Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether new religious schools established as a result of their new capital funding scheme and which are legally permitted to select all of their pupils on faith grounds will be encouraged to convert to academy status; and whether there will be a time restriction on when such schools are able to do so.

Any voluntary-aided school, including those funded through the recently announced voluntary-aided capital scheme, can apply to convert to academy status in the same way as any other maintained school. Whilst the department does not plan to put specific restrictions in place on academy conversion for this group of schools, they will need to obtain the necessary consents, meet our criteria and undertake a consultation before doing so.