Must we believe in God to get a good school?

A new secondary school in a south London borough seemed like great news for parents. But there was a snag: it's Church of England, and will give priority to churchgoers. Caroline Haydon describes her uphill struggle to find a good school for her son

This year, Wandsworth parents attempting to play the three-dimensional game of chess that the transfer of their offspring to secondary school has now become were grateful for some good news.

A south London borough that was sorely pressed for places because of its popularity – children flock to schools in Wandsworth from surrounding authorities – was to open a new, £11m school. Boasting "outstanding accommodation", it was to be situated in the heart of the borough, in Southfields, and take the steam out of the pressure-cooked system by offering 900 new places by 2009.

For the non-churchgoers among us, however, there was a catch. It was a Church of England school. In the first year of opening – September 2003 – it would offer 100 places to children whose families were practising members of a Christian church, and 50 "open places" irrespective of religious background; but with priority given to those with medical or social needs, or living nearest the school. Which, presumably, meant that some of those places would go to churchgoers, too.

Parents are now a resigned lot, taking it for granted that they will have to research, visit, form-fill, plug into the local gossip, read prospectuses and generally agonize over anything up to a dozen schools to get a decent education for their children. In London, it's no good applying only inside your own borough, particularly if schools are over-subscribed, or worse, suspiciously under-subscribed.

But as the mother of an 11-year-old, Alex, who would be extremely unlikely to qualify for one of those few open places, and who, in any case, wanted a good, academic, moral and ethical education for him in a non-religious context (shouldn't they make up their own minds later?), I felt that this was one turn of the screw too far.

Surely church numbers were plummeting? How could a new, publicly funded church school with a highly selective set of entry guidelines, be opening in 2003? Why wasn't the much-needed new school, which is 10 minutes' walk from our house, even if we were over the Wandsworth boundary by a pipsqueak (it is four houses away, to be exact), open to all?

Remembering that there were other – Roman Catholic – church secondaries in the borough, I went back to the local authority brochure. Maths has never been my strong point, but even I could see that adding up all the secondary places available to boys from a religious background came to a total of 1,063. Adding up all the places available to non-religious boys, on the other hand, gave a total figure of only 814.(Girls are better off because there is a big all-girl community school in the borough.) In inner London, where every good school place is bitterly fought over, that began to look like a bit of a disadvantage for the non-believers – a hefty 24 per cent fewer places for them, in fact.

Uncomprehending, I rang the local education authority. The press officer was cheerful. Yes, there had been a consultation about the new school, St Cecilia's. He was a bit vague about how it had worked, because it had been so long ago – 1995, before we had moved to the area. Wandsworth, "like the Government", was firmly committed to "diversity", and saw faith schools as a genuine response to parental choice and an ingredient in improving standards across the board. It had been as enthusiastic as the church in setting up the new school. And it had been responding to the concerns of parents whose children had attended one of the nine Wandsworth Church of England primaries but then had no secondary school to move on to.

But didn't he feel there was now discrimination against the non-religious families – where boys were concerned? A slight note of annoyance betrayed itself beneath the public-relation speak. No, he didn't accept that argument – the council was meeting a demand for places and had deliberately broadened the mix. Would I send in my figures? I e-mailed them.

I had no argument with the parents who genuinely wanted a faith education for their children – this was an issue of reciprocity. My son might effectively be barred from the best church schools, where places were scarce – indeed, my daughter previously had been – but there was no corresponding bar on the Church of England child at Graveney, the other school they might both be competing for, now dubbed the most popular state school in south London. So no equality there, then.

If Wandsworth hadn't added up the figures, had anyone? Cue the National Secular Society, who have campaigned since 1866 for a clear separation of church and state, and for the elimination of religious privilege. They had no good news for a parent in my position. Indeed, according to the Society, the situation was "getting worse", owing to a subtle combination of the prime minister's belief in faith schools and the church's own wish to expand.

St Cecilia's began to fall into place – it was one of the 100 new secondary schools the church had identified itself as needing. A quick check confirmed this: there were another two to three church secondaries hoped for north of the river, and three south – St Cecilia's first on line, and then another two, in Merton and Kingston.

But was this the same church whose parish system, according to its own recently commissioned report, was on the verge of collapse? And which had warned that the church was facing meltdown: "The Anglicans of 2030, in a myriad of tiny congregations, could be struggling to maintain their buildings in a thinly spread church crushed by the weight of its own heritage"?

Glumly, the National Secular Society had concluded in its own submissions to the Government that "the pattern of education being provided by the State does not remotely reflect the reality of non-belief patterns of the new Millennium ...with disbelief in God increased from around 2 per cent in the 1940s and 1950s to more than 30 per cent now, with 45 per cent saying they have no religion".

And, they noted "while the non-religious contribute to the public purse which finances faith schools, discrimination can be openly practised against the children of the non-religious, and against non-religious adults as teachers". So I wasn't the only one using the "d" word.

It was time to ring the Church. Tom Peryer, Director of the Board for Schools, London diocese, while not being directly responsible for St Cecilia's, put the arguments for those who saw themselves on the losing end of that increase in non-belief.

Calling for "a sense of proportion", he said that of around 3,600 secondary schools in the country, fewer than 500 – about 16 per cent – were religious, both Church of England and Roman Catholic. The rest were community schools with no faith allegiance and an increasingly "secular" agenda, where the "default" position was one of secular humanism. (DfES figures show that all but 41 of the faith schools are associated with the major Christian denominations.)

And of the 200 or so Church of England secondary schools, about half had no control over their admissions policies because they were set and controlled by the LEA – the voluntary controlled schools. That made the proportion of church schools in the country operating strict entry on religious grounds very small; in London, no more than 12 to 15 schools.

He thought that my point was "interesting and technically valid", but in the end, his argument was the same as I was beginning to hear elsewhere. No school offered equal access to all – some discriminated on gender, some on ability, some on sibling attendance, and so on. The answer might be to improve schools all round, though he did admit that would require a "magic wand".

Back in Wandsworth, where the LEA thinks it has very successful schools – though no Gandalf-like solution to the ills of the inner city – I finally spoke to the councillor with responsibility for education in the borough, Malcolm Grimston. He is very proud of a system in which diversity has, he says, overcome a previous inertia on the part of schools (so they now try harder, because of competition) and an unfairness whereby middle-class parents could always move near the best schools.

But whether this is the best way to run a school system in 2003 has to be open to doubt. Research persists in showing that areas with the most diversity – foundation, grammar, specialist, academy or any other of the multiplying types of school – have the greatest social segregation, as well as the greatest disparity between the educational achievement of the best and worst. Wandsworth schools sit at both ends of the spectrum, and only for the few at the top is there that intense, out-of-borough competition.

And where would this stop? A Muslim school is now planned for the borough in two years' time. What group would ask for separate schooling next? And which other group would then feel aggrieved? Above all, no one had really addressed my central point, let alone suggested they might be prepared to think of an answer. Actually, they had been surprised by the figures.

Alex is waiting to hear which school will accept him next year. Looking at another note to the Government from the Secular Society, which points out that since the proposal is to increase the number of faith schools while the proportion of non-believers is rising, "the discrimination suffered by non-believers is set to increase very substantially indeed" – I am rather glad that he has no younger sibling.

education@independent.co.uk