Would you/have you started going to church to get child into a good church school?!

I was just running thorugh my mind how I would manage my life as a Christian - 'Faking It' for years, at home in front of DS - it would be well dodgy to implicate your child in a knowing lie, wouldn't it? I would have to convince my friends, family.....the mind boggles!

If you check back you will see I have never said it is easy to pretend to be a Christian, just that you can and many people do. I wouldn't know how easy it is.

It would be mostly futile for low income families to pretend to be Christian as the Church schools in their areas are likely to be struggling schools which no one fighting to get in. Even if they pretended to be Christian, they would never get into the middle class church schools and they select on faith and catchemnet.

You seem to under the illusion that all church schools are over subscribed. This is not the case. Many are in quite deprived areas and middle class parents wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. These schools are also full of non faith children.

My point was these choices are for the middle classes and there are many who have no choice, and to suggest if they really tried they could rent flats in affluent areas suggests you do not know the type of families which I am talking about.

No - you said it was easier for people to pretend to be a Christian and get into a good faith school. Clearly disenfranchised families do not do this since the amount of pupils in the faith school system eligible for free school meals is very low.

Many struggle to pay rent on their one home in the roughest part of town.

The more I think bout it the more naive that post was.

Getting rather cross now, should go and do something else.........

I see both as inequalities in the system.

Lots of parents do manage to pretend to be christians so you'd have to ask them how hard it is.

I'm not sure you know any totally disenfranchised families who feel they have no choice and so passively accept the worst services??
Your post sugeests not.

I work with many and to suggest they could rent a flat in an affluent area if they got another job (many don't have one job, or are single parents) would be cloud cuckoo land in their world.

So tough * for their children, who remain in the no 'realistic choice in my mind' crappola school.

And of course, there are people who DO take a second job and rent a flat for a year in a desirable school area. I'm not saying one is more wrong than the other, it's just that you fail to see faith schools as contributing to the inequality in education.

"It's a choice.

If you're Christian you have an option of a church school. If you're not a Christian you'd persume you wouldn't want that ethos, but if you do you can pretend to be Christian, and many do.You have choices.

Unlike parents with a failing school and no econonmic power...no choice."

I don't know Smiley. Where there's a will there's way. It's got to be easier to take a second job and rent a flat in a desirable school area for a year than it is to have your children baptised and attend church every week for 10 years when you don't believe that god exists?!

Is it that easy to pretend to be Christian when you don't believe in god?

Just another point I wish to make. A friend of DD1s has parents who are evangelical Christians. They attend a New Life Centre. Every part of their life is dominated by their Christian belief. Their DD was not accepted at the C of E school.

I feel pretty sure her value and belief system would have meant she fitted right into the Christian school but it seems that she doesn't attend the 'right' church.

"Around 25% of kids are at discriminating schools." - DC, is this true, or do you mean 'faith schools'? Because of the many CoE schools, for e.g, many do not discriminate at all because they are not over-subscribed and / or are the only school serving a collection of villages. I would be surprised if 25% of all children were in faith schools which actually had to enforce the church partipation criteria.

Isn't sheffield wednesday a term for a gmixed group?????? Peachy racks her brains to try and remember why she thought this.

Oh well- must be me age

I think there should be a variety of schools on offer to poele. Where there can only be one (for example in villages such as here), that school shouldn't be anything but inclusive and non-orientated. Where various specific schools occur, it should be compulsory for a certain amount of their curriculum to be integrated- for example in shared PE activites / projects / arts events, thus minimising the social exclusivity / introspective nature of these palces.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I don't want a Football School, but was postulating a situation in which they existed. Or in which Labour, Tory and Lib Dem chools existed. Or schools for children with blond hair and children with brown hair and children with ginger hair. None of which would be a very good idea.

To say you have the choice not to send your children to a religious school if you are not religious is not enough. You only need to repalce "faith" with any of the above - equally arbritrary - criteria to see why.

I think that's spelt it out enough.

