Clegg jnr to go to state-funded comp

Yes but how? The data shows they have few low achievers but how does the selection criteria engineer that exactly?

Im outside london but read how stressful schools are.

Sadly bristols no better.

I thourght oratory was private as remember the blairs go there.

Miriam is spanish so predominantly roman catholic country.

I non rc from non rc family

we chose to send eldest to smallish roman catholic primary.

she was baptised coe at home parish where grew up and attended.

She was undersubscibed year so have no idea if made a difference.

It had even 50/50 mix I would say not everyone was rc.

It did have high%english as 2nd language due to polish kids not sure if that caused extra pressure.

mostly the faith schools here have better results.

our la has no rc secondry but the nearest one is one of top secondrys in our city so cant blame some for jumping through hoops but clegg has wealth so never has to play that game.

From what i heard an spoken to rc parents cant get their kids into the secondry even if baptised, holy communion, rc primary attend chirch as oversubscribed and takes from such a wide area.

I have freind whos non rc who kidding herself she can get her 7year old baptised and into rc secondry.

But I told her its yera long conversio cause to become roman catholic then she needs to get child baptised think catholisms harder to join to be honest more so than coe.

I admit im prepared to go coe church more to get kids onto the top performing and only coe faith secondry.

shes left the rc school and moved to coe but coes admissions at primary here are distance not faith.

Looking at where faitrh schools situated affleunt areas it will always be full of mostly middleclass as its harder to get into..

wonder what year daves eldest starts seniors shes in coe primary
I guess child security is important factor too.

Clegg said (here):

" Many parents want to send their children to schools that are run by faith groups or have a faith ethos, and many of those schools are really excellent. Some, including ones in my constituency in Sheffield, do a lot to reach out to other communities and promote inclusion ? which I think is hugely important, and more faith schools should make that kind of effort. I'm not hostile to faith schools at all, but I want to make sure they are engines of inclusion/tolerance, not segregation or intolerance."

However he proved this was bollocks by choosing the most segregated Catholic school in Britain.

bamboostalks, I'm sure you could write an essay on how these criteria work to exclude low-achieving children, but the undeniable fact is that they do.

Here:

www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=137157

2 low-attaining children out of 178

You could come up with different criteria that had the same effect, but these criteria undoubtedly exclude low achieving children.

have to say i think where he sends his children should be his private business, more particularly his childrens private business.. i think probably most parents can be hypocritical when it comes to their beliefs versus their childrens best interests..

Nick Clegg is doing what any other parent would do - sending his child to the school he thinks will be best for them out the ones he has access to. Thats all. It's a non issue.

How does the selection criteria exclude low achieving children? KateShrub

FSMs are not the key benchmark here I think.

The issue for me is that their selection procedures exclude low-achieving children, which allows them to focus all of their resources on high/middle-achieving children.

The Oratory is in terms of ability profile, a grammar school (albeit not a super-selective one).

People commute/apply to London's grammar schools from all over London, and the same thing happens at the Oratory; as Copthallresident says, there are plenty of people who qualify, like the Cleggs, who aren't local, but will apply to the Oratory because it's an elitist selective school with all that goes with that (higher academic expectations, more intellectual extra-curricular activities (Programming Club, Euclidean Society, etc.)).

London is so densely populated that it's probably true that a good proportion of the Oratory applicants are genuinely Catholic, BUT that doesn't take into account the fact that they have applied to the Oratory ahead of other much closer schools.

It has also been interesting to speak to expats from Catholic countries who have secular education systems, such as Italy and Poland, who arrive here and are shocked by the system. They too just want to access a decent education and though they find it shocking do what they have to to..............

Like all politicians hes used privilege and power to his advantage
Disgusting given he's self avowed atheist,except til school and privilege
All his right on stuff is ok for ud plebs but for his own child

There are 16 different nationalities in my son's year 1 class alone. The HT said there at least 6 different faiths including my own lack of faith.

Nick Clegg is also an MP in Sheffield. He might have got more kudos if he had chosen to send all his kids to schools in an area he' supposedly' represents - lots of excellent schools there and it would have kept him and his family in touch with the electorate he 'supposedly' champions

< yes Sheffield I hear you ( and I love you!) - you dont want him either>

I agree with Kate with reference to London, the Catholic Primaries around here have changed in character just in the time since my DDs first started school 15 years ago. They used to have a much more mixed intake but now are heavily oversubscribed and have some of the lowest FSM in the country, indeed in one case the lowest FSM, though next door to a community primary with ten times the percentage on FSM. I don't think there has been a huge surge in genuine or strategic conversions amongst the middle classes though I am sure Catholics are amongst the huge influx of parents and parents to be attracted by successful Primaries but at the same time every year for the last fifteen hundreds of parents find themselves without a primary school place, sometimes even after term starts. You can not blame parents who may have baptised their child to please the family, as we did, then making the decision to flex their Catholicism to access a Catholic Primary as we could have done.... Anecdotally I know this is not uncommon.

When it comes to parents in London, I'm afraid all bets (if that is not a sin) are off. There are people tutoring from age 5 for 11+ tests, pre-registration waiting lists for tutors.

