Schools Admissions review announced: Humanists UK urges end to faith-based admissions discrimination

The Schools Admissions Code is to be reviewed to ‘to promote fairness for all families, particularly the most disadvantaged and children with additional needs’. This includes clearer in-year admissions decisions, stronger support for children who can’t get a place, and tightening rules so that class intakes better reflect local communities. The Department for Education’s (DfE) new white paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, says it will take these proposals to consultation later this year.

Welcoming the announcement Humanists UK, which campaigns to end religiously selective admissions policies on the basis that they segregate children by faith, socio-economic status, ethnicity, and prior attainment, said that admissions can only be genuinely fair if every publicly funded school is in one clear, consistent system with effective local oversight.

The impact of faith-based school admissions has been under scrutiny over recent years. In 2024, the Sutton Trust found that areas with more faith schools have higher levels of socio-economic segregation than those areas with fewer schools with a religious character. Also in 2024, the Education Policy Institute reported that disadvantaged pupils were less likely to be admitted to a faith school, and the Office of Schools Adjudicator found that looked-after children were continuing to miss out on school places due to faith-based admissions. 

Humanists UK has sought to make the admissions process fairer by supporting amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, including the requirement that the DfE collect and publish data on how faith-based admissions impacted parental choice, and by applying the 50% faith cap, which is applied to faith free schools when oversubscribed, to any other school able to open under measures in the Bill. Disappointingly, both of these amendments were rejected by the UK Government.

Humanists UK’s Policy and Campaigns Manager, Lewis Young, said:

‘No young person should be blocked from attending their local, state-funded school because they are of no or the ‘wrong’ religion, but sadly many are being failed by an admissions criteria that allows faith-based discrimination. We welcome the news that the School Admissions Code is to be reviewed, as it is clearly not fit for purpose. Once the consultation is out, we’ll be making the case for the Code to be fully reformed to require every state school to be open to all regardless of religion or belief.’