Faith schools
In its continued sniping campaign against faith schools, religious education lobby group Accord has criticised the Government’s new proposed admissions code for failing to ‘confront ongoing violations of admissions law by faith schools’.
According to Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chairman of the Accord Coalition, the Department for Education’s proposals do not contain enough measures to prevent faith schools controlling their own admissions policies to the exclusion of pupils and teachers of other belief systems.
Dr Romain said, ‘Successive annual reports of the Chief Schools’ Adjudicator have shown particular problems with faith schools that control their own pupil admission policy breaking the existing school admissions code.
‘Meanwhile, the Local Government Ombudsman chastised a school in North London for breaking the code in failing to take into account how a child’s parents were not able to take part in church activities due to the disabilities of a sibling.
‘Although not unexpected, it is therefore with great regret that the Government has issued a revised code that fails to offer better guidance to faith schools on their admissions arrangements to help better tackle these ongoing abuses of pupil admissions law’.
