A government plan to ban secularist groups from complaining about admissions to faith schools has been condemned by campaigners as “an affront to democracy and the rule of law”.
Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, announced new rules on Monday which she said would get rid of the bureaucracy surrounding school admissions to ensure that parents had more of a say in the process.
She said she wanted to stop “vexatious complaints” against faith schools from secularist campaign groups in order to “unclog” the admissions system. In future, only complaints from local parents and councils will be considered.
Under current rules, parents outside the area and organisations such as the British Humanist Association are allowed to lodge an objection with the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) if they believe that a school has failed to comply with the school admissions code.
The government move comes after the BHA, working with the Fair Admissions Campaign, published a highly critical report last year which claimed that many faith schools were illegally denying places to children.
The report – entitled An Unholy Mess: how virtually all religiously selective state schools in England are breaking the law – detailed how the BHA and FAC lodged objections to the admission arrangements of a representative sample of nearly 50 religiously selective secondary schools.
According to the BHA, the adjudicator identified more than 1,000 breaches of the school admissions code, with what campaigners described as “near universal non-compliance among schools”.
The BHA chief executive, Andrew Copson, said: “A near universal failure to adhere to the law in a particular area has been identified. 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.”
The education secretary also announced plans to require admissions authorities to consult on their arrangements every four years rather than the current seven.
“As part of our mission to deliver educational excellence everywhere, 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,” Morgan said.
“So that parents can be confident that the school admission process is working for them, we are ensuring [that] only local parents and councils can object to admission arrangements, which will also put a stop to vexatious complaints against faith schools by secularist campaign groups.”
The government will carry out a public consultation on the proposed changes.
