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

Unquiet Dad, in response to your point about whether it is the 'faith dimension' that makes successful faith schools successful...
I wonder if it is more to do with the parents and their, well, 'culture' for want of a better word. I only have experience of my own catholic schools, but as I said in my previous post, the parents were predominantly working class with a great respect for both authority and education. My parents included. I have no idea whether that was true in other schools with families from a similar socio-economic background, but I do believe, as I said before, that it was a very significant contributing factor to the school's success.

Does the government roughly give all the schools the same sort of money? If this is the case I don't see anything wrong with a community, local church, local atheist group, local naturist enthusist supplementing their children's education.

I don't think it matters where they get their better resources from, the fact that children who attend any school which has more spent on their educational opportunities than other children have spent on theirs, is what the issue is for me.

I really don't understand how that is a moral position, tbh. Life isn't a level playing field, but education should be.

Surely faith schools get alot of their better resources through donations and church support

UD What do you think makes faith schools better then?

Quite often one of the reasons that other schools are bad, is because the good schools take more resources, both in terms of finance and the children of middle class concerned parents.

It's a vicious circle. Concerned middle class parents don't want to send their kids to "bad" schools, so the bad schools stay bad because there is no mass of concerned middle-class parents pressuring them to be good and providing them with the support needed for them to establish a good ethos.

So saying that we should be getting angry about the bad schools instead of the good, doesn't address the fact that the two are inter-related.

PPB - "It seems to me that maybe some of you should be getting more upset about the state schools being so bad instead of being derogatory about schools that are good." The two are not mutually exclusive. It's all part of wanting schools to be good across the board, rather than for a select few. And I don't think I have been derogatory. It's great if a school is good. I'd just still like to know how much - or little - it has to do with the god element.

Violet - if the system didn't suck, people would need to do so. I wouldn't, but I sympathise with those who do.

kimi "the church school my son will be going to IS by far the best in the area, as the league tables show" Good, that's great. I bet it still would be if it wasn't a faith school.

Indeed mercy.
Of 4 applications, giving exactly the same evidence of DS's needs, we got two refusals (one on appeal), and two immediate acceptances. Acceptances from a regular (but small and competitive) maintained school and from a small and competitive foundation CoE school, refusals from one Foundation school (but not faith) and one regular but competitive maintained school.

(any school which is not actually a failing school is competitive in our LEA as there are not enough places!)

Non-faith schools can be discriminatory and selective too.

Cappuccino - that was what was so ludicrous. He actually said to me 'a plan to make the school accesible within 5 years'. The school in question is a London Victorian primary - they are built with about 4 or 5 storeys around tights stone / brick stairways. Of course it couldn't have been made acessible easliy. I ponted out the difference between a 'plan / policy/ and a bricks and mortar entry to an actual school, and he shrugged and threw out his hands in a 'what can I do?' kind of way!!
Of course, they put this in writing to us, and i guess they would have taken care to be sure ofd thier facts. Although our LEA is notorious ofr taking an adversarial stance in relation to SEN. i.e 'say no and sort it out when the parents win the tribunal'.

Blu - but what does 'access plan' mean? Does it actually mean they have to build anything or just produce a 'plan'?

it would be interesting to see if any school would actually have had time to get any ramps in place to meet the needs of a child due to start school

we had pressure put on us to put dd in a school right across town because the access was good. it was only because our school, independent of the LEA or any legal obligations, wanted to improve their access that we could tell them to bog off

Cappuccino:
That's interesting.
We were looking for a school with flat access throughout because DS will not be independently mobile for large periods of his primary school life when he is having orthopaedic surgery. I applied to a handful of flat schools which were handy for travelling, i.e close to home or my work. I was told, on appeal at one of these schools that they would not accept DS over children living nearer (even though SN was a higher priority in their admissions criteria than proximity) because the DDA now meant that every school had to have an access plan and therefore there was no justification for them to accept DS because of his access needs!!

It is true that I did not apply to the nearest school which had flat access because it is underperforming, riven with social problems, huge and tumultous etc etc. The other nearby schools were Catholic or highly competitive and has 5 steps before you even get in the front door! (this is the school the appeal panel said should take us...the school itself said on it's website that they could not accommodate children with mobility difficulties!)

We must be very, very lucky here as the state schools are pretty good, there is the option of grammar and we opted for the catholic school - why? because that is what you do. Many of the parents went to that school themselves and some even had the same teachers, you don't often get that in a city state school

It is quite annoying when you get the temporary mass attenders who then complain about the school once the child is there - about the requests for donations and a lesson cancelled for masses on holy days.

"Hahabizarre in what way are faith schools elitist??" They are discriminatory and selective.

Personally no, because I'm too lazy, but don't blame anyone else for doing so. You make a hoop for someone to jump through just so they can get their kid educated, and some people will jump through it. Others may have the resouces not to have to, or the confidence not to to feel the need to. In either case, lucky them.

yes and agree with Smiley

faith schools were set up to educate children when the state was not doing this

not set up as elitist alternatives to the existing state system

sorry yes to answer the OP

I wouldn't go if I didn't go anyway, but I might step up my attendance if that was an issue

just because I know that my family are Christian and we are already active members of the church and I wouldn't want my child to miss out on an education in her own faith because there were some people going through the motions just for a school place

agree with someone further down the thread though that a lot of priests/ vicars will be able to tell the fakers a mile off

Hahabizarre in what way are faith schools elitist??

