The CES believes that a report by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) Admissions: who goes where (August, 2006) was misleadingly used by the Independent newspaper on 18 September 2006 to attack schools with a religious character.  By using the broad category of “Voluntary-Aided Schools”, the research did imply that Catholic schools are socially exclusive (using the measure of pupil entitlement to free school meals), when in fact the opposite is true.

After a fruitful conversation with the NFER, we hope to see their disaggregated data for Catholic schools in the near future.  We expect that the statistics will confirm those of Ofsted, which are used in a report entitled Quality and Performance shortly to be published by the CES.  These statistics show that overall, the percentage of pupils in Catholic schools eligible for free school meals is equivalent to the national average for other maintained schools.

Oona Stannard

Chief Executive and Director