ABSTRACT
Charles Clarke and Linda Woodhead are certainly right to speak of uniformities giving ‘way to a much wider and more diverse range of religious and non-religious commitment’, though again this may be dated from the 1960s onwards, rather than as accredited by them. Clarke and Woodhead provide a useful overview of legislation relating to religion in schools, beginning with the 1944 Education Act and concluding with recent provisions for the expansion of academies and free schools. This chapter provides a brief statistical description of schools in England, including the place of faith schools in the English education system. This is prefaced by further summaries of the nature of religious change indicated by a comparison of statistics from the two latest censuses: Between 2001 and 2011 there has been a decrease in people who identify as Christian and an increase in those reporting no religion
