Barnet Hill Academy designated as Islamic faith school
This is one of those legal notices that looks dry until you read the line that matters. On 26 August 2026, the Secretary of State made the Designation of Schools Having a Religious Character (England) Order 2026. It came into force on 27 August 2026 and gives Barnet Hill Academy in Barnet, NW4 3ES, formal legal designation as a school with a religious character. The religion named in the Order is Islam. The document, published on legislation.gov.uk and signed on behalf of the Secretary of State by Department for Education deputy director Lorna Howarth, applies to an existing voluntary aided school. So this is not the creation of a new school. It is a change in the school’s formal legal status.
If you are wondering what religious character actually means, the short answer is that it is a legal category, not just a description. Under section 69 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, a school can be officially designated so that the law recognises its faith basis in specific parts of school life. **What this means:** Barnet Hill Academy is now treated in law as a school with Islamic religious character for certain purposes. A voluntary aided school is state-funded, but it usually has a stronger role for its foundation or faith body in how it is run. This designation therefore sits inside a school structure that already allows a clearer faith identity than many other state schools.
If the phrase statutory instrument makes your eyes glaze over, here is the useful bit. A statutory instrument is a form of secondary legislation. Parliament passes the main Act first, and ministers then use powers in that Act to make more specific rules or orders. That is what happened here. The Order says the Secretary of State used powers in section 69(3) and (4) of the 1998 Act and followed the Religious Character of Schools (Designation Procedure) Regulations 1998. In plain English, there is a set legal route for giving a school this status, and the government says that route was followed before the designation was made.
The first practical effect concerns religious education. The Order says Islam is the religion in accordance with whose tenets religious education is, or may be, required to be provided under Schedule 19 of the 1998 Act. The legal wording is dense, but the meaning is simpler than it looks: the school’s faith status now helps determine the form of RE the law expects it to provide. The same applies to collective worship. The explanatory note says designation matters for the mechanism that decides what form collective worship should take under Schedule 20. **What this means for pupils:** the school’s Islamic character is not a decorative label. It has a direct bearing on how faith-related parts of the school day are organised.
The Order also matters for staffing. Its explanatory note points to sections 58 to 60 of the 1998 Act, which deal with school staffing matters. That does not mean every job suddenly changes on 27 August, but it does mean the school’s religious character becomes relevant in parts of employment law that apply to faith schools. For staff and governors, this is where the paperwork becomes real. Recruitment, role descriptions and policy decisions need to match the school’s formal status. Governors, in particular, will need to make sure the school’s arrangements on RE, collective worship and staffing are consistent with the legal position now attached to the school.
One small line in the document is easy to miss but worth learning from. The government says no full impact assessment was produced because no significant effect on the private, voluntary or public sectors is expected. That sounds technical, but it does not mean the Order is trivial. It means ministers see this as a targeted legal change affecting one school, not a system-wide overhaul. There is another detail here that helps if you are learning how legislation works. The Order says it extends to England and Wales, even though the power is exercisable by the Secretary of State only in relation to England and the school itself is in Barnet. **What this means:** a law’s territorial wording and its real-world application are not always identical. Legal drafting is often more precise than everyday speech.
If you are a parent, pupil, staff member or governor, the most useful questions are practical ones. What form will religious education take? How will collective worship be arranged? Where does the school’s faith status matter in staffing and governance? Those are the areas this Order clearly points to, and they are the ones worth watching if you want to understand the change properly. There is a wider lesson here too. Short legal notices can look remote, but they often shape ordinary school life in very concrete ways. When you see the words made and coming into force, read them as the date the law was signed and the date it started to apply. In this case, those dates were 26 August 2026 and 27 August 2026. A one-page Order can still tell you a great deal about how a school is meant to operate.