Our Aims: Building Blocks

 

1. To provide a focus for local residents, and other interested people, who think that all state-funded schools should be equally accessible to families of all faiths and none, regardless of who is running them.


2. To identify and challenge any cases where existing local state-funded schools try to introduce or increase discrimination in admissions on the basis of religion or belief.


3. To highlight any cases where this type of discrimination has other negative consequences locally, such as covert social or racial selection.


4. To oppose the establishment of any new local state-funded school with an admissions policy that discriminates against children on the basis of religion or belief.


5. To support any opportunity to reduce faith-based discrimination in the admissions policies of existing local schools.


6. To identify and publicise the position of candidates in council elections and by-elections in terms of reducing this form of discrimination and therefore increasing inclusion.


7. To hold the council to account for the secondary school supply/demand forecasts used to justify giving the Clifden Road site for an exclusive Catholic school.


8. To provide a link between local people with an interest in fighting this form of discrimination and national activities.

 

Our Policies:

  • Our group is not opposed to faith schools in principle.  Some RISC supporters are against them, but others support them and send their children to them.
  • Our group is not against religion.  Our supporters include Catholics, Anglicans and members of other faiths, as well as humanists and other non-religious people. They’re united on the principle that it’s wrong for state-funded schools to have admissions policies that discriminate against local children simply because of their parents’ religion or beliefs.
  • We aim to stay out of debates about whether Free Schools and Academies are a good idea compared to other types of state-funded schools.
  • We aim to stay out of disputes about admission of individual children to local schools, unless they’re directly related to faith/belief-based discrimination.