Admissions To Faith Schools Under Attack

Faith schools have long been regarded as performing better than their non faith counterparts. They frequently dominate the top positions in league tables and are perceived as being better at controlling and motivating their pupils. However, their admissions practices are increasingly coming under fire.

Currently, schools having a religious character (commonly known as faith schools) may use faith-based oversubscription criteria, so that if the school has more applications than it has places available, preference may be given to children who meet the oversubscription criteria. That seems simple enough, or at least it does if you're on one side of the fence, the side that sees faith schools as a valued part of our educational landscape. But if you occupy the other side of the fence, then segregation on the grounds of religion is anathema.

The British Humanist Association has long been opposed to faith schools and has recently pointed to data that they believe shows faith schools failing to serve their fair share of poor children. The measure used is the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals and the statistics reveal over 70 % of Catholic schools having a lower proportion of pupils eligible for free meals than the average for the local authority. The critics of faith schools accuse them of operating a system of selection by the back door.

Unsurprisingly advocates of faith schools reject the criticism. They point to schools like the Rosary in the Saltley district of Birmingham where 90% of the pupils are Muslim, as evidence that Church schools do indeed serve their local communities and are much valued by their parents. Catholic schools for example, point out that they have many schools in the poorest parts of our cities but their catchment areas are that much bigger than their neighbouring local authority schools and so the comparison in terms of the communities they serve is not an accurate one.

In the midst of this debate the Secretary of State for Education created further furore by announcing that he believed a 50% cap on admissions by faith would be "very sensible". Faith schools make up a third of the schools that are state funded in England and many of them are hugely oversubscribed, which has placed their admissions practices in the spotlight. The Schools Adjudicator complained more than once about the way their complex over subscription criteria favoured the middle-classes. However, when pressed on the point he admitted that out of 6753 policies that had been scrutinized only 151 were found to be at fault and only 12 were guilty of being too complicated.

Even so, the criticism continues that savvy parents, often middle class parents, play the system by suddenly finding religion just in time to get their kid into the sought after, high-performing faith school. As a result there is a growing tide of disapproval at tax payers' money being used to subsidise what many believe is an unfair system. All of which fuels the growing number of school appeals.

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