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

I don't think schools should be allowed to select. No other taxpayer funded body is allowed to choose who it helps.
Obviously there needs to be exceptions for schools that deal with special needs, but for the other 98%, schools should take what they're given. Teachers need to understand the meaning of the word "employee".

That means some kids will go to crap schools, but that's happening anyway. All that happens is that middle class people like me can dodge the crap through buying a house in the right place, pretending religion, or simply leaving the state system altogether.

We need to be brutal on failing schools. The bottom 1% of schools each year should be closed and the teachers sacked. That means having enough capacity in others to take the slack, and rewarding good teaching. This costs money, and education is a less popular use of taxpayers money than the Iraq war.
Whilst British poeple vote for the party that offers the lowest marginal rate of income tax, we are going to remain at the bottom of every league table except maths.
Recall that we aren't bottom of the maths table because the arts grads in the department of education ghot their sums wrong.
Botswanan civil servants succeeded in this task, as did those in the Palestinian Authority at a time when they weren't being paid, and the head of department was in an Israeli prison cell.
You may have missed this story. No one cared.

The countries with the best state systems have small or practically non existent private sectors.

I thought about sending my dd privately to school but decided with a group of other parents that instead we would send our kids to the local state schools (which were faith ones) and use our influence. interest and power to raise standards. When dd starts secondary we will do the same.

Our education is often poor because the people with power have historically not used it. Even today so called socialist mps who could use there power and influnce to highlight poor schooling choose so use the private or even public sector.

If everyone had to use the state sector it would be better as there would be no get out clause. The intial costs may be higher but in the long term the money would be well spent.

(Stop me when I use concepts beyond your understanding.) was thata aimed at me?

Why shouldn't people be able to opt out of a system that doesn't suit them? Would you not let people home school either?

No. I have started going to church (every week since last December) for my own reasons and only started going when I was good and ready to reexamine my relationship with God and the Church. But its too late for DS1 to go to the c.of e. school we would have liked him to go to. I think its wrong to go just to get a school place.

Yes mercy, it is a fact that children of parents recently arrived in this country are more work. What you don't know is that my parents were immigrants. I was serious work....

Twinsetandpearls is right, abolishing private schools would affect standard more. It would lower them.
Do that maths (assuming you didn't go to a state school where only a tiny % of maths teachers are qualified).
If you abolished privagte schools, then the kids will be educated in the state system. (Stop me when I use concepts beyond your understanding.)
So there would be a serious increase in the number of kids. British people hate paying for education, a lot. There is simply no way that spending would be increased emough, so you'd have far less money for each pupil.
You really think that would make things better ?

Should read:
How do you think schools should select

Because it is selection by income , it allows those with the power to change schools to opt out of the system. I can't see why if you want to get rid of faiths schools (which I don;t agree with but I do want to see them reduced) I can't understand why you think it is right to keep private or public.

Haha it may not be a stipualted requirment to have a £250 thousand mortgage, but living near the school is stipauted, and paying infalted house prices is intrinsic if not explicit in the selction criteria.

Please let's not pretend that economic selection is just an unfornate oversight, and why are middle class parents not up in arms about this type of selection? Because they control it and it suits them.

How do you think schould should select Haha??

Twinset why would you do away with Private Schools?

Haha your arguemnt seems to boil down to no school should be better than any other as it's unfair for those who can't get in.

I'm sure this is not the case but that seems to be where your arguemnt leads.

Yes a good school is good for those in it, and not good for those for out of it, and some selction on some basis will have to take place to decide who gets in, and there will be some unfairness in the selection inevtiably, whether on faith grounds or not. But surely the existence of good schools is still a good thing??

Successful Jewish and Muslim schools exist, which I wouldn't want my child to go to and which they coyldn't get into, but I still think their existence is good.

Smiley - I think UQD addressed your catchment argument below

"One big difference. The "money and wherewithal" needed to move into a good catchment is not an absolute requirement - it's just how it has evolved. Nobody stipulates that you must have a mortgage of over 250K to be in certain catchments - it just happens that way, which I agree is appalling, and should be addressed. But the requirement to follow a faith is just that - a requirement, not a side-effect of the rules." Hope UQD doesn't mind me quoting him here.

