Faith schools: Shrewsbury MP tells Theresa May to keep ‘promise’
Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski has urged Theresa May to keep a "promise" over lifting the admissions cap for faith schools.
Mr Kawczynski is the latest of the region's MPs to have expressed disappointment at the government's decision not to lift the cap on admissions to faith schools.
It comes after the Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury, the Rev Mark Davies, accused the government of betrayal over the decision not to fulfil its manifesto pledge.
Mr Kawczynski has now written to the Prime Minister asking her to take action.
He said: "Recently it was brought to my intention by the The Rev Mark Davies, Bishop of Shrewsbury that this government has failed to address the removal of the admissions cap for faith schools despite promising to do so in our most recent manifesto.
"This cap means that faith schools in this country currently can only accept half of their students from one particular faith and, after this point, are prevented from accepting any more pupils of the same faith. This, in my humble opinion, means that they are not truly faith schools at all. This cap has also had the effect of stifling the opening of new catholic schools as to do so would contravene the code of canon.
"As a Catholic I feel very strongly that we should tackle this issue immediately; we promised in our 2017 manifesto to remove this cap and to improve educational freedom in the UK. Would you agree with me that fulfilling this manifesto pledge will help restore trust in this Government as we will have achieved a victory for religious freedom and demonstrated tangible proof that we have made and kept promises to the population?"
Mr Kawczynski said the government would have to question itself if it could not fulfil its manifesto pledges.
He said: "This is an incredibly easy promise to keep and one that I, and many others, would argue is long overdue. This issue was raised earlier this year by my colleague Lucy Allan MP and I feel that the time has come for the government to take action.
"As a government we have to ask ourselves, if we cannot fulfil the pledges of our own manifesto and deliver on what we promised - then what are we for?"
