New bid to stop pupil selection by religion

A report says state-funded schools should be forced to offer classes to all children, regardless of their faith, claiming the policy is divisive.

But critics claimed it was another attack on faith schools “by the back door”.

Two years ago the Government was forced into an embarrassing climbdown over plans to force religious schools to take more children from other faiths.

Former Education Secretary Alan Johnson wanted new faith schools to allocate up to a quarter of their places to children outside their religions.

But the plans were scrapped after fierce protests from Catholic, Muslim and Jewish groups.

Now influential think-tank, The Runnymede Trust, has launched a damning condemnation of England’s 6,800 faith schools, claiming they are not fulfilling their duty to educate children from all sectors of society. The Trust says that selection procedures in many faith schools favour the privileged.

The report puts forward six recommendations including calling for an end to faith schools selecting pupils based on religion.

It says: “Faith schools should be for the benefit of all in society rather than just the few.

With state funding comes an obligation to be relevant and open to all citizens.”

But church leaders rejected the central conclusion of the report.

The Rev Janina Ainsworth, Chief Education Officer for the Church of England, said: “Its main recommendation of ending selection on the basis of faith is inadequately supported by the evidence, would be unpopular with parents and do nothing to foster community cohesion.

“All schools with religious character are open to all students, but where there is heavy demand for places, it is right that those parents who share the religious and philosophical convictions of that school should have priority.”

Jon Benjamin, director general of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: “To take the successful model that is the faith school and to try to mould it into something that will effectively strip away precisely that which makes it successful, will do a huge disservice to this country and its young people.”

Oona Stannard, chief executive of the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales, said Catholic schools were active in promoting social cohesion. The report comes despite growing support for faith schools in Britain. A separate study earlier this month showed two-thirds of parents with children under 18 and six in 10 of the population support the option of sending their children to a state-run school with a religious, moral or philosophical ethos.

In a survey of more than 1,000 people across Britain, 58 per cent disagreed with the view that church schools divide society.

In the study by pollsters Opinion Research Business, 78 per cent said that they promote good behaviour and positive attitudes while 79 per cent said they helped young people develop a sense of right and wrong. Faith schools make up a third of all state-funded schools in England.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: “All schools have a legal duty to promote community cohesion from this term.

“Many faith schools are more ethnically diverse than non-faith schools. The bottom line is that faith schools are successful, thriving, popular and here to stay.”