Hell Heck, there are private schools that require you to put your child's name down at an early age and they cost thousands, and when you consider that in fact London Catholic primary schools are also very desirable and require priest's references and so on, it's really not hard to see that Catholic-for-free-education is a rational choice even from the age of 2 or 3 months.

He has done what all left wingers do when they get a bit of power/money.

Move heaven (find religion) or move earth (multimillion catchments) to get into an exceptional state school.

Then they can smugly criticise all those who go private while thanking the lord/the bank that their kids don't have to mix with the working classes.

It pisses me off but doesn't surprise me.

"The year they stopped the interview the intake became far more middle class because the catchment was smaller. They re introduced the interviews to make it more inclusive. They re introduced the interviews to make it more inclusive.

You may not like the idea of the school but please get your facts right."

Hahaha.
Oh my aching sides.

They DIDN'T reintroduce interviews, which are obviously anything but inclusive, since they can very effectively weed out any low-achieving kids through this process - what they did do was reintroduce rules which require parents to detail their brass-polishing, flower-arranging, etc., activities in support of the Catholic church.

What they DID do, is drop the interviews because they were ILLEGAL, and then when they found out that this was reducing the quality of the intake, came up with a long and intrusive form that amounts to an interview, asking what activities you do in support of the Catholic church.

In terms of schools and their precious 5 GCSE pass %, there is really one critical thing - and that is the number of children who enter the school at 11 below level 4. For the Oratory school, their admissions process restrict that to 3%.

In addition, with 66% high attainers, that is children entering at level 5 and above, those children are nailed on to pass 5 good GCSEs - wherever they go to school.

At Clegg's local school, ARK Academy, 97% of high attainers got 5 good GCSEs. At the Oratory, 99% did.

No matter what you say about diversity, FSMs, whatever, the fact is that the Oratory School has excluded low-attaining children from the school. This is not diverse at all. There should be about 30% low attainers, but actually there are 3%.

It's all a bit Emperor's New clothes, isn't it.

People pay lip service to a religion which frankly is a load of medieval superstition and which has presided over the most horrendous mistreatment particularly of women and children - look at the magdelene sisters, the child abuse cover ups, the nonsense spouted about homosexuality.

Yet these parents pay lip service to it so they can get their child into a certain selective school to learn about these values which are obviously so dear to them.

Faith schools are divisive to a community and i don't think they should exist, and I particularly don't think exclusive schools such as the Oratory should exist.

I think the difficulty is that the more hoops you create, the more you exclude people who have absolutely no idea that the hoops exist. (Hence, I would imagine, fewer FSM at London Oratory).

You can't apply for the London Oratory if you have never heard of it.

On the other hand, hoops aren't specific to the London Oratory. I saw a big notice in the front window of a local estate agent's yesterday asking for houses in catchment area of sought after primary. Said family houses won't leave much change from £1m.

With such a diverse population in the UK, I don't know how you get rid of hoops. Private tuition for all pupils maybe? Able parents will always help their children, whether that means homeschooling them (even if they officially attend a school) or sending them to Eton.

"Tbh - the poor chap cannot win,"

Er yes he can, he could have sent his child to his local, but less desirable Catholic school, or the local non-Catholic comprehensive, and supported, it joined the PTA, Governors, and so on.

Instead he has chosen one of the most elitist schools in the country.

It's quite obvious from his comments that if he thought he could get away with it he would send his kid to Westminster, but he can't so he has to 'make do' with The Oratory, which takes in only 3% 'low attainers'. Had he not got a place at the Oratory, he would have gone private.

There is a Catholic School less than half the distance from his house - St John Bosco.

Fact.

In addition, ARK Academy is less than half-a-mile from his house, it is an improving school, and Clegg should be supporting it by sending his child there. According to ARK's head, Clegg didn't even visit it for fuck's sake. www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jan/26/state-school-head-challenges-clegg

Clegg is a multimillionaire who got an elite education accessible to large degree only to the children of millionaires, and he is continuing in this by sending his child to a socially elite state school where you can't get in unless you plan 10 years ahead, and get baptised before the age of 6 months.

ARK looks like a pretty decent school, and Clegg could use his vast financial resources to top up with tuition, Oxbridge interview coaching, all without anyone batting an eyelid.

However that's not enough for him, because he insists that his child goes to a school where children are selected, not on ability, but on their parents brass-polishing and brown-nosing skills.

Clegg obviously wants a long career in politics and knows that he would not be respected if he sent his son to private school. I know he is going to a catholic school, but it is still a state school with larger classes and will still have more of a social mix than a private school. This is a generally positive thing for state education. Maybe he also chose the school because the Blairs have done well there and the school has been discrete in dealing with the child of a high profile politician.

I think Fulham is a pretty standard mix for London. Great poverty, next to great wealth. I know there is creeping gentrification, but Hammersmith, West Kensington and Earls Court have plenty of poverty and are known for their Polish and Irish populations.

On the face of it, London Oratory should be very multi-cultural.