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How pupil shares and counts changed across faith and non-faith schools, including state-funded and independent schools.
Schools with a designated religious character are commonly known as faith schools; those without one are described here as non-faith schools. The designation applies to the school and does not record the religion of its pupils.
The share of all reported pupils at a school with a designated religious character fell in every year shown, from 24.6% in 2015/16 to 23.5% in 2025/26, a 1.1 percentage-point fall.
In 2025/26, the independent-school share was 34.1%, compared with 22.8% in state-funded schools, which was 11.3 percentage points higher.
Pupils at Muslim-designated schools increased from 16,059 (0.19%) in 2015/16 to 26,089 (0.29%) in 2025/26. That was 10,030 more pupils while the overall religious-character share fell.
Each segment shows the percentage of pupils in the selected schools who attended a school in one reported religious-character category.
The line shows the selected designation as a pupil share, pupil count or school count. Sector and phase set the schools included. Pupil share uses the pupil total for that selection as its denominator; the two counts have no denominator.
Each horizontal bar shows the complete reported religious-character composition of pupils in all schools, state-funded schools or independent schools in the latest year.
The Department for Education’s Schools, pupils and their characteristics collection reports January snapshots of schools and pupils in England. This analysis covers 2015/16 to 2025/26. The all-reported population includes state-funded schools, non-maintained special schools and independent schools.
A pupil share is the percentage of pupils in the active sector and phase whose school has the selected designation. Pupil count is the number of pupils in that selection; school count is the number of schools. “Any religious character” combines every reported denomination and excludes “No religious character”.
The composition charts retain every reported category and exact source row. When a category is absent from a source slice, it remains absent rather than being converted into a zero observation.
The page uses the DfE’s 2025/26 “School characteristics by year, sex and attendance pattern” release. A reviewed, reproducible mapping combines the source denomination labels; every plotted row retains those labels and the immutable release identity.
Religious character is an institutional designation, not a record of a pupil’s religion. Pupil and school measures are January snapshots, so they do not count everyone who attended at any point during the school year.