So we did not get DS1 into any of the Catholic Boys Secondaries, and the reason was the baptism criteria. This will also be the case for ds2

correctly and appropriately applied ...

I am really not sure that the "bullying" culture does exist at the local state secondaries. But I wish you well in your appeal.

prh47 - that sucks. Looked after children and those with a medical or social need (eg disability) should come top of any list.

CVMS is fiendishly difficult to get a place at; are you sure if you got past the baptism timing you'd have a chance? I think the first criteria is distance; they've effectively filtered out anyone living outside Holland Park.

Hmm. I admit I was thinking in general terms about appeals where the child does not fufil the published criteria (whether about baptism or anything else) and hadn't seen this school's admissions criteria. Again, in general terms, there are potentially two aspects of any appeal - were the published criteria correctly and appropriately and, beyond that, will the prejudice to the child outweigh the prejudice to the school? Here, I can see that there is scope for arguing that the governors should have used their discretion.

edam - A faith school must, as a minimum, prioritise looked after children of the faith ahead of all other faith-based criteria. Similarly looked after children who are not of the faith must be prioritised over other children who do not meet the faith criteria. They are allowed to prioritise children meeting faith-based criteria over looked after children who do not meet the faith criteria.

PureQuintessence - I am going to disagree a little with PanelChair for once! CVMS say in their admissions policy:

The Governors will take account of factors which delayed your son?s baptism ONLY if this was as a result of events which were entirely beyond your control and NOT a matter of parental choice. Examples of circumstances beyond parental control include the death/serious illness of a boy?s parent/sibling, serious illness of boy, adoption, delay caused by the parish, (civil) wars, domestic abuse, care proceedings, reception into the Church after the boy?s birth. When you make your application, you must explain what these events were AND you must provide written evidence from a priest or other person acting in a professional capacity which fully corroborates the reasons for delayed baptism.

On that basis there is, in my view, an argument that CVMS should have taken account of your situation. There are clearly some circumstances in which they do set aside the 6 months requirement. The question is whether they should have done so for you.

You should also, as PanelChair says, argue that your son will be disadvantaged by not attending the school.

Going on your choice of private school on other threads, it is apparent that you live some distance from CVMS. You have closer Catholic schools that you could have chosen. So why do you like this school so much more? Surely it's largely because it has a better quality of pupil intake. And it has that because it is selective.

I personally find faith selection both unfair and immoral. It attempts to rank people in a rather distasteful ladder of virtue.

I'm sure there are young 'Tri's, 'Quad's and 'Sext's out there who didn't meet the criteria and live even closer to the school. Maybe their parents didn't baptise them soon enough either. Perhaps it was because they were too busy shooting up heroin or lying in a gutter somewhere. Are those children less deserving of a solid Catholic schooling if they wanted it? Really?

The real issue you have is not the selective school that cherry picks its pupils. (If it didn't cherry pick it wouldn't have even made your list as you are so far away.) The problem is with those local comprehensives that are not inspiring any confidence in you.

I'm in slight disagreement with tiggytape about how - if you decide to appeal - you should present your appeal.

There is not much point in arguing that the six month deadline for infant baptism should have been set aside for you. As has already been said, schools/LEAs have to have published admissions criteria against which to consider applications and if schools/LEAs were to set aside some or all of those criteria for some applicants, so that the admissions criteria effectively said one thing but meant another, there would be even more potential for unfairness and perverse results than there is now.

As with any secondary appeal, you need to present your arguments in terms of the prejudice (disadvantage) to your son in not attending the school outweighing the prejudice to the school in having to admit another pupil. As part of that, you can argue that you want a Catholic school, and can show your commitment as churchgoers and so on, and can even explain why your son was baptised at older than six months, but that is not quite the same thing as trying to persuade the appeal panel to treat him as if he had been baptised before six months. You can present supporting letters from your priest. But the benefit of this approach is that you can also go more widely, by bringing other arguments for your son to attend the school, be that curriculum provision or anything else.

edam It is indeed and add to that this is in a borough which has one of the highest percentages of children in private schools in the country, far out of step with any measures of affluence. If it had the percentage of children going from state primaties to state secondaries of the average of London's ten most affluent boroughs it would need to establish two new secondary's to take the additional pupils, that figure is so high because parents have felt deprived of local school choice, and so many move or bear the financial strain of going private. The result is that communities formed in nurseries and primaries break up and we have a scary tutor culture . Yet the Council in it's wisdom decided to ignore all those parents and all the bulge classes straining our primaries and prioritise a Catholic School ......

