ABSTRACT
There have been recent criticisms of both the admissions policies and the very existence of schools with a religious character. Most of the criticism is unwarranted and is usually based on misunderstanding of both the numbers of faith schools and how they operate. David Jesson has produced for this book a special study of these schools. In his view,
there has been a fundamental confusion between the total number of 1,150 voluntary aided and foundation schools, which account for 37 per cent of all maintained secondary schools, with the assumption being that most of these schools are schools with a religious character, and the much smaller number of these schools which are actually faith schools who together total only 526 or 17 per cent of all maintained schools Table 13.1 shows that value added (VA) and foundation schools (with CTCs and acade-
mies) comprise around one third of all secondary schools. They are their own admissions authorities. However, as Table 13.2 shows, only half of voluntary aided and foundation schools are faith schools. It is true that both the 526 voluntary aided and foundation schools with a religious
character, (including the twenty-one selective schools) together with the 645 non-faith voluntary aided and foundation schools are responsible for their own admissions. But all
these schools have to follow the National Admissions Code described in Chapter 2. The code forbids interviews of children seeking admission to a particular school. The accusation that faith schools are selecting more able children from wealthy families through interview and other techniques is simply not true.1
