School Admissions: Tears and Fears

“Why, Oh Why?” whines the Mail about school admissions. Stephen Glover excoriates opening faith schools to all and sundry as “death wish.” However our C of E schools’ title deeds say that “all and sundry” is exactly whom they were founded for — like the Kingdom of Heaven, the way Jesus taught it.

The Church is there to spread the teaching of Jesus, not sectarianism and bigotry. We are in the business of growing faith, not paranoia about “secularism.” We are non-sectarian whenever possible, not because we have lost our nerve, or as a marketing gimmick, but because Jesus taught a bigger conception of God and humanity than any sect can take in. He addressed everyone, not just the religious, and his harshest words were for those who ghettoised faith.

Bishop John’s TES interview (as Chair of the National Society) suggested that the standard aim of Church School admissions ought to be 10% of places for Churchgoers, the rest for fringe and everybody. Interestingly, looking around, as Chairof our Dicoesan Board of Education, at our 289 schools, the vast majority of them are primaries, and the proportion he’s talking about is actually what usually happens. It doesn’t kill anyone off. Our schools face major challenges, but they are generally doing their job, serving the communities they were founded to serve incredibly well.

Different contexts need appropriate policies, though. In some places there is a desperate shortage of Church School secondary places. It takes me back to my time as admissions governor for Ranelagh, a pioneering and excellent Comprehensive school in Bracknell.

If the frequently repeated figures for churchgoing in England reflected reality in any simple way, we would have had no admissions problem. Given the size of the local population of parents of 11 year olds, the school would only need about 30 places a year for them, leaving another 94 for fringe and non Church families.

In fact the assumption of a post-Christian secularised population was, quite honestly, complete tosh in our area. Our school used to receive at least 120 fully documented applications every year from regular Churchgoing families, and a good 50 others from families with a strong claim to places. That’s the simple fact. Not 30. 179.

One way to address the real problem would have been to increase the number of places available in Church secondaries in the area to allow for a more balanced intake, with a larger number of places for fringe and outside families. Sadly it was not in our power, as governors, to build a bunch of new secondaries at 30 million a pop; nor to expand numbers in a school on a cramped urban site. So we soldiered on, trying to be as fair as we could in applying our published admissions policy. And in the meanwhile there was a school to run.

I expect Bishop John meant exactly what he said. He wasn’t laying down some new iron law about admissions, which the National Society couldn’t anyway. He was talking about the good things Church schools have being made available to as many people who want them as possible; which is something, surely, we would all wish for, although the way to achieve it will be more obscure and trixical in some local contexts.

Finally, I was interested to meet last week a friend and colleague just back from the States who pointed out that inEngland there is a lot of twitchiness about Faith and politics, and in the States about Faith and Public Schools (in the American sense of the term). Is it, he wondered, the same cultural twitchiness? I wonder...