Admission policies

Once there was a child, who got beaten up by life. No one can say for sure who the bandits were, maybe it was poverty or abuse or having to flee from a war-torn country, maybe it was having the wrong colour skin or wrong religion, maybe it was the emotional and cultural poverty of his parents, but on thing is certain, here he lay, in pain, suffering, in need.

As he lay there, his chances of a different future dying, there passed by a church school. When it saw him lying there it felt sorry for the child. But it did not stop to help, because it was late for a meeting of the admissions committee.

And then a diocesan board for schools walked passed. It too wished there were something it could do, but needed to be at an important press briefing, to share the latest statistics that proved that church schools were not socially divisive.

Finally, along came a county school. When it saw the child, it was full of compassion. It picked up the child, carried him to safety and paid above and beyond to enable his hurts to be healed.

Apart form being a head teacher, one of the things I get to do is inspect church schools. So far, I have only come across church schools that were Samaritan schools – schools that provide safe and healing places for damaged, hurting children. In fact, it is an amazing privilege to bear witness to the deep compassion, the going the extra mile, the sacrificial giving of self for others that is evident. I haven’t yet come across a school that walks by on the other side.

But, despite that, even though clearly many church schools are places where God’s creative, liberating and empowering love is made flesh in practical, down-to-earth ways that touch peoples’ lives, need we be afraid of asking ourselves tough questions? Do we not all need to hold up our admissions policies and view them through the lens of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Should we not desire eagerly to be held accountable for our social impact?

Without this, it would be very easy to delude ourselves that we were serving our neighbours in need when the reality is we are doing so only superficially. Unless we have hard data that tells us that we are taking more children on free schools meals than our county school neighbours, more children with parents in prison, more on the at risk register, with emotional and behavioural difficulties, with parents with chaotic lifestyles, more who find academic success a challenge, then all our inclusive words are so much rhetoric. Do parents who are drug addicts or prostitutes send their children to our schools? And how much more so or less so than our neighbouring schools? If our admission policies, in giving preferential admission to Christians, mean that are intake is less vulnerable than those in neighbouring schools, then that policy has failed in its role as a sign and instrument of the gospel. Of course it is perfectly possible that preferential Christian admission produces a more vulnerable intake, but, in the jargon of the day, where is our evidence? After all, admissions policies are also exclusion policies, since they define who is less likely to be offered a place..

We do not have this data. We need this data. How can we self evaluate our mission without it? The toolkit [the self evaluation document used in section 48 Anglican church school inspections] does not ask the question. When all church schools squarely looks themselves in the face and ask themselves these types of question, and publish their data and their plans to remedy any shortcomings, then we will be able to answer our critics with authority.