Why do faith secondary schools have advantaged intakes? The relative importance of neighbourhood characteristics, social background and religious identification amongst parents

Abstract

This paper explores reasons why secondary schools with a religious character have pupil intakes that are of a higher social background and ability than their secular counterparts. We show that this is especially true across all regions in England once the characteristics of the pupils living in the local neighbourhoods are taken into account. Data from the National Pupil Database and the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England are combined to show that likely reasons for this are complex. Parents reporting a religious affiliation are more likely to be better educated, have a higher occupational class and a higher household income. We also show that higher-income religious families are more likely to have a child at a faith school than lower-income religious families. Policy implications regarding the state-funding of faith schools are discussed.

Notes

1. In the Guardian/ICM poll of August 2005, 64% chose ‘Schools should be for everyone regardless of religion and the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind’; in the Populus poll of October 2006, 62% agreed that ‘Faith schools are divisive because they prevent children from different religious backgrounds from getting to know and understand each other’; and in a YouGov/’Evening Standard survey of August 2006, 44% of Londoners said they believed all faith schools should be banned.

2. See http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/resourcesfinanceandbuilding/FSP/volun-taryaidedschools/, and related pages for more details of types of schools.

3. These were originally set up to educate boys who were ‘clever’ but of ‘humble origin’ (Trevelyan, 1946, p. 52; see Allen & West, 2009, for more details).

4. The government also reduced to 10% the financial contribution to capital costs required by voluntary aided (in the main religious) schools.

5. Around 1 in 10 parents with children at Roman Catholic schools (9.2%) and Church of England schools (12.3%) stated that their school was not their first choice school. This compares to 9.4 and 12.9% at foundation/CTC and community schools, respectively.

6. Drawbacks of the FSM measure are discussed in Croxford (2000), Shuttleworth (1995) and Hobbs and Vignoles (2009).

7. The only other recent research that described the religious background of pupils used a survey of London religious secondary schools (see Allen & West, 2009). The results for the London were broadly similar (Roman Catholic schools: 94% Christian in London LSYPE compared with 96% in London schools survey; Anglican schools: 83% Christian in LSYPE compared with 73% in schools survey).