Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Agnew of Oulton on 23 January (HL4568), why the Department for Education has not collected data about the preferences of parents from different faiths in relation to the schools they choose for their children.

Schools designated with a religious character are permitted to collect information about parents’ faith in a supplementary application form. Schools that do not have a religious character will not require information about parents’ religious beliefs or practice as this will be irrelevant to their choice of school. Only schools with a religious character might hold this data and so, if collected by the department, this would not provide an accurate picture across all schools.

We do, of course, keep this general approach to the collection of data under constant review.