Church of England schools are not the preserve of “white, middle class pupils” and should be allowed to expand 
to take in more children, according to the Church’s head of education.
Anglican schools take as many pupils from poor backgrounds and ethnic minorities as the average school in England and Wales, new figures show.
His comments come after a vicar from a privileged area of London said that his local school maintained diversity “precisely because we admit on the basis of church attendance”.
Writing in the Telegraph, the Bishop of Oxford, Rt Rev John Pritchard, attacked the “distorted lens” of secular groups who seek to claim church schools effectively select by the back door.
And he added that the Church of England should be allowed to step in to create more primary school places – addressing a desperate national shortage of capacity for five-year-olds.
It comes as Bishop Pritchard prepared to address the Church’s General Synod on the issue on Tuesday.
In his article, Bishop Pritchard said that more than eight-in-10 CofE primary schools and three-quarters of secondaries are rated good or better by Ofsted – marginally higher than rankings awarded to non-Anglican schools.
Bishop Pritchard said: “One of the great accusations against church schools is that they are predominantly for white, middle class pupils whereas our statistics tell a different story.”
He added: “Rather than seeing them through the distorted lens of those who campaign against church schools, would it not be better to understand why they are so popular and see that the Church of England can offer solutions to some of the challenges facing education in this country, such as the shortage of primary school places? We have the experience and the skill.”
He insisted that the success of Anglican schools was down to their “distinctive ethos, rooted in Christian values”, with teachers developing children’s “social, spiritual and emotional intelligence… alongside their academic performance”.
Last week, the Vicar of St Peter’s Church Eaton Square in the heart of wealthy Belgravia, west London, insisted that his local Anglican school maintained a diverse pupil population “precisely because we admit on the basis of church attendance”.
In a letter to The Times, he said around 30 different ethnic backgrounds were represented at the school, which also takes many pupils from nearby council estates.
“The children of millionaires mix with those on free school meals,” he said. “If our school admitted solely on grounds of distance, we would be entirely white and entirely millionaires.
“Would that be diverse? We may be an extreme example, but since the Christian faith is so strongly represented among ethnic minorities, selection by distance would often lead to white, upper-middle class secularists who know how to play the game and can buy houses in the right place, crowding out less well-off Afro-Caribbean, east European and Asian Christians.”
New figures show that 15 per cent of pupils in Anglican secondary schools are eligible for free meals – meaning they come from households earning less than £16,000 – which it said was “in line with the national average” for non-CofE institutions. Nationally, the proportion is actually 16 per cent, according to Department for Education data.
They also admit 25 per cent of pupils from black and ethnic minority families, which is slightly higher than the 24 per cent average for all state secondary schools.