FAITH schools should be barred from using religious belief as a means of admitting pupils, a government adviser said yesterday.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said that religious affiliation was one of the causes of “social selection” at the country’s top 200 comprehensives, which admitted many fewer poorer children than other local schools.

Schools such as the Roman Catholic London Oratory, chosen by Tony Blair for his elder sons and his daughter, should not be allowed to use religious faith as part of their admissions criteria. “If you sign up for the programme for your child and are prepared to have that faith taught by the school, whether you are part of that faith or not should not be a deterrent,” Sir Peter said. “The criteria that your parents are not good Catholics should not be allowed.”

Sir Peter said that the issue was important because faith schools represented 18 per cent of all secondaries and 42 per cent of the top 200 comprehensives. A report by the trust, which campaigns for fairer admissions to schools and leading universities, showed that the top 200 admitted very few poor children compared to the numbers in their neighbourhoods.

Only 5.6 per cent of pupils at these comprehensives qualified for free school meals, the yardstick of family poverty, compared with 11.5 per cent of children in their local postcode areas. The average in secondary schools is 14.3 per cent.

The gap was wider among faith schools, which admitted 5.9 per cent of pupils having free school meals, compared with 15.2 per cent living in their localities.

Sir Peter gave warning that the Government’s Education White Paper could deepen social divisions by handing control of admissions to individual schools run by private trusts, free of local authority control. The report found that schools with responsibility for their own admissions accepted fewer poor children.

Sir Peter supported the reform as a way to raise standards, however, provided there were tough safeguards to ensure fairness. He said that 70 per cent of the top 200 comprehensives controlled their own admissions, compared with only 31 per cent nationally. “We have such a socially selective system in this country that we cannot just let it drift on like this. This is not something that is going to happen if you introduce more trust schools. It is already here,” he said.

Sir Peter, who has advised successive education secretaries, said that the research findings “starkly underline the extent of the social divide in our education system”. Top comprehensives mirrored the situation in the 161 grammar schools, where just two per cent of pupils were eligible for free school meals. “The top fifth of schools — independents, grammars and also leading comprehensives — are effectively closed to those from less privileged backgrounds, ” he said.

Sir Peter said that top schools should introduce programmes to attract more poorer applicants from families living nearby. Oversubscribed schools should also assign places to children by lottery, a method used in parts of the United States.

There are 351 Catholic and 201 Anglican secondary schools, 30 representing other Christian faiths, 7 Jewish schools, 2 Muslim and 1 Sikh.

A spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church said that its schools drew children from much wider areas than the local postcode. Ofsted inspection data showed that 15 per cent of pupils in Catholic schools were eligible for free meals, in line with the national average. “It is clear that Roman Catholic schools are not socially selective,” he said.

The Church of England said that its schools also admitted poor students in line with the national average. Those among the top 200 comprehensives were no different from non-faith schools.

SOCIAL SELECTION

Of the top 200 comprehensives:

42 per cent are faith schools

5.9 per cent of their pupils are eligible for free school meals

58 per cent are secular schools

5.3 per cent of their pupils are eligible for free meals

14.3 per cent of secondary school pupils nationally are eligible for free meals because of family hardship

Source: Sutton Trust

Times Recommends

• Phoebe Caldwell wins Times/Sternberg Award
• Raging against fake pop has its own pitfalls
• How a voice for everyone led to stalemate