The Church of England has welcomed the announcement from the Education Secretary that the government will no longer force faith schools to take a quarter of pupils from other faiths or none.
Alan Johnson denied a climb-down after his announcement yesterday to scrap the quota plans for new faith schools. He said a change was no longer needed after a "voluntary agreement" was reached with the Roman Catholic Church following in the footsteps of the Church of England.
Both Churches have agreed that they would accept non-faith pupils to their schools voluntarily.
The Church of England said in a statement: "We welcome this latest outcome of recent discussions between government and faith leaders over how we can together ensure that faith schools continue to help build understanding and cohesion across communities. The government have promised all along to listen to the views of faith groups in this process, and this latest announcement is a result of their having done so.
"We are glad to note that the government are not proposing to impose a legal requirement on all faith schools to set aside a proportion of places on the basis of local priority. The Bishop of Portsmouth wrote to the Secretary of State on 3 October saying that faith groups could accept this voluntarily - as the Church of England had done - but that he did not want to see it imposed through legislation.
"This will be seen as a watershed moment, when public confidence in faith schools and their role in breaking down walls within communities has been affirmed. We look forward to the further growth of Church and other faith schools within the maintained system."
The Education Secretary first revealed a backtrack in a letter to the Archbishop of Birmingham, the Rt Rev Vincent Nichols, in which he agreed that all new Catholic schools would only have to apply the quota once Catholic demand had been met.
Mr Johnson came under heavy pressure from Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims to change the "bad legislation".
Archbishop Nichols expressed his gratitude in a statement that admissions would remain the prerogative of school governors and that changes to the law would not affect Catholic children.
He also thanked Mr Johnson for listening to Catholic concerns - up to two million of which were reportedly ready to vote against the government at the ballot box if the quota was imposed.
"In those discussions we came to a broad agreement about how future Catholic schools could be planned in ways that ensure that they always meet the needs of Catholic parents."
