Why should religion have any influence on our lives?

[Michael B]

That does make it clearer, thanks. It just seems a bit unwieldy and overcomplicated to me, but that might be my dumb American talking~

Actually it's much 'lighter' to maintain than our previous system of local bodies that governed education. It's also much more 'hands-off' from a government perspective. It gives much more power and control to schools and to parents. Some like that. Some don't (as you can see!). Most parents like it.

The shift in the ways allocations to schools is controlled has also had other interesting effects. Before our current system (which is getting on for 20-25 years old now, I think), you generally went to your local school without any choice (that's what I did). There were strict catchment areas and clear dividing lines of which school you went to depending on where you lived. But what happened was that good schools drove high house prices in their catchment area. The way parents 'chose' a good school for their children was to buy a house in that school's catchment area. The size of the school depended on the catchment, not on how many people wanted to go there. It really was a big consideration of where to buy a house, and so it was a key driver of house prices. There will always be a link between neighbourhood and schools, but that clear ability to 'buy' your way into the best local schools has now been broken, and I think that's good. As I mentioned the schools our kids went to were brilliant. There are no statistics on average family income, but free school dinners are given to those on low incomes, so you can roughly gauge the intake of the school by the proportion of children on free school dinners (and those stats are available). The main Catholic school our kids went to had the best results in a very wide area, but also had one of the highest proportions of kids on free school dinners. Great school, not a wealthy intake. And that school got larger when our kids were there, and maintained that high standard. You just wouldn't have got that under the catchment system I went to school under. For whatever reason (and it's probably a variety of reasons), faith schools are generally very successful and popular, and our current system gives the power back to parents and schools. I, for one, am a very satisfied parent.