From Mark Earl, School Admissions Policy, Implementation and Good Practice Team, DCSF 13 November 2007 (reference 2007/0078406)
Dear Mr Heller,
Thank you for your further e-mail about maintained faith school admissions. Your e-mail has been passed to me for response as an officials [sic] with responsibility for this policy area.
I can confirm that it is lawful for maintained schools which are designated as faith schools under section 69(3) of the School Standards and Framework Act to give priority, in their admission arrangements, to children who are either members of a faith or who practice a faith [1]. The Equality Act 2006 prohibits educational establishments from discriminating on the grounds of religious belief are excepted from that prohibition when they make their admission arrangements.
Many parents want a faith based education for their children. To allow oversubscribed faith schools to give priority to members or practitioners of the faith meets this demand. [2]
One of the means by which the Government ensures that children are able to benefit from an education in line with their parents [sic] philosophical beliefs or creed [3] is through the provision of a diverse mix of maintained schools and academies. This is further supported by allowing faith schools to give priority to faith applicants in the same way as the existence of non-faith schools allow [sic] the parents of humanist children to access an education in conformity with their philosophical convictions [4].
Of course, that does not mean that the Government is under a duty to provide faith schools within the maintained sector but, given that such schools often provide an excellent standard of education and meet a parental demand for such places, the Government is content to see the contribution faith schools have made to education in this country continue.
There may, of course, be some pockets within the country where there are very high concentrations of faith schools and, if all places were to be offered to faith applicants, local children might – on the face of it – have to travel further to school. Ministers therefore welcome the commitments of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church – made in October 2006 – to set aside a proportion of places in new schools (25% of all places in CE schools and 25% of places once Catholic demand has been met in RC schools for children who are not ‘of the faith.’ [5]
In its guidance to its schools the Church of
‘In cases where the provision of church schools in plentiful, the proportion of local priority places would normally be higher than where provision is scarce. In some parts of the country 3 out of 4 primary schools are provided by the Church of England. There it might be appropriate to make 75% or even 100% of places available on the basis of local priority, In such cases, all those who lived within the parish or parishes the school served would be offered places as a priority. In other parts of the country, possibly in the same diocese, only one in twelve primary schools is provided by the Church of England. There it might be appropriate to make as little as 15% of places available on a local priority basis.’ [6]
However, what happens if schools choose to disregard this guidance and go their own way?
All schools have to comply with the School Admissions code as well as admissions law generally. This includes ensuring their arrangements are fair and do not disadvantage particular social groups (paragraph 1.67 of the Admissions Code). Admission forums are being urged, for the 2008 admission round, to undertake a fair access report to the local authority, schools and the Schools Commissioner. These reports should identify areas where the social and ethnic intake of schools is not broadly in line with the areas in which they are located.
Statutory consultees [ie those bodies which schools are required to consult in setting their admission arrangements: other schools, the local authority, neighbouring authorities, their faith body and the admission forum] can object to the Schools Adjuicator before annual admission arrangements take effect, if they consider those arrangements to be unfair or unlawful. Any decision of the Adjudicator is binding upon the school. So, if the forum finds that a school has a socially or ethnically segregated intake, it has the evidence to object. Moreover, faith bodies now also have the right to object [7] and, should faith schools ignore their guidance, we might expect them to take advantage of this right.
Parents, of course, may also object if a school’s arrangements are unlawful or are not in line with the Admissions Code. [8]
To conclude, and if I read your concerns correctly [9], if a school has adopted unfair admission arrangements which mean that local children have to travel out of the area to school, then it is open to statutory consultees to bring about change by submitting an objection to the Adjudicator.
Commentary by Richard Heller to Mr Earl,
[1] This implies that it is lawful for faith groups to set their own tests of religious practice in their admissions policies.
[2] As I remarked in my original letter to Mr Balls, parents desire many things for their children’s education which are ignored by the state. Why should parents’ religious desires take priority over other wishes?
[3] There are no maintained schools which are designed to meet parents’ philosophical beliefs unless these are tied to religious faith.
[4] There is no such thing as a “humanist child”. Humanist parents do not define their children by their own beliefs, they leave their children free to determine their own beliefs when they get older. Humanist parents do not demand that their children (or any others) receive humanist or atheistic teaching for their children and if they did the law would not allow a maintained school to provide it. Nor do humanist parents demand the right to discriminate against children of non-humanist parents. This entire passage is very ill-advised and (if such a thing were possible) likely to inflame humanist parents. I suggest its deletion from future correspondence.
[5] This voluntary undertaking appears to apply only to new schools, not existing ones. It also allows the two faith groups concerned the right to reserve at least 75 per cent of places at such schools to the children of their own adherents. Why should any minority group be allowed to control access to a publicly-funded service? Would the government welcome Christian fire brigades which gave priority to 999 calls from the faithful?
[6] See point 5. Who will monitor whether faith groups follow their own voluntary policies, since no one collects information on the religious affiliations of parents?
[7] Do secular and non-faith bodies have a right of objection – or is this another privilege of faith bodies alone?
[8] Does not do much good to parents. They are forced to challenge a powerful and moneyed faith body and even if successful they do not secure any remedy if the faith body rejects their child. All that happens is that the faith body has to behave better in future.
[9} With respect, the Department’s three letters to me have not met the general points which I put in my original letter to Mr Balls. I object to faith schools because they help to entrench social division, and even if they did not do so, I think it wrong in principle that any self-selecting minority group should be able to control access to any publicly funded service on the basis of its chosen beliefs. Worst of all, faith schools entail religious politics, at both local and national level – and religious politics is a pestilence to any country.