Church of England schools admissions will be open to all

THE CHURCH of England has reinforced its commitment to ­creating faith schools with open admissions policies where no places are reserved for Christians.

The point was made by the Anglicans’ incoming chief education officer, the Revd Nigel Genders as four new schools opened in London with 100 per cent open entry. More will open in September.

The Church of England aims to increase the number of school places to address the need for an additional 130,000 primary school places alone due to a rise in the birth rate and immigration.

Mr Genders, head of school policy at the Church of England, who will take up his new post in September, told The Daily Telegraph: “In practice, most of the new schools that the Church of England has provided over recent years have all been entirely open admissions policies so that they would serve their local community. They have been built for that particular purpose.”

He said that pressure on pupil places and a need to serve local areas meant it was “no surprise” admissions policies were becoming more open, adding that schools will still be “rooted in Christian heritage” without explicitly selecting Anglican pupils.

A spokesman for the Church of England said there was no change in admissions policy, but admitted religious practice was not necessarily a criterion.

“As many of our schools are oversubscribed, church attendance can be part of the admissions process but every school is different,” he said.

About 3,000 new places have been created at Anglican schools in the last two years alone, mostly by expanding existing schools but some created by new free schools.

Last September, William Perkin Church of England High, in Ealing, west London, opened with priority given to pupils who live nearest the gates. Another new school, St Mary’s Hampton, does not use faith criteria and has a lottery-style “random allocation” system.

* The majority of voters think that faith schools should not be state-funded or should be abolished completely, a poll in The Observer found.

The survey revealed that 58 per cent of UK adults object to state-funded faith schools, with 23 per cent saying they should be banned.

More than a third thought faith schools should not receive any state funding. Of those who objected, more than half said this was because they promoted division and segregation, while 41 per cent said that faith schools are contrary to the promotion of a multicultural society. The same figure said they promoted ­radicalisation around faith.