Faith schools battle rages among Tories as Damian Hinds told to scrap cap on religious admissions

Jan 17, 2018 by Jill

by Harry Farley, Christian Today:

A battle over faith schools is raging within the Conservative party after hints the new education secretary Damian Hinds would scrap a cap forcing religious schools to give half their places to pupils from other religious backgrounds.

Hinds replaced Justine Greening at the Department for Education last week with reports that Greening was personally opposed to faith schools.

A Catholic, Hinds came under fire after his appointment for accepting £5,000 from the Catholic Church in 2014 to pay for a parliamentary intern. Bishops insist the cap prevents them from opening any more Catholic schools because it breaks the Church’s Canon Law to turn Catholic pupils away, purely on the basis of their faith, which the cap forces them to do.

Hinds is understood to support removing the cap, a move pledged in the Tories’ 2017 election manifesto but ignored under Greening. The restriction was put in place under David Cameron when the Conservatives were in coalition with the Lib Dems to force children of different backgrounds to mix and to counter extremism.

Senior Tory MPs urged Theresa May to go ‘slow and careful’ with the plans allow religious schools to accept 100 per cent of pupils from one religion to avoid ‘ghettoisation’.

But Sir Edward Leigh, Conservative MP for Gainsborough and President of the Catholic Union of Great Britain, told Hinds to press ahead with the ‘urgent’ changes.

Writing to Hinds on Tuesday he said he hoped he would ‘consider urgently lifting this cap and honouring the Government’s promise to parents and voters’.

Read here