The government has amended legislation to provide reassurances for educational institutions with a religious character that want to become academy schools.
The amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill ensures that where a church academy relocates to a new site, the land would continue to be held in charitable trusts that guarantee it will be used for a church school.
The Church of England said the legislation is important for all schools with a religious character, not just for CofE schools, and it will provide reassurance for dioceses.
The Department for Education Schools White Paper, published in March last year, acknowledged barriers to the church’s full participation in the academy agenda.
It included a commitment to removing those barriers by bringing forward legislation to ensure the statutory freedoms and protections that apply to Church maintained schools also apply to academies with a religious character.
One of those barriers relates to issues arising from the occupation of land by church academies.
The amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will reintroduce clauses originally found in the Schools Bill, which was dropped by the government when Rishi Sunak became prime minister last autumn.
The amendment was brought by the government at the House of Lords committee stage.
Paul Roger Butler, the CofE’s lead bishop for education and Bishop of Durham, has welcomed the amendment: “We have been working closely with the government and very much welcome this amendment - a vital step towards ensuring school sites continue to be used for those original charitable purposes and enabling schools with a religious character to engage with the changing educational landscape.
“The decision not to progress the Schools Bill would have meant that this uncontroversial but very important change to legislation might have been lost, so we welcome the work done by the Departments for Education and Levelling Up to allow it to go forward and fulfil the government’s commitment.
“Church of England schools provide a highly valued education to over a million children, which is distinctly Christian, but serves a diverse community of all faiths and none.
“But this legislation is important for all schools with a religious character, and it will provide reassurance to dioceses regarding academisation and the protection of land provided for the purposes of a church school.
“We look forward to our continued work with the DfE on governance arrangements, which will sit alongside this legislation to support the Diocesan Boards of Education in the development of their families of church schools, and which will help to secure that provision for the future.”
Paul Barber, director of the Catholic Education Service, said: “This amendment ensures the same legislative protections for church academies as exist for maintained schools, and is a welcome measure to safeguard the charitable purpose of school land.
“The Catholic Church is the biggest provider of secondary education and second largest provider of primary schools, with nearly 850,000 pupils, and this legislation will help ensure the church’s mission in education is protected as schools move toward a multi-academy trust model.”
Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford, spoke in the debate in support of the amendment: “We welcome this amendment to preserve trustees’ existing land interest once schools whose sites are held on educational endowments become academies.
“This is a vital step towards ensuring school sites continue to be used for those original charitable purposes.”
The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill concerns the improvement of educational standards, of which academy expansion requiring a new site would be an example, and with the functions of a local authority in its capacity as a landowner and otherwise in relation to land.
