Faith primary schools top league

The extraordinary success of faith schools is revealed by official school league tables published today.

They show that of the top 20 state primary schools in London, all but two are Roman Catholic, Church of England or Jewish.

By contrast, the 20 worst-performing primaries are all non-denominational schools.

The disclosure comes days after the head of a successful Roman Catholic school told how a parent offered a bribe of £5,000 in a bid to secure her child a place.

It highlights the dilemma facing parents who want the best state
education for their child but, because of their beliefs, do not qualify for a faith school place and have no acceptable secular alternative.

Today, faith school authorities put the success of their institutions down to the "shared ethos" generated by the close connection between parents and their local religious community.

Tom Peryer, spokesman for the London diocese of the Church of England, said: "In a way it's common sense. The most successful organisations of any kind are those where everybody is clearly signed up to the same set of values.

"That is more likely to be the case in a faith school, because the religious authorities stand for a clearly defined moral framework.

"And because parents and school are linked by the church they attend - probably along with a lot of the teachers - that means they are more likely to support what the school is trying to achieve."

Mr Peryer acknowledged that parents often had to travel further to get their children to a faith school, and had to attend church or synagogue before they would be offered a place."

He acknowledged that desperate parents could be tempted to bend the rules, for example by faking church attendance, or only going to church until a place was confirmed. "We do not condone any abuse, but neither do we apologise for asking parents to demonstrate their commitment," he said.

But an academic who has studied-school admissions said there was evidence that faith schools' success was often helped by their ability to select the brightest pupils, rather than any religious ethos.

Church schools have lost the ability to interview pupils in order to test their parents' claims of commitment to faith - a practice that critics said was often used to establish other features of a child's background.

But Dr Anne West of the London School of Economics said: "Church schools are their own admissions authorities and it is easier for them to use their criteria to ensure their intake is of a higher ability."

David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, cautioned against assuming that church schools were always the best.

In today's school league tables, which record for the first time the educational "value added" by primary schools, 39 per cent of the top 200 schools by this measure were church schools.

But so were 31.5 per cent of the bottom 200. Both figures were roughly proportionate to the number of church schools, which make up 36 per cent of the total.

Mr Hart said: "You will find faith schools among the worst-performing in the country as well. It is dangerous to argue that faith schools by definition provide the best education.

"Parents who think a faith school will automatically give them the best education need to strip away their prejudices."