Amazingly, there is still a reluctance to accept in debate that faith schools exam results come from their ability, stealthily deployed, to select their pupils and weed out the ones they don't like, who naturally, will go to a local community school instead. This week we see yet more evidence of how faith schools, this time in London, introduce growing levels of inequality within our schools system.
Rebecca Allen, of the Institute of Education, University of London, and Professor Anne West, Professor of Education Policy at the London School of Economics, studied the intake of faith schools across the capital using an extensive 'pupil-level' database compiled by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. They found faith schools are cherry pick too many children from affluent families and contribute to racial and religious segregation.
Their research also showed 17 per cent of pupils at faith schools are eligible for free school meals compared with 25 per cent at non-religious schools. Faith schools educate just under 20 per cent of lowest-ability pupils compared with 31 per cent of non-religious schools. Faith schools also educate a greater proportion of the pupils who score highest before arriving in secondary education.
Isn't time for supporters of faith schools to come clean? The consequences of your support is the growing use of social selection in school admissions and ever growing segregation of our local communities.
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