THE cap on the proportion of places that academies and free schools are allowed to allocate on the idea of religion could also be lifted, it’s reported.
Funding agreements for these schools stipulate that, where the varsity is oversubscribed, not less than 50 per cent of the places have to be allocated regardless of faith.
Plans to remove the cap were set out in a Green Paper in 2016 (News, 16 September). The Conservative manifesto promised to “replace the unfair and ineffective inclusivity rules that prevent the establishment of recent Roman Catholic schools, as a substitute requiring recent faith schools to prove that oldsters of other faiths and none can be prepared to send their children to that faculty”.
In 2018, after a consultation, the Government decided to retain the cap. But it also announced a capital scheme to support the creation of recent voluntary aided schools (which usually are not subject to the cap).
This week, The Sunday Times suggested that government officials were once more exploring a repeal, and that the Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, who attended an RC school, was said to be in favour.
The C of E’s chief education officer, the Revd Nigel Genders, has repeatedly said that neither the removal nor the retention of the religion cap would have an effect on the C of E’s existing or recent schools (News, 28 July).
This week, he said: “We provide church schools for the entire community and have a vision for education which is for the flourishing of all children. We have at all times sought to open recent schools to advertise this vision for education which is deeply Christian, serving the common good.”
The C of E is the most important single provider of faculties within the country. Its 4630 schools include 1540 academies (making it the most important provider of academies) and 1492 voluntary aided schools. This week, a Church House spokesperson said that data on the share of its schools that used religious-affiliation admissions criteria weren’t collected centrally.
But, in 2017, Mr Genders said that 60 per cent had no such criteria, and people who did gave “some priority” to Christian children. This was “in areas where competition for places is acute, and, often, providing places purely on distance from the varsity would mean that only the wealthiest, who can afford to maneuver house near by, can access the most effective schools”.
In 2018, a report by Dr Linda Woodhead, F. D. Maurice Professor at King’s College, London, and Charles Clarke, a former Education Secretary, really helpful that the C of E should phase out selection on the idea of religion in its schools (News, 20 July 2018).
The RC Bishops have said that they can’t sanction the creation of RC free schools while the cap is in place, as it could require the turning away of pupils on the idea of their Catholic faith. Last 12 months, the Catholic Union launched a “Scrap the cap” campaign.
