Faith admissions system objections to be limited

The government claims secularist groups will be prevented from submitting ‘vexatious complaints’ against the admissions systems of individual faith schools and will only allow local parents to pursue such objections.

Ofsted added that a significant amount of public money was being wasted by multiple objections by pressure groups.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has welcomed the measure, claiming the move will make it ‘easier for parents to have a say’.

Morgan says the changes will ‘unclog’ the admissions system for individual schools by limiting challenges to local parents and local authorities and exclude lobbyists and pressure groups.

The Department for Education (DfE) has announced that the new rules will stop ‘secularist campaign groups’ from targeting faith school admission ‘as part of a particular agenda’.

In her annual report, Schools Adjudicator Elizabeth Passmore argued that complains which held ‘no connection in terms of seeking a place for their child’ is ‘not good use of an adjudicator’s time and public money’.

It is calculated that challenges such as this have resulted in over £1.1 million in adjudication costs per year, with some campaigners appearing to be attempting to influence wider education policy as opposed to the actual operation of the admission systems.

However, Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association (BHA), says the changes will ‘reduce parents' fair choice of state schools’.

Copson said: ”Instead of moving to enforce the law, the government has responded by planning to make it harder to identify future violations of it. This is an affront to both democracy and the rule of law."

Furthermore, the BHA has said that the government is ‘more interested in concealing the appalling record of religious schools manipulating their intakes than it is in addressing the serious problems this causes’.

Contrastingly, Paul Barber, director of the Catholic Education Service, welcomed the government’s recommendations, claiming it would reduce the ‘unnecessary burden of teacher workloads’.

He argued: "The time of school staff that is taken away from supporting pupils to respond to vexatious complaints serves only to fulfil the campaigning purpose of one organisation.”

The new guidelines also outline that admissions authorities should hold consultations more frequently, at least every four years, rather than every seven years, as is currently observed.

Morgan said: "We want every child to have the opportunity to go to a good local school by making it easier for parents to have a say in their local school's admission process.”