Ask your MP to support the free school discrimination cap

The current cap which prevents faith free schools from religiously selecting more than half of their pupils is under threat. Though a small measure, the 50% cap upholds some important principles for the future. It highlights that faith and discrimination need not go hand in hand, and provides more exclusive schools with positive examples about how they might operate differently. Almost all new schools must be free schools.

The Accord Coalition doesn't want any state funded school to religiously discriminate. We would like government to go much further. However, the Government is currently considering plans to do away with the current cap altogether. This is despite all the evidence showing the positive benefits of ethnic mixing in schools, along with an Accord commissioned poll in May showing 80% of voters preferred that the 50% cap is kept rather than scrapped.

Doing away with the cap would be a highly regressive move. It would not equip faith schools for the realities of operating in an increasingly diverse society, but send schools policy back to darker days when ghettoisation and division were more readily tolerated and facilitated.

A cross party group of MPs have come together and tabled an Early Day Motion in support of the cap. Below is a template letter which you can send to your own local MP, asking that they lend their support to the Motion. The template letter can be amended in any way you wish.