Headteachers on Wednesday blasted government plans to remove a cap on faith schools which currently limits the number of pupils they can select based on their religion.
School leaders said the move is “unnecessary and potentially retrograde” while campaigners said it would increase religious and racial segregation in schools.
The government today launched a consultation on removing the current cap which ensures faith schools allocate at least 50 per cent of their places to pupils without reference to their faith if they are oversubscribed.
If the cap is removed, oversubscribed faith-based free schools will be able to select up to 100 per cent of their intake based on pupils' religious belief.
The Catholic Education Service has argued that the 50 per cent cap effectively banned the opening of any new Catholic free schools because turning away Catholic pupils would be against canon law.
The Department for Education is also proposing to create faith-based academies for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the school leaders’ union, the NAHT said that faith schools “aremade up of diverse communities and work hard to ensure that pupils mix and interact with children from a wide range of backgrounds and with different beliefs from their own.”
He added: “NAHT is concerned that the move to remove the faith cap is an unnecessary and potentially retrograde step.
"We are concerned that there is a danger that such a move could inadvertently lead to a sense of selection through the back door and could potentially make it harder for some pupils to get a place at their localschool.”Ministers hope that lifting the cap on faith-based admissions, which applies to new faith free schools in England, will create more school places for pupils.
It is understood that existing faith-based free schools - which currently have to adhere to the 50 per cent rule if oversubscribed - will be able to apply to have the cap lifted if the Government's plans are given thegreen light.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, who attended a Catholic school, said she had seen first-hand how values and standards in faith schools “often give young people a brilliant start in life”.
She said: “Faith groups run some of the best schools in the country, including in some of the most disadvantaged areas, and it's absolutely right we support them to unleash that potential even further -including through the creation of the first ever faith academies for children with special educational needs.”
Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said: “The proposal to allow 100 per cent religious discrimination in new state faith schools will increase religious and racial segregation in our schools at a time when integration and cohesion has never been more important.
“It will further disadvantage poorer families, non-religious families, and families of the 'wrong' religion.”
Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society, said lifting the cap would only “exacerbate the discrimination, division, and disadvantage that faith based education encourages”.
He said: “Allowing new faith academies to apply 100 percent religious selection would be entirely wrongheaded and run contrary tovalues that should be at the heart of our society.”
Simon Barrow, chair of the Accord Coalition - thealliance of religious and non-religious groups and voices working for fullyinclusive education, added that scrapping the cap would be “an enormouslyretrograde step”.
