A recent campaigning communication from the National Secular Society, headed “Education, not Segregation”, expresses the need to tackle the “discrimination and segregation wrought by faith schools”. More immediately, it calls upon the Government to keep the cap of a 50 per cent limit on the number of places that new state-funded faith schools can allocate on the basis of religious denomination.
Despite the popularity of faith schools in many regions, the opposition to the perceived discrimination in school admissions is becoming stronger and more vociferous. Indeed, the Liberal Democrats last year called for “selection in admissions on the basis of religion and belief to state-funded schools” to be phased out over the next six years.