Faith schools accused of 'backdoor selection'

Alexandra Frean, Education Editor, The Times, writes,'Faith schools and academies should be stripped of their power to choose pupils, according to research that suggests that some secondary schools are flouting new rules designed to prevent middle-class pupils dominating the best comprehensives.

Researchers at the London School of Economics, who studied more than 3,000 secondary school admission forms for 2008, said that faith schools and other establishments that control admissions, including academies, should hand over the job of allocating places to an independent body to ensure greater fairness. Anne West, director of the education research group at the LSE and lead author of the study, said that this could be the local authority, which already controls admissions for community schools, or a religious body such as the diocesan authority.

The researchers found that some schools were operating a form of backdoor selection by asking for personal information about parents’ marital status, occupation and educational background and even children’s hobbies. It also found that a significant minority of nonselective schools – 5 per cent – were selecting pupils on the basis of aptitude for a particular subject.
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Several schools asked about children’s hobbies and one even asked children to complete a 100-word statement. Another invited parents to meet the headteacher or deputy “to discuss the application for admission”, despite a ban on interviews.

A small number of grammar schools (15 per cent) asked about parents’ marital status through indirect questions, which is also against the rules.

The sheer complexity of admissions procedures discriminated against certain groups of parents, the report suggests. More than a fifth of voluntary aided schools have at least four admissions criteria relating to religion and some have as many as 11.

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Faith authorities were highly critical of the report. The Rev Janina Ains-worth, chief education officer for the Church of England, said that the study was based on out-of-date information and denied that the procedures for deciding a child’s religious affiliation were complex or that schools had too much discretionary power.

“Church attendance is the only measure our schools use when allocating places on the basis of faith, and you cannot get a much simpler way of assessing whether someone has a faith commitment or not,” she said.'

Why should the people who run faith schools not choose their pupils however they wish? Why is selection a dirty word? It is not true that C of E schools' only criterion is church attendance. If you attend a church not in Churches Together, you are beyond the ecumenical pale and your child will not be considered on a par with the religious majority.