Attending a church school could give your child a year’s head start on other pupils by the time he or she starts secondary school, according to a new survey. A report, published in the National Institute of Economic Review, found that that on average pupils who had attended faith schools were 12 months ahead in their studies of children from non-faith schools by the age of 11.

The study looked at the maths national curriculum results of over 300 pupils at a Roman Catholic and a Church of England school in East London and then compared the figures with the results of 2,000 children in local authority schools across the borough.

In the top 25% of pupils, church school-educated children were the equivalent of three quarters of a year ahead. But this gap widened the lower down the results you looked; the bottom 25% of pupils in church schools were a year and a half ahead of pupils in other LEA schools.

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