Faith school

A faith school is a school in the United Kingdom that teaches a general curriculum but which has a particular religious character or formal links with a religious organisation. The term is most commonly applied to state-funded faith schools, although many independent schools also have religious characteristics.

There are various types of state-funded faith school, including Voluntary Aided (VA) schools, Voluntary Controlled (VC) schools, and Faith Academies.

Faith schools may give priority to applicants who are of the faith, and specific exemptions from Section 85 of the Equality Act 2010 enable them to do that. However, state-funded faith schools must admit other applicants if they cannot fill all of their places and must ensure that their admission arrangements comply with the School Admissions Code.

Note that legislation varies between the countries of the United Kingdom since education is a devolved matter.

The Education Act 1944 introduced the requirement for daily prayers in all state-funded schools, but later acts changed this requirement to a daily "collective act of worship", the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 being the most recent. This also requires such acts of worship to be "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character". The term "mainly" means that acts related to other faiths can be carried out providing the majority are Christian.

Independent schools are exempt from this provision, so it has always been possible to have an independent (not state-funded) school with no act of worship or with acts of worship relating to non-Christian religions. However, many schools that were originally church schools are now largely state funded, as are some Jewish schools. These are allowed to have acts of worship "in accordance with the beliefs of the religion or denomination specified for the school". Until 1997, the UK funded only Christian or Jewish faith schools (Muslim schools existed but were privately funded), but the 1997–2007 Labour Government expanded this to other religions, and began using the term "faith school".

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