A Church of England report which found that faith schools do better on community cohesion as judged by Oftsed has been criticised by campaigners including Accord.

The report analysed the compliance of schools with the duty to promote community cohesion, which the government passed after making a u-turn on a proposal to open up faith school admissions. The analysis of the first year since compliance with the duty has been inspected shows that while primary faith schools do no better than their non-denominational counterparts, at secondary level more faith schools are rated “outstanding” on cohesion. However, Accord has argued that the inspection criteria used by Ofsted leave much to be desired.

Commenting on the report, Accord Chair Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain said:

“Building community cohesion is vitally important and we congratulate all those schools that have been working hard to meet the duty”

“The most pressing issue is whether the criteria used by Ofsted are sufficient.

“While school linking projects and classroom discussions of diversity are commendable, inspectors should also consider the impact on cohesion of discriminatory admissions and biased RE lessons.

“Occasional meetings with other groups have little merit if the children move in closeted circles most of the time and do not receive a broad education in class.”