06 Oct Gold Jennings acts for the appellants in the case of R (CKT & DGT) v Twyford Church of England Academy Trust and others, being heard in the Court of Appeal on 6th and 7th October 2026.

The High Court judgment can be found here.

The appeal concerns the application of the prohibition on indirect race discrimination in the Equality Act 2010 (“EA”) and the public sector equality duty in s.149 of the EA to faith-based oversubscription criterion to Church of England (“CofE”) schools and in one such school in particular.  Faith schools form around one third of the state education sector in England. Of these, around two thirds are CofE schools.

Faith schools can adopt oversubscription criteria that give no priority based on faith, or if they do choose to have faith-based criteria, such criteria can take a wide variety of forms. The adoption of oversubscription criteria which favour CoE children can, as in this case, significantly disadvantage non-white and/ or non-English heritage applicants in accessing the most popular and best performing state schools in their area. This appeal is about whether the respondent school can justify the disadvantaging effect that its oversubscription criteria have on these racial groups; whether equality law required the school to consider this when setting, maintaining and applying its criteria; and what the legal consequences are if they are found not to have done so.

The Court of Appeal often delivers its judgment some time after the case is heard.