Members of the House of Lords have this afternoon queried Government plans to prevent civil society organisations from raising complainants about school admission policies. The proposals were triggered after the Fair Admissions Campaign brought a string of successful objections to the admission policies of a range of religiously selective schools and published in 2015 two reports highlighting the problems found.
Speaking this afternoon, Shadow Education Spokesperson Lord Watson of Invergowrie asked the Government to consider creating an independent body to police school’s compliance with admission rules, to allay concern about civil society groups being banned from raising objections. The Liberal Democrat Baroness Pinnock asked the Government what measures it would be introducing to ensure fairer access to schools, given the range of abuses in faith school admissions that had been identified. The crossbench Peer Baroness Meacher meanwhile asked Ministers to meet with groups, such as the Fair Admission Campaign, to discuss when admission rule breaches were found to occur.
Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said ‘There is widespread concern that education policy too often advances the wishes of faith school sponsors, rather than the common good. The public interest is best served by all schools adhering to the statutory School Admissions Code and, as the Fair Admissions Campaign has shown, abuses are much more common at religiously selective schools. Rather than shooting the messenger, Accord urges the Government to work with civil society groups to consider how school’s compliance with the Code can be better upheld, in the interests of children and families across the country.’
The Fair Admissions Campaign was co-founded in 2013 and is actively supported by the Accord Coalition. The Campaign’s 2015 reports demonstrated, through a case study of objections taken to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, how almost every religiously selective school in England currently breaks the School Admissions Code, and how religious selection is becoming through an interplay of religion and race a major and worsening source of indirect racial discrimination, placing those of South Asian heritage at a particular disadvantage.
Despite describing broad based organisations like the Fair Admissions Campaign as ‘secularist’ and the Campaign’s admission objections as ‘vexatious’, the Government revealed last month that objections taken by such groups to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator were upheld in 87% of cases.
