Fight for inclusive education and integrated schools

Last year 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.

But now, after almost a year of campaigning by Humanists UK and its supporters, the Government is considering a u-turn.

All the evidence suggests that religious selection leads to greater segregation along religious, ethnic, and socio-economic lines, and reduces the access of local families to their local schools. In our increasingly diverse society, we should be encouraging those from different backgrounds and with different beliefs to come together, not introducing policies that will only drive them further apart.

If the Government is to listen to the better interests of children and society instead of the vested interests of the religious lobby, we need your help.

Please email the Secretary of State for Education Justine Greening and urge her to abandon plans to drop the 50% cap on faith-based admissions. Our view is that there should be no ‘faith’ schools at all, but that as long as they do exist, they should have no right to discriminate. The 50% cap is an important step on the way to achieving that goal and to realising an inclusive education system in which children from all backgrounds can learn together, play together, and grow up together.

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 governor… does your school select?

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Subject

Dear Secretary of State,
I wanted to take the time to write to you to urge you not to bring forward proposals to allow religious free schools to become entirely segregated in their intake.
Requiring schools to keep at least half of their places open to all local children, irrespective of religion or belief, is incredibly important not only in ensuring the fair access of local parents to their local state-funded schools, but also in ensuring that our education system is one in which children from a range of different backgrounds can learn together, play together, and grow up together. There is clearly no replacement for such mixing, and alternative measures such as diverse governing bodies or desultory school twinning will fall far short of achieving meaningful integration.
Having consulted on the proposals last year, you must now know that dropping the cap is not a move supported by the evidence or by the vast majority of experts in this area. If anything, the evidence is clear in demonstrating that integration and fair access would be better served by extending the cap to all religious schools rather than removing it. You can see that here: <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-09-15-FINAL-Ethnic-diversity-in-religious-Free-Schools.pdf">https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-09-15-FINAL-Ethnic-diversity-in-religious-Free-Schools.pdf</a>.
I would also draw your attention to the results of a recent Populus poll on this issue, which found that 80% of the public thought that the cap should remain in place. This included 67% of Catholics and 77% of Christians as a whole. Given the fact that people of all religions and beliefs overwhelmingly support diverse, integrated schools, it is very disappointing that the Government allowed itself to be pressured by the Catholic Education Service (and others) into proposing this change. This is especially true given that the claims of this lobby regarding the cap and their own religious rules were demonstrably false: <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-11-17-BHA-briefing-Religious-lobbying-on-50-per-cent-cap.pdf">https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-11-17-BHA-briefing-Religious-lobbying-on-50-per-cent-cap.pdf</a>.
You very admirably appointed an ‘evidence champion’ to your Department in recent months, and to the extent that this is indicative of an evidence-based approach to policy-making, I do not see how plans to remove the cap can go ahead. Bowing to the religious lobby over the better interests of children is no way to govern.
The 50% cap may not be a silver bullet capable of ending segregation on its own or overnight, and for that reason I broadly welcome the other proposals you are considering to increase diversity. But the cap must stay, for if our increasingly diverse society is ever to be an integrated and cohesive one too, then so must be our schools.

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Fight for inclusive education and integrated schools

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