Urge the Education Secretary to support the 50% discrimination cap

Religious and ethnic mixing in schools can make a major contribution towards boosting the growth trust, cohesion and integration in society. Mixing doesn't simply avoid pitfalls and dangers of segregation, but takes better advantage of the nature of young people to form friendships that cross barriers, whether of race, religion or socio-economic. Since 2010 the Government has required almost all new faith schools to select no more than half of their pupils by religion. Though a relatively small measure, the 50% cap highlights that faith and discrimination need not go hand in hand.

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

Below is a template letter which you can send to the new Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, urging him to maintain the 50% cap. The template letter can be amended in any way you wish. Do consider adding any personal perspectives. These could be based on your hopes and anxieties, your own direct experiences of schools and those of people close to you.

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Dear Secretary of State, I am writing to urge you to maintain the Government's 50% religious discrimination in admissions cap at faith free schools. The cap has worked well since being introduced in 2010 and promoted greater mixing in schools, <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-09-15-FINAL-Ethnic-diversity-in-religious-Free-Schools.pdf">particularly in Christian settings</a>. It also communicates that schools should at least be open to those of different backgrounds and provides positive examples to less inclusive schools. Scrapping it would send a terrible signal that it is 'okay' for funded schools to be cultural silos and to make the school system more segregated.
I am concerned by aspects of public debate around the cap, including that it supposedly bars Catholic schools from being opened. This seems completely spurious when we consider that most Catholic schools in other countries do not religiously select their pupils and when most Catholic private schools in England do not either. In fact the Catholic International Education Office (CIEO) <a href="http://accordcoalition.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/2016-11-23-OIEC-paper-on-Catholic-schools.pdf">notes</a> that a Catholic school should be 'a non-discriminatory school, open to all … In conclusion, the Catholic school is anything but a communitarian school. It is open to all … It must constantly promote intercultural and interreligious dialogue, if it is to continue its mission. This is in any case a motto of the CIEO all over the world'.
Not only is the Government's 50% cap workable and sorely needed in a country that is becoming increasingly diverse, it is also popular. An opinion poll by Populus last May found that 80% of voters <a href="http://accordcoalition.org.uk/2017/05/29/overwhelming-majority-of-the-public-want-to-maintain-the-50-religious-selection-cap-for-new-faith-schools/">prefer</a> that the 50% cap should be maintained than scrapped.
When considering the Government's 50% cap I hope you will consider the wise words of Dr James Doyle, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, who said before a Committee of the UK Parliament in 1830:
'I do not see how any man, wishing well to the public peace, and who looks to Ireland as his country, can think that peace can ever be permanently established, or the prosperity of the country ever well secured, if children are separated at the commencement of life on account of their religious opinions. I do not know any measure which would prepare the way for a better feeling in Ireland than uniting children at an early age, and bringing them up in the same schools, leading them to commune with one another, and to form those little intimacies and friendships which often subsist through life. Children thus united, know and love each other, as children brought up together always will; and to separate them is, I think, to destroy some of the finest feelings in the hearts of men.'
Messages from educationalists, voters and history are clear that schools should be encouraged to bring people of different backgrounds together, not to divide or segregate, which would be bad for integration and social cohesion. Future generations will judge us poorly should we leave a legacy of fragmentation or discrimination. I urge you to defend and uphold the Government's cap.

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Urge the Education Secretary to support the 50% discrimination cap

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