Centre for Policy Studies' faith schools report under fire

In Bad Faith, published by the Centre for Policy Studies, says Children’s Secretary Ed Balls is leading an attack, based on phoney egalitarianism, which threatens the future of faith schools.

The report, written by the former editor of the Catholic Herald, Christina Odone, pre-empts the result of an investigation by schools adjudicator Philip Hunter, due later this month, into claims of selection by faith schools.

Odone said faith schools did not cream skim pupils, did not charge for places and were not divisive. We need more, not fewer, faith schools, she argued.

But Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL, said the report risked polarising the debate. While there is much to be praised in many faith schools, their discriminatory admissions and employment practices mean these benefits are not available to all children even though most of their funding comes from taxpayers via the government, she said.

The British Humanist Association also condemned the report as misguided. Our aim should be for all state-funded schools to admit children regardless of their religious or non-religious backgrounds, said the association’s director of education, Andrew Copson.