THE LIVERPOOL BLUE COAT SCHOOL AND CHURCH OF ENGLAND STATUS
Link to Statement by the Bishop of Warrington
The issue of whether the Blue Coat School should have been designated a Church of England school following the 1998 Education Act has received much attention in the media recently. The law requires that this issue is resolved by the Secretary of State and the Diocese has stated from the start that it will abide by his decision.
Unfortunately, there have been many misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions made about this matter, particularly concerning the impact on the school if it were to be designated a Church of England school by the Secretary of State. The Diocese has been asked many questions about this by individual parents and in the press, but our ability to communicate with everyone concerned with the school is inevitably limited. In view of the latest developments, we have asked the school (5th January) to distribute a letter from the Bishop of Warrington, Chairman of the Diocesan Board of Education, to all parents, governors, staff and trustees. This is intended to clarify a number of factual points which are clearly important issues for many people.
The main questions we have been asked about this matter are as follows:
Question 1
How and why has this matter arisen?
Answer – In 2003 the Diocesan Education Department was given a copy of a regulatory Scheme agreed between the Blue Coat Foundation and Charity Commission in 2000. This contained a clause that Religious Education in the school must be given “in accordance with the doctrines of the Church of England”. This clause, which we had not been aware of before but have since discovered was contained in earlier legal documents for the school, including its Foundation document, was significant because it suggested the school should have been designated a Church of England school following the 1998 Education Act. We were also advised that this was a matter for the Secretary of State and should be referred to him. We tried to meet informally with the trustees in the first half of 2005 but this proved unsuccessful and the matter was formally referred to the Secretary of State in June 2005.
Q2
What is the current situation?
Answer – This is a legal matter between the school and the Secretary of State. The Diocese has had no further correspondence with the Secretary of State or DfES on this matter since the summer 2005, other than a copy of the letter to the school before Christmas.
Q3
Is this not simply a legal ‘accident’ or technicality?
Answer – No. The Religious Character of Schools (Designation Procedure) Regulations 1998 which followed the 1998 Education Act are very precise and cover 9 pages. They were produced by government to deal with schools returning to Local Authorities from Grant Maintained status and gave very clear criteria against which the government would judge schools religious character. The outcome was not a matter of choice, but was mandatory if one of the criteria was satisfied. The whole issue is a matter of government policy and law.
Q4
Would the Diocese take over the running of the school if the Secretary of State designated it as a Church of England school?
Answer – No. There would be no change to the Governing Body. The Blue Coat Foundation would remain as trustees and would continue to appoint the majority of governors (the Foundation Governors). Other governors would continue to be elected by parents and staff or appointed by the City Council. The Diocese could make no appointments of its own.
Q5
Would the school cease to be a grammar school if designated a Church of England school?
Answer – No! Education law is very clear that the Governing Body would continue to be responsible for admissions arrangements and policy, including grammar school status. The Diocese would not use its power to advise any change in this policy anyway, not least because it supported the introduction of partial selection by ability at Church of England high schools in Liverpool several years ago.
Q6
Would any priority for admissions be given to Anglican children if the Secretary of State designated the school as a Church of England school?
Answer – No. For the reason given in the above answer, the admissions policy would remain unchanged. Many Church of England schools, of course, do give such priority, but more than half across the country do not. In this Diocese, the 4 new Church of England secondary schools opened since 2001, including the joint Anglican/Catholic Academy of St Francis of Assisi in Liverpool for its Anglican places, all give admission priority to children from their local communities regardless of their faith background. It would be quite inconsistent of the Diocese to even advise a change to this aspect of Blue Coat School policy and we have given categorical assurances that we would not do so.
Q7
Would there be any change to the ownership of the school buildings and other assets of the Blue Coat Foundation?
Answer – No. Charity Law is very clear on this matter – the Blue Coat Foundation would continue to be the trustees and would continue to own and be responsible for the buildings and other assets.
Q8
Would future headteachers have to be in “holy orders”?
Answer – No! Only one of the 118 headteachers of Church of England schools in this diocese is a priest. Diocesan advice is that practicing Christians (but not necessarily Anglicans) be appointed to headteacher and deputy headteacher posts, but this is not a legal requirement and only the Governing Body has the power to appoint staff, including the headteacher. Many headteachers at Church of England schools in this diocese belong to other denominations. All staff would, as now, be expected to support the ethos of the school, which would remain fundamentally as it now is.
Q9
Would the school cease to be as multi-cultural as it currently is, if the Secretary of State designates it as a Church of England school?
Answer – No. Church of England schools are as culturally and racially mixed as most others, sometimes more so. In Liverpool, for example, Archbishop Blanch and St Hilda’s Church of England high schools have respectively 3 times and twice as many pupils for whom English is a second language as the Blue Coat School (City Council statistics, 2004) and many pupils at these and other Anglican schools in the city are members of other faiths, particularly Islam.
Q10
Would the religious character of the school be noticeably different if the Secretary of State designated it as a Church of England school?
Answer – No. There are many different types of Church of England school, but the Blue Coat School already has key features of the best:
Anyone wishing to find out more about the school’s history and its religious features should read one of the many books about it, such as A Blue Coat Boy by Danny Ross (1996) or The Liverpool Blue Coat School Past and Present by G.G.Watcyn (1967). The latter is particularly informative, written by a former
Headteacher of the school who was also a Church of England Reader.
Q11
What does the Diocese stand to gain if the school is designated a Church of England school by the Secretary of State?
Answer – Very little in any tangible sense, other than clarification of the school’s legal status and the right to be consulted or to advise on certain matters. There would, however, be two important consequences, firstly that the school’s existing religious character and features could not be ended in future and secondly that these would be subject to statutory denominational inspection alongside each Ofsted inspection.
Q12
Did the Diocese save money by raising this issue after completion of a large building project by the school?
Answer – No. The 10% contribution towards such schemes is a ‘governors contribution’ in all voluntary aided schools (90% being grant aided by the government) although the trustees of the school may contribute if they can. The Diocese of Liverpool has limited resources for such purposes, which it generally only uses to support schools in the poorest areas which have no resources of their own.
Q13
Is there a danger that the characteristics of the school would start to change after a few years, if it is designated with Church of England status?
Answer – Of course all schools change over time, and the law itself changes regularly, but the Diocese has given clear assurances that the fundamental character of the school would not change as a result of its designation as a Church of England school. It would, anyway, be astonishing if Charity Law changed so that the Blue Coat trustees lost control of their assets, and any move to stop trustees of Church schools appointing a majority of their governors would be resisted strongly by the churches nationally – after all, they are themselves (through their dioceses and parishes) the trustees for most Church schools.
18th January 2007