50 percent rule

The 50% rule or 50% cap in English faith school admissions introduced in 2010, stipulating that where newly established academies with a religious character are oversubscribed, at least 50% of their places would be "open places", i.e. allocated without reference to faith. The rule is sometimes referred to as the faith cap on admissions. However, as the open places were just as accessible to faith applicants as non-faith applicants, in practice the rule did not explicitly prevent such schools from having more than 50% of students with a faith affiliation.
The 50% rule applied only to new academies, established under the "free school" programme, not to maintained schools that converted to academy status.

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