Humanists UK express concern about plans to permit new 100% religiously selective schools

Humanists UK has raised concerns over potentially unintended consequences of measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would, if not amended, pave the way for a new generation of 100% religiously selective schools. The Bill does not refer to faith school admissions at all and nothing in what the Government has published has referred to this effect, but the measures are tucked away in the later clauses.

Since 2007 all new religious academies (and since 2011 all new religious state schools) have been permitted to enforce religious selection for only 50% of their intake. With the Government now proposing to return control of opening new schools to local authorities, religious schools will once again be able to open and apply religious discrimination to 100% of their places.

The Government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was given its first reading on Wednesday 17 December, and includes measures for greater cooperation between local authorities and schools to make sure there are enough school places in the local area. In Part Two of the Bill, clause 51 sets out measures to remove the presumption that any new school would be a free school or academy. This allows local authorities and other organisations to bid to open other types of schools – including Voluntary Aided ones. Voluntary Aided schools can determine their own admissions, and discriminate against all pupils on religious grounds if oversubscribed.

This will result in the ‘50% faith school cap’ which is applied to free schools being circumvented, and used to open new 100% religiously selective schools, and will force local children of the ‘wrong’ or no religion to have to look further afield for their school place.

The ‘faith cap’ was first introduced by the last Labour Government in 2007 and has been a crucial safeguard in making sure that faith schools do not exclude all children who live locally whose families do not share the same beliefs. Since then the cap has dramatically improved ethnic diversity within state religious schools.

Analysis carried out by Humanists UK in 2016 found that ethnic integration in schools improved significantly as a result of the cap. In Church of England free schools subject to the cap, 15% of the pupils at these schools were from Asian backgrounds, compared to just 6% at fully religiously selective Church of England schools. A similar picture was seen in ‘other Christian’ free schools subject to the cap, with nearly a fifth of pupils (19%) from Asian backgrounds, compared to 3% at fully religiously selective ‘other Christian’ schools.

The cap is also popular with the public. Research from when the removal of the cap was first proposed showed that 80% of the public, including 67% of Catholics and 71% of Christians overall, opposed any attempts to let taxpayer-funded faith schools choose their pupils based on religion alone.

Commenting on the announcement Humanists UK Chief Executive Andrew Copson said:

‘While we understand that the overall intention of these measures is to allow local authorities to open or seek bids for new community schools, we are concerned about the potential unintended consequences. One of them is that 100% admissions discrimination on religious grounds will once again become possible. This could contradict the other aims of the Bill which are to make sure children in a locality have access to a school place.

‘All the evidence shows that the faith school cap is successful in increasing integration, and any circumvention – unintended or otherwise – of this could undo its good work at a very dangerous time for social cohesion. We will be raising these concerns with ministers in the hope that they can at least introduce some measures to mitigate the great harm it may do. The Government should be heading in the opposite direction and making admissions more inclusive, not opening the door to greater segregation.’

Humanists UK welcomed the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill when it received its first reading (17 December) in general and in particular the measures proposed to close down illegal faith schools.