Open doors of Church schools, urges Bishop

Calling for a major shake-up of admissions rules, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford, said policies which favour religious children should be changed, even if it affects a school’s exam results.

He urged headteachers to reserve no more than 10 per cent of places for youngsters who are practising Anglicans.

Bishop Pritchard, who is chairman of the Church of England’s board of education, said: “Every school will have a policy that has a proportion of places for church youngsters... what I would be saying is that number ought to be minimised because our primary function and our privilege is to serve the wider community.

“Ultimately I hope we can get the number of reserved places right down to 10 per cent.”

The move would be a major shift for the Church, and it could also lead to an end to the practice of parents attending church to secure their child a school place.

Under current admissions rules faith schools can choose how to allocate places, for example to followers of their faith, if they are over-subscribed.

The Church of England has around 4,800 schools, and the majority are primaries. It is believed that around half of CofE schools are voluntary aided, and so set their own admissions policies.

Bishop Pritchard said he recognised that urging schools to change their admissions policies may not be popular with everyone.

However, the suggestion was welcomed by the National Secular Society, whose president Terry Sanderson said: “The Church has repeatedly denied that the strict selection criteria that are applied in some schools are the reason they perform so well.

“We are told that it is because of the ‘Christian ethos’. Now the cat is out of the bag and the Bishop of Oxford has let us know that the Church is fully aware of why their schools perform so well.”

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chair of Accord, which campaigns to end religious discrimination in school staffing and admissions, said: “This is a very welcome step that attempts to help rectify current policy, which means that religion and discrimination in schools have become almost synonymous.”

“Schools should be inclusive and tolerant and no state-funded school should be allowed to discriminate on the grounds of religion for any of their teacher posts or any pupil places.”

The Church is expected to publish new admissions guidelines in the summer.

But yesterday, Gillean Craig, the vicar of St Mary Abbots Church in Kensington, west London, said he was “incandescent” that the issue of school admissions had been raised on Good Friday.

“The last thing we should be thinking about today is schools admissions”, he said.

Asked about the proposal, he added: “I think it’s simply not been thought through at all, communities throughout Britain vary enormously.

“In some there are very large numbers of people who worship at a Church of England church, in some areas there is virtually no one, and I think it’s absolutely right that different church schools will reflect that different community that they serve.”

Dr Oona Stannard, head of the Catholic Education Service, said they would not be changing their stance. Catholic schools were originally set up to “provide an education in the Catholic faith for Catholic children”, she said.

Around a third of the pupils at Catholic schools are not of the faith, Dr Stannard said.

Kevin Courtney, deputy general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), welcomed the Bishop’s comments and said faith schools should be for the whole community, not just followers of the faith.