Overheard at the LFGSS golf club bar

Also, what of state-funded faith schools? They can get to fuck as far as I'm concerned.

That's partly my point. The faith side provides some of the funding, so if you get rid of that then the Government has to pick up the shortfall. That's a fuckload of money each year across 33% of schools and that's going to come from a hike in Council Tax.

Having some control over the admissions criteria is exactly the reason why the faith schools exist. The more progressive schools are opening up more and more places to the local community (irrespective of practice), and new schools are bound by the 50% cap.

In many schools the places always drop down to the "any or no faith" criteria. It's just specific schools in densely populated bits of London where it never gets past the "regular practitioner" sections of the criteria and there's a ballot amongst that cohort for the places.