Planned education reforms should include abolishing religiously selective admissions, the National Secular Society has said.
Responding to a call for evidence by the House of Commons Education Committee, the NSS highlighted the “significant and growing body of evidence” that faith schools, particularly those which use religiously selective admissions, perpetuate unfairness against those most disadvantaged in our society.
The committee is examining the Government’s proposals for wide-ranging reforms of the school system in England, which include changes to admissions, inclusion, school governance, and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) education.
Religiously selective admissions
Around a third of publicly funded schools in England are faith schools, with the vast majority being either Church of England or Catholic. Legal exemptions allow most kinds of faith schools to select pupils based on religion in their admissions and prioritise children from families who share the school’s religion.
Faith schools have consistently been shown discriminate against less well-off families, with multiple studies finding the difference between the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) at a school and the proportion of those eligible in its catchment area to be higher at faith schools than at nonreligious schools.
These FSM ‘gaps’ cause socio-economic segregation, which is higher in areas with greater numbers of faith schools. In local authorities with high levels of segregation, attainment gaps between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils are also larger.
Faith schools have also been found to discriminate against children with SEND and to disadvantage looked after children.
As part of the proposals, the Government has committed to consulting on changes to the school admissions code to “promote fairness for all families, particularly the most disadvantaged and children with additional needs”.
The NSS told the committee that to “maximally promote fairness” these changes “must involve ending legal exemptions which allow faith schools to discriminate on the basis of faith in their admissions”.
Collective worship
The NSS also said the Committee’s emphasis how schools can “promote belonging” should include “the abolition of laws mandating daily acts of collective worship in schools”.
The UK is the only western democracy which legally imposes worship in publicly funded schools, with the law requiring all maintained schools to hold ” an act of collective worship” every day. Even in schools with no religious designation, the worship must be “wholly or mainly of a Christian character”.
Research has found children at both community schools and faith schools are often critical of the dominance of Christianity in education.
The NSS said mandated acts of worship were “entirely inappropriate” in the context of a modern UK school as they “undermine the rights of children and families” and leave schools “highly vulnerable” to external evangelists.
School trusts
The NSS also expressed concerns that Government plans for all state-funded schools to join or form school trusts will leave nonreligious schools “more vulnerable to takeovers and interference by religious institutions and interest groups”.
The NSS pointed to numerous cases where multi-academy trusts have attempted to either merge or convert secular schools into faith schools.
NSS: Reforms should support best interests of children, not religious institutions
National Secular Society spokesperson Jack Rivington said: “Ending religiously selective admissions would significantly benefit children with SEND and those from less well-off backgrounds, improving attainment, community cohesion, and social mobility. It would also cost very little.
“The Government has consistently said it wants to create a school system which provides high standards and inclusion for every child, regardless of their background or need. For this ambition to be credible, it must consider the harms of faith-based admissions as part of proposed reforms.”