"Stop faith school selection" says think tank

The Government's favourite think tank, The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), this week published a report that suggests that no school should have the ability to apply selection criteria to its pupils – not even "faith schools".

The report will be embarrassing to the Government, which insists that the continuing selection privileges that religious schools have is necessary to ensure "choice".

The IPPR says that Academies, Foundation schools, Trust schools and faith schools have no reason to be their own admissions authorities, other than to select students by ability. Research shows that secondary schools which are their own admissions authorities are much less representative of their local areas. Faith schools that decide their own admissions, for instance, are ten times more likely to be highly unrepresentative of their surrounding area than faith schools where the LEA is the admissions authority.

The IPPR recommends that faith schools lose much of the ability to "cream off" pupils and become havens for middle class, pushy parents.

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, said: "The Government will not be happy with these findings and is unlikely to take any notice of them. If 'faith schools' were stripped of their unique selection criteria – which leads to so much injustice and dishonesty – I have a feeling that the churches would not be quite so enthusiastic about education. If they had to compete on a level playing field with other schools, it would soon become apparent that religious ethos has nothing to do with performance. The success of 'faith schools' is all down to selection."

NSS March 2007