Bishop of Shrewsbury condemns schools' admissions quota

Shrewsbury Diocese
May 17th, 2018

The Government's refusal to uphold a Conservative Party manifesto pledge to remove an admissions quota from religious schools represents a blow to the rights of Christian parents, the Bishop of Shrewsbury has said. Bishop Mark Davies suggested on 13 May that the decision of Education Secretary Damian Hinds to retain the 50 per cent cap on Catholic pupils in free schools was an ominous sign that the freedom of Christian parents to educate their children was being made subservient to ideology.

The Bishop said the policy represented both a defeat for the aspirations of parents who sought a Catholic education for their children and a betrayal of assurances given to Catholic parents by the Conservative Party ahead of the 2017 General Election.

In a homily preached during Mass for the National Conference of the Catenian Association in Telford, Shropshire, Bishop Davies told 550 representatives that the Government had capitulated to the demands of a vocal minority opposed to the existence of church schools.

Bishop Davies said:

"This Sunday, we all are aware that the Government has gone back on its manifesto promise to remove the admissions quota which prevents the opening of Catholic free schools. It is a situation not unlike that of a century ago, which sees a Governing Party swayed by a vocal minority.

"It is a decision which is not merely a betrayal of a manifesto pledge or the promises made to the Catholic community. It represents a deeper shift in attitude across the whole political spectrum, where the rights and choices of Christian parents in raising their own families are made subservient to an ideology.

"I say this, because it is was not diversity or social inclusion that is at issue. We know Church schools represent the fullest ethnic diversity and contribute enormously by their values to social cohesion. It appears to be an ideological understanding of 'diversity' which has seen the Church barred from a particular field of education in spite of the facts.

"This was very definite defeat for Catholic education and more specifically the aspiration of parents seeking a Catholic education for their children. However, it is a defeat from which an ominous lesson can be drawn of how a government can acquiesce with a small and largely secularist lobby to undermine the freedom in which Christians can live and educate their children."

The cap was introduced by the Coalition government of David Cameron and it means new Catholic free schools must turn away Catholic pupils simply because they are Catholic once the threshold of a 50 per cent intake of Catholic pupils has been met.

The bishops have informed the Government that such a practice would contravene the Code of Canon Law, leaving them powerless to open Catholic schools free from the control of local authorities. The current Prime Minister had promised to abolish the cap and her Party manifesto acknowledged the difficulties the policy was causing to the Church, which has been unable to engage with the free school system for the past eight years.

Justine Greening, the previous Education Secretary, was reluctant to act, however, but it was expected that Mr Hinds, a former pupil of St Ambrose College in Hale Barns, Cheshire - a Catholic school situated within the Diocese of Shrewsbury - would move swiftly to remedy the

problem. Instead, Mr Hinds opted to retain the cap on free schools while allowing Catholic voluntary-aided schools to open with the permission of local authorities and to permit them to select all of their pupils on grounds of faith. Secularists had previously lobbied the Government to retain the cap, arguing that religious schools were divisive and that they allegedly wounded social cohesion.

The Catholic Education Service has repeatedly produced evidence, however, to show that its 2,142 schools are among the most diverse in the country, with the majority of them serving less affluent families within the state sector and drawing 36 per cent of pupils nationally from ethnic minority backgrounds.