In the wake of the Government’s move to prevent civil society organisations from raising formal concerns about unlawfulness in the admission arrangements of ‘faith’ schools, this week the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group (APPHG) hosted a meeting to discuss both the ban and the wider problems associated with religious discrimination in school admissions.
Opening the meeting, Chair of the APPHG Clive Lewis MP introduced the BHA’s Director of Public Affairs and Policy Pavan Dhaliwal, who outlined the findings of the report published by the BHA and Fair Admissions Campaign (FAC) last year, revealing that almost all religiously selective schools in England are breaking the law, before explaining how the Department for Education (DfE) had now moved to ban the BHA from doing anything similar in the future, despite having acknowledged both the success and the importance of the formal objections that made up the investigation.
Peers and MPs also heard from two parents with particularly acute experience of the religious discrimination permitted in the school system. First, Barnet mother Sonya Karafistan detailed her shocking experience as a secular Turkish Cypriot allocated a place for her son at a local Greek Orthodox Church school, a decision which she described as ‘inappropriate on religious, cultural, and ideological grounds’ and which shockingly the local authority neither apologised for nor reversed on appeal. Second, parent and Mirror journalist Andrew Penman recounted his decision to lie about his religious beliefs in order to have any chance of getting his child into a good local school, by attending religious worship over a period of three years, a story which is all too common around the country and formed the basis of his book School Daze: My search for a decent state secondary school.
Speaking from the panel, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chair of the Accord Coalition for Inclusive Education, joked that those present ‘might wonder why a Rabbi was at a humanist event in Parliament’, but stressed that he was keen to ‘break the myth that all religious groups are in favour of religious selection in schools’, and that this was a crucial step towards ‘ensuring that a multi-faith society doesn’t become a multi-fractious one’.
The Government’s proposals to ban civil society organisations from submitting objections to school admission arrangements when they suspect them to be unlawful will be consulted on as part of a wider review of the School Admissions Code, due to launch in the next few weeks.
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See the BHA’s previous news item ‘Government grilled in House of Lords on move to ban organisations from reporting illegal school admission policies’: https://humanists.uk/2016/03/09/government-grilled-in-house-of-lords-on-move-to-ban-organisations-from-reporting-illegal-school-admission-policies/
See the BHA’s previous news item ‘Department for Education acknowledges 87% of objections to school admissions labelled ‘vexatious’ by Education Secretary were upheld by adjudicator’: https://humanists.uk/2016/02/26/department-for-education-acknowledges-87-of-objections-to-school-admissions-labelled-vexatious-by-education-secretary-were-upheld-by-adjudicator/
See the BHA’s previous news item ‘Parliamentarians and wider public denounce Government move to ban BHA from raising concerns about schools admissions’: https://humanists.uk/2016/02/19/parliamentarians-and-wider-public-denounce-government-move-to-ban-bha-from-raising-concerns-about-school-admissions/
Read the BHA’s letter to the Secretary of State: https://humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-01-28-Letter-from-the-BHA.pdf
Read the Secretary of State’s response: https://humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/Letter-from-Nicky-Morgan-to-Andrew-Copson-19-02-2016.pdf
Read the Department for Education’s press release announcing the proposed ban: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/parents-to-get-greater-say-in-the-school-admissions-process
Read the BHA’s previous news item ‘Government moves to ban organisations from exposing law-breaking schools unfairly restricting access to children and parents’: https://humanists.uk/2016/01/25/government-moves-to-ban-organisations-from-exposing-law-breaking-schools-unfairly-restricting-access-to-children-and-parents/
Read the BHA’s comment piece in the Independent ‘Is Nicky Morgan on the side of children or faith organisations’: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/is-nicky-morgan-on-the-side-of-children-or-faith-organisations-a6837811.html
Read the BHA/FAC report ‘An Unholy mess: How virtually all religiously selective schools are breaking the law: https://humanists.uk/2015/10/01/an-unholy-mess-new-report-reveals-near-universal-noncompliance-with-school-admissions-code-among-state-faith-schools-in-england/
Read the FAC’s briefing on the report: http://fairadmissions.org.uk/anunholymess-briefing/
The Fair Admissions Campaign wants all state-funded schools in England and Wales to be open equally to all children, without regard to religion or belief. The Campaign is supported by a wide coalition of individuals and national and local organisations. We hold diverse views on whether or not the state should fund faith schools. But we all believe that faith-based discrimination in access to schools that are funded by the taxpayer is wrong in principle and a cause of religious, ethnic, and socio-economic segregation, all of which are harmful to community cohesion. It is time it stopped.
Supporters of the campaign include the Accord Coalition, the British Humanist Association, Professor Ted Cantle and the iCoCo Foundation, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the Campaign for State Education, the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, the Christian think tank Ekklesia, the Hindu Academy, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrat Education Association, Liberal Youth, the Local Schools Network, Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign, the Runnymede Trust, the Socialist Educational Association, and the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.
The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. It promotes a secular state and equal treatment in law and policy of everyone, regardless of religion or belief.