Prospective students of a Kingston primary school will no longer need to attend church in order to get a place from next year.

St Luke’s Church of England Primary School has dropped its church attending criteria from its admissions policy following a consultation.

The school, in Acre Road, had proposed allowing children who did not attend church into its intake from September 2016.

The church’s Fr Martin Hislop had also publically supported the proposal.

This month chair of governors Lucy Bird officially wrote to parents and carers to confirm the change in criteria.

She said: "Although Fr Martin’s announcement at Christmas was the catalyst, this decision was reached largely as a result of reflection upon guidance from the Diocese of Southwark, which directs schools of a Christian character to ensure that through their admissions policy they are offering places to children of ‘different faith or none’.

"The Christian precept will continue to underpin the school as it has since its foundation in 1836; it will remain a Church of England school with Christianity at its heart."

Following the announcement of the consultation the Surrey Comet conducted its own online poll earlier this year and asked whether schools should be allowed to use church attendance as part of its admissions criteria - 74 per cent of surveyors agreed it should not.

Guy Shirley, from the Kingston Fair Admissions group, which campaigns for all state-funded schools to be equally accessible, said: "This sets a fantastic precedent that both the church and the governors supported a change for the good of the community as a whole.

"What we'd like to see now, of course, is the remaining local schools which persist with selection based on faith (or church attendance, which is not always the same thing) following the path that St Luke's has paved."