I think private and public schools should be abolished before faith ones, less likely to happen but would have more effect on the standards of education in this country.

I want my taxes to be spent on good education and if a schol, with a shared ethos and belief system provides a good quality education and is not teaching hatred of those that are different I am fine with that.

I don't think a humanist or atheist school is that faroff to be honest.

And to those faith selection objecters, my point about selection on economic grounds has not been addressed.

This is more unfair and elitist than faith selction. So those demanding 'fairness' and equality of choice for all tax payers...how would you do that??

I may be wrong, but I suspect that those on here who object to faith schools on the basis of lack of choice for all, are not low income families on sink estaes with a failing school and no ability to move nearer to the 'good' state school 1 mile away.

I suspect (willingly to be proves wrong and apologise) that they are more likely to be middle class with some economic power to use, and so catchment 'unfairness' and 'selction' bothers them less, than the faith selection, which is the one that affects them.

"agree with SmileysPeople it is the shared value and belief systems thatmake a good school.I would be quite happy to see atheist/ humanist schools."

Fine but why ought you not pay for that like anyone else who wishes to choose their child's school based on its selective 'ethos' ?

"Not as vegetarians or Christians are intrinisically any better, but because when people actively opt into something they invest in it, they have shared and understood values, and work together more effectively for the common good and the success of the ethos they've subscribed to and beleive in.

Which is suely a 'good thing'??"

Yes, but only good for you, not for the majority of the population. Let's not pretend there really is ever going to be a vegetarian school or a Humanist school which could select on that criteria. Religion should be kept out of schools, full stop. Selecting children on the basis of a parent's commitment to a cause is ludicrous. I'd no more want there to be vegetarian or humanist schools than faith schools. Well, not true, I would like all schools to be secular.

And what do you mean that when people actively 'opt into' something they invest in it? Not everyone has such choices.

"and conversely just because a school is high up in the league tables doesn't mean the individual child will always be well supported"

Exactly.

UQD of course you can have that without the faith dimension (see me post on your vegetarian hypothetical school).

People with a faith want that and their faith to be central to the education. The cohesiveness and good results are a by product of the shraed faith/ethos, and it's that which others see and want a part of and object to being barred from.

Go build your own cohesiveness

Of course you can ahve a good school without the faith element, although you need to clarify what you mean by a good school as we may not all ahve the same definition.

As a "faith activist" myself I do not want to deny anyone a good education. Far from it in fact as I don't teach in a faith school.

and btw uqd if you had read my link below you would see that in general there isn't stronger leadership and management in catholic schools (use this example because that's what i know and have evidence for)than in the school population as a whole.

well that is the question isn't it, uqd? rather than people of faith saying they don't want to - isn't it up to the vociferous anti-faith school brigade to answer that question?

and conversely just because a school is high up in the league tables doesn't mean the individual child will always be well supported...

Thinking about what twinset and frogs and Blu have all said, it seems we are broadly in agreement that it is shared ethos and value system and concerned, actively involved parents which make for a "good" school. Along with strong management and good teachers, I expect (although you get great teachers in some "bad" schools because they want to make a difference).

So I wonder if you can have all this without the faith dimension? Surely you can. I suppose the faith activists would argue that they don't want to.

There's something else to remember in all this.

Although statistically certain types of schools do better, that doesn't mean that an individual child who is doing well and supported by parents will do better in, say, a Catholic school than a reasonable community school.

One of DS's friends goes to a catholic school which is way above DS's school in the league tables. But those league tables are based on the accumulative scores of the children in the school. I am confident that DS will do as well in his school as he might have done if he was in his friend's school.

Another proposal - and I have no idea whether this is true or not. Groups of people tend to develop a 'team mentality' when they have a shared identity - like MN v BMC, when I was at a (high performing) girls school, we felt immensely competitive as girls that we do better than the boys school across the road. Perhaps catholic schools have a sense of motivation and drive to be high achieving as catholics - especially as I am making the presumption (I am hazy on the historical facts) that the origin of catholic schools is in the discrimination Catholics have faced in this country since the Reformation?

Unquietdad - those are the reasons I was suggesting all along!