Mmm, it is a choice. Personally I'd love a sheffield wednesday school, its central to my beliefs. However, I am faced with the opposite dilemma which I feeel is just as unfair (if nor more so), since I have no choice but to send my child to a faith school. I say more unfair because if a Christian sends a child to a non-faith school, their Christianity is stilla ccepteed and alluded to in RE: at our school, non Christianity just doesn't exist. AS a non CofE(I believe in th teachings of Jesus, but not the Church as an organisation) my beliefs just don't exist.

It's a choice.

If you're Christian you have an option of a church school. If you're not a Christian you'd persume you wouldn't want that ethos, but if you do you can pretend to be Christian, and many do.You have choices.

Unlike parents with a failing school and no econonmic power...no choice.

Then you don't have to have one UQD.

Or send your child to one when someone else sets one up.

That's a very valid, point. Are discriminating schools supposed to promote Christianity ?
How does that work then ?

The numbers are unequivocal.
Around 25% of kids are at discriminating schools. About 7% (and falling) actually attend church when they are old enough to choose.
It would not even be "as many" as 7% if it were not for the fact that immigrants are on average more religious, so we're looking at less than 5% of people entirely educated here who go to mass in any given week.
Since we can viably assume that some of this 4 to 5% is parents trying to get school places, the number of "genuine" churchgoers does not look like a vindication of any policy which is supposed to promote it.

British schools are required by law to do a variety of things that promote religion. Assemblies are supposed to include religion and RE is a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Yet organised religion of the form that is "helped" so much by schools is in a bad way.

If we look at other countries there appears to be a pattern.
America has a constitutional ban that means there are no state schools run on religious grounds. Yet there's huge amounts of it in the population.
France has a similar ban, but again far higher church attendance.
Under socialism in E. Europe and Russia, almost all religious schools were shut down, and often the teachers simply disappeared.
Yet even when the countries were socialist, church attendances were at least as high as Britain these days.
Now, even though there are not many religious schools yet, religious observance looks way higher.

My conclusion is that the people who control religious schools are not only going against the tenets of their faith by their discrimination, they are actually helping in the structural decline of the whole enterprise.

The point is that I don't want a Sheffield Wednesday school!

Ds is currently going to Holy Communion lessons for no other reason. Religion has a puprose, and this is its purpose for us. Dont mean to offend but if schools are selective on who they take in based upon religious background then I will do what it takes to give him that religious background.

I have no doubt that as a result of these lessons so information will sink in, if that is a bonus then so be it.

Smiley I agree with you, stick with what works

maybe the answer is the governement should encourage the setting up of more 'united interest' type schools. Such as your Humanist school, multi faith school, vegatarian, organic, single sex primaries, steiner based...whatever, if positively united they should presumably do well.

Copy the positive model rather than abolishing it because not everyone is so successful. Work out what they're doing right and emulate it.

UQD could evn have his Sheffield Wednesday school if he could find enough takers.

I'd decline to draw up the admission policies though

Wow Bou- you deserve a Phd in Peachy message translation LOL

Ok Yes.

Blu, I was rather referring to the attitude of my kids school, fwiw, thats how they see dysfunctional.

Ours choo, is one of the top eprformngs chools in our County, and it has 400 pupils, 1 with a statement. That's WAy below national averages.

Anyway withr eagrsd to the OP I guess my main point is no I wouldn't attend Church to get my children into a school, as I would be settinga abd morale xample if christianity is my afith, and if it isn't and I purely want them to attend a good school then there are many versions of good- such as ones that enable experience of wide varieties of experiences with toehr groups of people. Poor, Muslim, Gypsy, whatever.

Peachy - in the context of this thread, 'dysfunctional' has been used to mean families where there is serious anti-social disorder, (crime, neglect, bad parenting etc) children whose parents do not support their education or the school they go to.

It specifically has not meant SN or SEN...not since the link BK posted demonstrates that the top performing cathollic schools, for e.g, have the same ratios of SEN children as other schools.

But then the same people who complain now would be complaining that the wealthier areas had the better schools.

I like to think that if the 18% of secondary pupils who are bussed out to a faith school remained in their local area, there would be more decent secondaries.

But perhaps I am being a delusional in exercising that thought.