More faith schools, more discrimination? Help us fight back

In late 2016 the Government announced proposals to usher in a massive expansion of religious discrimination and segregation in the education system. Dismantling progress made in 2007 when a 50% cap on religiously selective admissions was introduced for all new faith schools, the Government’s plans would drop that cap and once again allow all faith schools to become entirely segregated in their intakes.

After more than a year of campaigning by Humanists UK supporters and our own policy research and work, it looked as though the Government had changed its mind and would keep the cap in place.

But now, following a reshuffle earlier this month, the new Education Secretary Damian Hinds seems keen on dropping the cap after all.

Damian Hinds is a staunch supporter of state-funded faith schools and their freedom to religiously discriminate in admissions. He organised a debate in the House of Commons in 2014 calling for an end to the 50% cap, and has previously accepted financial support from the Catholic Church to pay for an intern in his parliamentary office.

If we don’t act now, the next few years will play host to the largest expansion of religious discrimination and segregation in the history of our education system.

Please, email the new Education Secretary today. It is vital that his attention is drawn to the overwhelming body of evidence supporting the cap, and the overwhelming majority of the public - Catholics included! - who wish to see schools open to all children, irrespective of their religion or belief.

A template letter is provided, which will be automatically emailed to the Secretary of State. If you want your letter to be even more effective, though, you can edit it yourself to make it more personal to you. Here are some examples:

As a young person… describe your recent experience of school. Was it inclusive? Did you mix with children from different backgrounds?
Having attended a faith school yourself… how diverse was it? Was it religiously selective? If so, what effect did that have?
As a parent, carer, or grandparent… What kind of school do your grandchildren go to? Do you want them to mix with children from different backgrounds?
As a teacher or school governor… what benefit have you seen of children from different backgrounds mixing together at school?

Name *

Your email *

Subject

Dear Secretary of State,
I am writing to you today to urge you to consider carefully the evidence around the 50% cap on religious selection in England.
I know you have spoken in the past about this issue, and was disappointed to note your support for removing the cap. I therefore wanted to set out briefly the overwhelming evidence in favour of keeping the cap in place, as well as the overwhelming public support for doing so.
First and foremost, the evidence is absolutely clear that mixed schools are more effective in promoting trust and positive attitudes between children from different backgrounds. Given the natural link between mutual understanding and mutual respect, this should not come as a surprise. Indeed, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/634118/Diversity_and_Social_Cohesion_in_Oldham_schools.pdf">Department for Education-commissioned research</a> into mixed and segregated schools in Oldham illustrated this beyond any doubt only last year.
It is also the case - and the evidence is equally strong on this - that the 50% cap has been tremendously successful in boosting diversity within religious free schools. <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-09-15-FINAL-Ethnic-diversity-in-religious-Free-Schools.pdf">Official data from the annual school census</a>, the same data used by the Government in its Schools that work for everyone green paper, reveals that at Christian free schools opened under the cap, 18% of pupils are from Asian backgrounds, while at Christian schools that are fully religiously selective, just 5% of pupils are from Asian backgrounds. The cap, in other words, is a remarkable success story. Its limited impact in the small number of minority religious free schools that have opened since 2010 does not detract from this - the intakes of such schools are obviously driven more by parents’ choices than by their admission arrangements.  
Taken together, these two facts ought to demand the expansion of the 50% cap to all schools in England, not just to free schools. Instead, it is proposed the cap be removed altogether. This proposal would be inexplicable if it weren’t for the transparency of the religious lobby in its effort to undermine the cap’s success and mislead the Government about its impact on its schools.
It is now well established - and has been for more than year - that the Catholic objection to the 50% cap, supposedly on grounds of ‘canon law’, is false. The cap does not mean Catholic pupils would be turned away from Catholic schools ‘on the basis of their faith’, as has been claimed. It explicitly allows for 50% of pupils to be admitted because they are Catholic, while admitting the other 50% ‘without reference to faith’. In any case, the appeal to canon law is fatally undermined by the fact that most <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/2016/09/09/exposed-catholic-hypocrisy-in-calls-for-end-to-restrictions-on-religious-selection-in-schools/">Catholic private schools</a> in England, and some Catholic state schools too, do not select all their places with reference to religion, while in Scotland most Catholic schools do not religiously select their pupils at all. In fact, the UK is just one of four countries identified by the OECD that permit any form of religious discrimination in state school admissions. None of this is to mention that <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/2017/05/30/80-of-public-oppose-government-plans-to-remove-cap-on-faith-based-school-admissions-in-england/">67% of Catholics and 77% of Christians as a whole</a> believe that the cap should remain in place.  
Given how overwhelming the evidence is in favour of keep the cap, and given that the only objection to the cap is a demonstrably false and disingenuous one, the cap must stay in place. Please, keep the cap and send a clear message that our schools and our society becomes as integrated as they are diverse.
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More faith schools, more discrimination? Help us fight back

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