It's worth looking at the figures more closely to examine data for those faith schools that set their own admissions (within the government admission code).

Some faith schools are "Voluntary Controlled" (VC), which means the local authority controls them and sets the admissions. However, there are a significant number of "Voluntary Aided" (VA) faith schools, which set their own admissions.

The extra data provided by The Guardian shows this:

The results appear to show that where the school is in charge of its admissions policy, it has fewer free school meals pupils.

• 72.4% of VA schools have less than the local authority figure for free school meals, compared to 42.9% of community schools

• The gap is bigger at a very local level: 61.1% of VA schools have less than the postcode figure for free school meals, compared to 26.9% of community schools