Constituents: Write to Robert Halfon about religious selection in state-funded schools

On the 21st April, your local MP, Robert Halfon, who is also the chairman of the Education Select Committee, co-wrote a letter to the Sunday Times in which he criticised a letter co-organised by Humanists UK that had featured in the newspaper the week before.

The letter, which was co-organised with the Accord Coalition, was signed by over 180 politicians, academics, religious leaders, and humanists, and urged the Government to give up on plans to open new 100% selective religious schools.

Will you write to Robert Halfon to ask him to reconsider the evidence on this issue?

We have provided a facility for you to contact him and suggested text for your letter below. However, as MPs generally respond better to personal messages from their constituents, we do advise that you adapt it.

It is vital that policy decisions are based on fact and, as the chair of the Education Select Committee, Mr Halfon has considerable influence. Will you urge him to do everything in his power to ensure that schools across England are inclusive and open to all irrespective of background?

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Dear Mr Halfon,
I am writing as your constituent with reference the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/letters-to-the-editor-faith-schools-are-a-broad-church-tlgfk3fdq">letter</a> you Lord Pickles, Lord Polak, and Baroness Altmann wrote to the Sunday Times criticising another letter, published in the same publication, on the subject of new voluntary aided religious schools, which are legally permitted to select 100% of their pupils on faith grounds.
You argue that, since many community schools ‘serve a far smaller catchment area than faith schools… they are often less diverse and may educate a narrower socioeconomic cohort.’
This is simply wrong. It is true that religious selection means that faith schools often serve a geographically larger catchment area than other schools. But this doesn’t mean that faith schools are more diverse – in fact they are not. <a href="http://fairadmissions.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Overview-of-issues-to-do-with-religious-selection-in-school-admissions.pdf">The evidence on this issue is very clear</a>, and <a href="http://accordcoalition.org.uk/research/">study</a> after <a href="http://fairadmissions.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/2017-08-29-FINAL-Religious-Selection-Research-Survey.pdf">study</a> demonstrates that religious selection not only segregates pupils by religion, but along ethnic and socio-economic lines, as well as by prior attainment. 
The original letter was signed by a broad mix of public figures including around 40 high-profile religious leaders and spokespeople, however, you conveniently appeared to ignore the issue in favour of criticising the motives of one of the co-organisers of the letter, Humanists UK who, you claim, aim to limit ‘access to state-funded education for parents of faith’. I find this very disappointing. By failing to engage with the argument, you miss the point that religious selection threatens rather than facilitates parental choice by locking those who do not share a particular faith out of their local schools.
As both my local MP and the chair of the Education Select Committee, I urge you to reconsider the evidence on this matter and do all you can to ensure that all schools are diverse, inclusive, and open to all irrespective of background.

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Constituents: Write to Robert Halfon about religious selection in state-funded schools

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