A bit like your experience of the application of baptism criteria it just seems a little bit lacking in empathy.

what a mess.

No. Right from the start Lord True and the diocese went down the VA route to establish the school precisely to ensure that it would be entirely selective on faith grounds, assuming it was oversubscribed. The Catholic Church are refusing to participate in the Free School programme because it limits faith based selection to 50%. It was Vince Cable, and originally, Gove who suggested 50% faith selection would be a fair compromise between the desires of the local Catholic community and the deep concern amongst local parents about the availability of places in local non faith schools. Lord True successfully defended his right in court to set up a Catholic School with 100% faith based selection.

The only reason non Catholic parents are being offered no choice but St RR (actually not strictly speaking correct assuming RPA is not oversubscribed, they could presumably get in there, except that it seems that most of the parents concerned are in Hampton so it would be a hellish journey) is that the school does not seem to have been as desired as The Council and diocese maintained and has not been popular enough with Catholic parents for the oversubscription criteria to have kicked in, and that local parents were right and there is a shortage of places in local non faith schools. At this stage anyway as of course a lot can change between now and September.

That was this year when there was a slight decrease in the number of pupils coming out of primaries, next year there will be 144 more pupils than this year, the size of a whole new secondary and the only hope of additional places in local non faith schools will be if Turing House gets approved as a free school and finds a suitable site and gets planning approval. The Clifden site would of course have been perfect. I have no issue with Catholic Schools as I have said but I do think that setting up the school at that time on that site with exclusive admissions criteria was deeply unfair in terms of the needs of the community as a whole.

It prioritises baptised Catholic children over looked-after children? Is that legal? It's certainly shocking. Looked after children are clearly vulnerable through no fault of their own and obviously sometimes have to move schools and homes quickly again through no fault of their own - it's appalling that a supposedly religious school can kick them down the pecking order, below where they would be in an ordinary state school.

It went ahead because it was easier and legal for the council to set up an exclusively Catholic school than a free school with 50% community places, which would not have pleased the diocese, and would have met competition from other school groups anyway.

I'm sorry you are disappointed. But note that the new St RR does not stipulate a time limit for baptisms and although certain parishes are higher up the list, it still prioritises 'Other baptised Catholic children' over looked after children or other children who are not Catholic. Apparently in its first year they are undersubscribed as they have been offering places to non-Catholics (who cannot even get into the supposedly less popular sponsored academies, which must now be full). Non-Catholics who accept the offer this year will find their siblings pushed to the bottom of the queue when it does become oversubscribed.

On the basis that we should all count our blessings I suppose you could say that you were in, and hopefully still will be, at least in with a chance of having a choice other than the nearest local non Catholic School with places. As you probably know that was the crux of the recent rift in Richmond, that Catholic parents have always had choices local non Catholic parents did not. This year indeed some non Catholic local parents are being given no choice but the new Catholic School because the non Catholic local schools are oversubscribed, and some feel as strongly against that as you are against your local non faith school. I'd be interested to know what choices have been made for your son's peers in Year 6 at the Catholic Schools.

pure The UK is 1 of only 4 countries out of the 34 countries in the OECD to have faith based selection for schools, the UK, Ireland, Estonia and Israel.

Quint, sorry you missed out on your choices. Are you on waiting list for G?

I feel for you pure. My dd was baptised over a year with mitigating circumstances. She did get into the school she wanted (we applied for 2 RC - one was under 6m bap and the other a year). Like you, I had a letter from the priest and 2 doctors. I don't know if it has been said at all above but make sure that you are on the waiting lists and find out what place you are. Where I live, the waiting lists change daily and you may be able to find out from your LA what number they went down to last year. How old is DS2 - the admissions policy may change (the school that my dd is at - she was in category j when we applied - if we were applying this year - she would be category d).

maybe it's a good thing your children won't be educated by the Catholic church...