than another, they will prefer it for their sons and daughters.

If the better school is not selective in its admissions, there will be little parents can do to influence whether their child is given a place or not. But if the better school is religiously selective (as will happen to be the case about half of the time), then ambitious parents can try to maximise their chances. For instance they may start going to church or sending their children to Sunday school – not because they are religious but because they want their children to go to the best performing school which just happens to be a religiously selective school.

But some parents are more able than others to make the system work for them – for example, those with free time and sufficient means. Others, with heavy work commitments (for example, a single mother with two or three jobs) will have no time to attend Church on a Sunday.

As a result, the religious selection process is automatically skewed against children from less affluent backgrounds because their parents are typically less able to play the system. As a consequence of the skewed intake, the religiously selective school gets even better exam results, attracts better teachers and becomes even more desirable, while nearby schools that do not select enter into a similar, but downward spiral.

Everyone then suffers: not just the more disadvantaged children and parents but also parents who feel they are letting their children down if they do not feign religious observance to keep up with everyone else.

Does this theory match reality? Well, surveys show that very few parents consider the religion of a school to be important when they are deciding what schools they prefer for their children. Easily the most important thing is, of course, performance.

We also have a wide range of evidence (such as eligibility for free school meals, academic ability of pupils starting at schools, and value added indicators) showing that admissions to religiously selective schools cause socio-economic bias.

Until recently religious schools were able to select deliberately by socio-economic factors (such as class and income): they could require parents to financially support or volunteer for the Church, or require pupils to attend an interview at which their social class would be apparent. Now this is not allowed and there is less evidence that deliberate socio-economic selection is occurring. The latest School Admissions Code in England explicitly bans schools from requiring parents to give financial or practical support to a church or other religious body. And the Education and Inspections Act 2006 also bans interviews. The only way such deliberate selection can now take place is through priests using their discretion to decide whose references they will sign off.

But even where there is no deliberate social selection by the school, it is clear that socio-economic selection still often occurs as a consequence of the religious selection. And this should be worrying enough for us to do something about it.

First of all it is worth pointing out that many Church of England and Methodist schools already do not religiously select their pupils, and yet we have not heard any complaints of this issue arising.

Beyond that, some parents prefer faith schools because the education they provide lines up with their own beliefs, and it might turn out to be that a few of these parents are not able to get their children into religiously selective schools if they open up their admissions policies. However, it is not true that these parents will as a consequence be unable to educate their children in their own faith. The Human Rights Act guarantees that the state must ensure children are not indoctrinated by schools, and schools without a religious character teach about religion and belief from a neutral point of view (with the exception of Collective Worship, which is mainly Christian). In addition, there is nothing to stop parents educating children in their faith outside of school hours, at home or by taking them to Sunday school, as many do already.

In 2010, the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights wrote that an ‘argument is that discrimination is necessary in order to maintain the distinctiveness of religious schools and so maintain the plurality of provision… This argument is weakened by evidence which suggests, in relation to Church of England schools, that plurality of provision has been preserved even where those schools do not have faith-based admissions criteria. It carries more weight in relation to other faith schools, however. In consequence, the exemption permitting faith schools to discriminate in their admissions on grounds of religion or belief may be overdrawn’.

By definition Catholic schools are more attractive to Catholic parents than non-Catholics, and so even with no religious admissions policies there will be some degree of self-sorting. With that said, it is true that sometimes it would be the case that inclusive admissions stops Catholics from being able to gain access to a Catholic school.

However, to this we have two responses. First of all, inclusive admissions would mean that parents of all faiths and none will have the opportunity to send their children to their nearest Catholic school if that is what they want. This will stop the discrimination of children being turned away from their local fully state-funded school simply because their parents are of the wrong religion or no religion, and it will mean that each school is more religiously and socio-economically diverse than the current highly selective admissions policies allow.

Secondly, those Catholics who can no longer get their children into a Catholic school would not find themselves at any disadvantage compared to the wider population; instead they would simply be on a par with other parents seeking places in the state system. Schools with no religious character are not atheistic but treat all faiths and none equally (with the exception of there being Collective Worship, which is mainly Christian); therefore nothing they teach will contradict the Catholic education that parents can provide their children at home and through Sunday school.

Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (incorporated into UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998) says ‘No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and teaching, the state shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.’

Sometimes this Article has been used to argue that parents have a human right to send their children to faith schools. But this is a false interpretation. As Amnesty International commented in October 2000, allowing parents the freedom to educate their children in their own religion is not the same as obliging the state to pay for it: ‘This article guarantees people the right of access to existing educational institutions; it does not require the Government to establish or fund a particular type of education. The requirement to respect parents’ convictions is intended to prevent indoctrination by the state. However, schools can teach about religion and philosophy if they do so in an objective, critical, and pluralistic manner.’

This makes sense. If parents cannot get their children into their favoured faith school, they can simply teach their children their religion in their own time, for example in a church or synagogue at the weekend. Nothing the school teaches will contradict this faith-based education.

This is also obvious if you look at other European countries. Very few developed countries, apart from the UK, have religiously selective state funded schools: the Republic of Ireland and Estonia do. In Germany, a small number of private religious schools receive state funds and can religiously select. And in the Netherlands, private faith schools that receive state funding can loosely require that pupils and parents support the mission/vision of the school. But we are not aware of any others. Even countries with strong religious traditions, such as Italy, Spain, Poland and the USA, do not have religious discrimination in admissions to state-funded schools.

In 2010, the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights similarly concluded, ‘We do not find persuasive the argument that it is necessary to allow faith schools to discriminate in their admissions on grounds of religion and belief in order to avoid a breach of the parents’ rights under Article 2 Protocol 1 of the European Convention.’

Finally, article 29 the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that ‘education of the child shall be directed to the preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin’. Segregating children by the religion of their parents hinders this goal.

1. States Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child’s or his or her parent’s or legal guardian’s race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status.

2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child’s parents, legal guardians, or family members.

Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

We are campaigning for increased choice for parents, not for a decrease. If people want to send their children to a state-funded school in their area, they should be able to apply to it without feeling they risk discrimination because of their religion or belief.

Everyone wants good schools. And it is true that many religiously selective schools get good exam results. But if a state funded school is good, why shouldn’t it be available to local children regardless of their parents’ religion or beliefs, or socio-economic background?

On top of that, the notion that there even is choice is often a fiction. In 2013, the Public Accounts Committee reported that:

The Department [for Education] acknowledged that there is still work to do to establish the level of surplus places required in the system to meet its stated aim of providing not just sufficiency, but a level of parental choice. The Department planned funding to support an overall surplus of school places of 5%, but admits that this is at the lower end of a range required to provide flexibility and parental choice within the school system. 13% of local authorities did not have this minimum 5% surplus for primary places in May 2012.

And, as the Department acknowledges in the same report, in many areas 5% will be insufficient surplus to provide genuine choice, particularly in urban areas. This, coupled with decreased funding for local authorities, and the fact that place shortages have got much worse in recent years, means that in many, many parts of the country there will not now be a sufficient surplus of places to provide choice. Religious selection doesn’t change that.

Different taxpayers will always be making competing and incompatible demands on what their taxes are spent on, with no-one gaining an automatic right to have their wishes fulfilled – it is through democratic and civic participation that society decides how best to allocate these limited funds. We do not think that taxes should fund religiously selective schools for the reasons we have presented elsewhere, namely the religious, ethnic and socio-economic segregation their admissions policies cause.

We are also unconvinced by the argument that having religiously selective schools open up their admissions policies would prevent them from maintaining their distinctive ethos, as the next FAQ explains.

Many Church of England and Methodist schools already do not religiously select their pupils, and these schools have no problem maintaining their distinctiveness, and so we would not expect this to be a problem for other denominations or religions either. This campaign does not seek to challenge schools’ employment or curriculum policies or their ethos. Schools’ ethos will only change inasmuch as having a diverse intake changes them. And that can only add to mutual understanding and tolerance.

In 2010, the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights wrote that an ‘argument is that discrimination is necessary in order to maintain the distinctiveness of religious schools and so maintain the plurality of provision… This argument is weakened by evidence which suggests, in relation to Church of England schools, that plurality of provision has been preserved even where those schools do not have faith-based admissions criteria. It carries more weight in relation to other faith schools, however. In consequence, the exemption permitting faith schools to discriminate in their admissions on grounds of religion or belief may be overdrawn’.