Many catholic schools are in very deprived city areas set up there originally for the Irish immigrant population. No one is fighting to get in there or pretending to be Catholic.

Some Catholic schools are in middle class areas and for interesting, but as yet on this thead unexplored reasons, are doing very well in league table terms.

They are not elitist or based on class. Anyone can be a Catholic, and in this counrty the catholics were usually the poorest, and lowest of the low. Uneducated immigrants.

"So, if no additional cost implications, why should the state object to a school existing where those parents have a shared religious ethos and would like a school with the same?"

Because it is selective. Selective on the basis of how godly a child's parents are. It's most bizarre when you think about it rationally.

"Also the idea that once these schools exist that people who who do not share that ethos should have equal access, seems bizarre."

Well, if it is the faith element alone that is bringing up the standards of the school, then why should children who have the misfortune of having athiest parents be denied access to this enriching ethos?

Bossykate - that's interesting.

I have read the summary and skimmed the rest - there is a strong emphsis in the findings of parental involvement being a factor...and (surprising to me, I must say) that standards of leadership and governance are not significantly higher or different than from other schools. (I thought they could potentially be higher because the jobs could attract a ore competitive field and that possibly more independent governors could be more exacting!).

It does seem to me that of course many faith schools of different kinds have a v high proportion of parents who play a keen, pro-active and constructive role in their children's education, and in supporting the school, because they have taken a pro-active role in wanting their child to go there - either because they are committed to the faith aspect of the school, or are frantically 'doing their best ' for their child by pretending! The fact that children travel further to catholic scools (in this study) shows just how pro-active parents are in ensuring the right / best school. IME parents who are keen to see their children educated as well as possible are not defined by race or class...(and i am favourably / mildly surprised that there is the same diveristy in catholic schools - that has changed my percepion) but the other maintained schools will have, by default, a higher proportion of kids whose parents just don't give a damn which school they go to or how it performs, and will play little part in supporting either their child or the school.

Amongst the wider maintained sector, it is the schools with a high ration of 'involved' parents that other parents try to flock to....

Anyway, in answer to the OP - I would not pretend to have religious beliefs in order to get DS a school place, I would happily have accepted a place in the CoE school we were offered, equally I would not have pretended to live at an address I didn't (including renting for a year) but I would geuinely move to the catchment area of a school I favoured.

IMO it's about your personal standards, not about faith schools per se.

In answer to the OP though:

Yes.

In reality I'd probably do anything I could for my children, and if I thought this was best I'm sure I would do it. (if I'm honest) Despite my misgivings, and pre children prejudices about poeple who did stuff like this.

But if I were in that position and prepared to basically lie for the school I wanted, I'd like to think that I'd least have the good grace to respect the schools faith and acknowledge it's part in providing the edauaction I want for my child.

People who do this and then still despise the religion so deeply, must be living with very high levels of cognitive dissonance, and IMHO, 'mentally ill'.

There?s insincerity on both sides. Yes, parents suddenly find god to gain their children entrance to a faith school if they are living in an area where the schools are otherwise bad. But (some of) the parents who are devout Christians living in the same areas pretend that their choice of school is all about their faith. Whereas I bet many of those regular church going parents would not bother to seek out a faith school that is a bus ride away if they were in a Grammar school county or if the local school were a high performing comprehensive.

Personally, I could never start going to church and pretending to believe in a god. I happen to live in a middle-class flight area. We?ve a secondary school on our doorstep which is not well attended by the children of the local villages. I see a lot of different school uniforms walking along the road leading to my house and only a handful are from the local school.

Sadly I don't think we'll be able to remain living in this area when we get closer to secondary school age.

But I wonder, why is it right that my daughter is not entitled to a free elitist education and others are?

"The ramps are a legal requirement under the disability discrimination act, not some act of charity."

er, no. as long as there is an accessible school within the LEA (ie even if you have to drive a bit to get there) there's no requirement for individual schools to upgrade their facilities, because the LEA counts an accessible school or two in it's area as provision for disabled children

this is why all this 'oh my child has no real choice apart from a faith school' doesn't wash with me - try talking to the parents of a physically disabled schoolchild about choice

on and DC, 'you and I both know' - no I don't. I believe you are talking about a certain type of faith school, whatever that might be

I don't understand why poele object to the state paying for part of religious schools. It is not as if this is an extra burden of children who would not need to be educated elsewhere if that school did not exist. The finiancial cost is no diffent.

So, if no additional cost implications, why should the state object to a school existing where those parents have a shared religious ethos and would like a school with the same?

Also the idea that once these schools exist that people who who do not share that ethos should have equal access, seems bizarre.

Firstly why would they want to?? If it's the discipline and teaching standards, lobby for these in the schools with the secular ethos to which you subscribe.

Secondly if a school exists to provide additional or specific religious education, surely those who actively subscribe to that ethos, for who the school was set up originally, should have primary access.

It's not as if it's religious school or no school.

So those who are non secular should be really studying what it is about religious schools that they want and why their secular schools are not providing it.