Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the findings of the research paper entitled Serving their communities? The under-admission of children with disabilities and ‘special educational needs’ to ‘faith’ primary schools in England, published in the Oxford Review of Education on 2 October 2023.

The department is determined that all children and young people receive the support they need to benefit from their education and progress to the next stage of their lives.

Children should be able to attend a school of their parents’ choice where possible. By law, all children with an Education Health and Care (EHC) Plan must be admitted to the school named in the Plan. A parent, carer, child or young person can request that a school designated as having a religious character (commonly known as a faith school) be named on an EHC Plan. Local authorities should do their best to accommodate such a request but should not name the school if it is unsuitable for the child’s age, ability, aptitude and special educational needs, or if naming the school would be incompatible with the provision of efficient education of other children or the efficient use of resources.

Where a child with special educational needs does not have an EHC Plan, their parents will need to apply for a school place in the same way as for other children without an EHC Plan. Places must be allocated in accordance with the schools’ published admissions criteria, which are set by the admission authority for each school, but they must comply with the statutory School Admissions Code which exists to ensure that places are allocated in a fair and transparent manner.

Admission authorities for schools designated as having a religious character may adopt admissions criteria which give priority to children of their faith, but they must offer a place to every applicant regardless of faith if there are sufficient places available. Free schools with a religious character may only allocate 50% of their places pupils by reference to faith in order to open up places to other children. Some other schools choose to limit the number of places they allocate with reference to faith, and many do not have faith admissions criteria at all.