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

thats how it is at the moment, if you live in a poorer area the likley hood of youhaving a school of any quality is low - hence whyt he house prices soar around schools witha good reputation in brighton.

with a lottery, in theory if a poorer area comes intot he catchment area of 2 schools within that area the lottery would give them a chance of going to a better school, one which they wouldnt be able to afford unless they had 300k worth of house

trouble is if you live in one of the poorer areas you grt the por performing school. fair........i don't think so.

It's fair, surely and should suit most socialists. It works there because of the geography. Wouldn't work in places with one school per area I suppose.

Xenia i think you need to look into the situation in brighton a bit more before you say having a lottery is good.

Sadly, I'm not at heart I really believe that one; would have been a good quote. God helps those that helps themselves always seemd truer than that quote - remember the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin.. or whatever and then everything is handed to them on a plate... mmm, doesn't quite work like that in practice.

Could they not to be fair remove all these silly school classifications - sports college, languages academy which mean nothing really, have just "schools" and then in the local area have a drawer for who gets in where?

You need more places like Brighton with lotteries so you're not choosing schools by ability to afford house prices then.

arf arf
Still waiting to find out what I do to get money for a posh school, seeing as i don't want God. Thanks.

no really, dh thinks enough of himself , you don't have to

I should have said He.

dh?
no he's at darts

don't think he's down there...

And if you have not the one and have no desire for the other, your children are royally screwed?...

My mother had us educated in private schools which were mostly not Catholic and I have done the same for my children. You can learn your religion at home perfectly adequately and anyway none of the church schools even in the private sector are anywhere near schools like St Paul's, Manchester Grammar etc. There's just nothing if you want schools int hat sort of leageu that is religious. The Catholic boarding schools are just so low down A level league tables and even religious state schools are no where near the very top 20 private schools so for me even these state church school parents cflcok to are far too academcially low grade it would be an unfairness to my children to force them in there. Even Blair's state Oratory school is no where near the academic level of the private schools the work colleagues of his wife would send their children.

So you're better off finding money not God if you want to do right by your children.

I want my children to be educated about the myths and legends of Ancient Greece - especially the stories of Odysseus, which I loved as a child - but I'd back away nervously, and very fast, from any institution which tried to tell them each and every day that these stories were all true and to make them chant worship to Zeus. That, for me, is the difference.

Well yes, twinset, you can tell me all sorts of things - but then I am old enough to make up my own mind. A small child doesn't have a faith. The process by which a child acquires a faith - which just so happens to coincide with its parents, teachers', vicar's and school governors' faith - that process is called indoctrination. The words simply means the instilling of doctrine into a person.

having been indoctrinated I can tell you there is a difference

"educated in her faith" versus "indoctrinated"....she wasn't born Christian. SO there's very little objective difference.

well my dd does go to a decent educational establishment, infact IMO you would struggle to find a better one and she is educated in her faith but she is not indoctrinated and when she is older she will make a choice, this will be a genuine choice as dp is an atheist as are much of my family so she will get to hear both sides of the argument.

Right I am off to procreate!

Twinset: but that's the whole point! Access to education should not depend on which brand of crap one's parents believe or profess to believe. If anyone's keen on bringing up their children according to some of the rules of some mythology (because these days, some rules of some mythologies, like sacrificing chickens and goats, building wickermen or stoning your neighbours to death for various transgressions without the intervention of the justice system, have generally been done away with in the West) then that's stuff they can do at home and/or in the local place of ritual.
Nothing wrong with schools teaching children comparative mythology and including references to mythologies in history and indeed geography - but teaching kids that one set of superstitions is actually true is not the business of state schools or any decent educational establishment.

!hic ! twinset.

Yes, there is a problem with labelling.

I think I was saying the same as you but in a not very coherent way as Ia hve drunk a bottle of wine.

WhatI meant to say was that an atheist school is just nonsense as it would be defining itself by wahtit does not believe in. I think Xenia was saying, and I agree with her, that we need not stress about schools if all the m/c parents who at present were pretending to be waiting to take over from mother theresa just used their local school. This would mean thatwe could reduce the number of church schools to accomodate those who genuinely want a religious education.

But it wouldn't just be for atheists/agnostics, that's the point - that's not, I don't think, what most non-believers want, or ar arguing for on here.

We just want SCHOOLS. For everyone. Where you, like, go to learn. You know - no faith schools, no political schools, no football schools, no vegetarian schools, no nuffink. Just SCHOOLS open to the local community. Open to everyone. It's not rocket science. Is it?

But surely an atheist school would be just that a school as you wouldn't label yourself as being a school that doesn't belive in something that doesn't exist anyway.

A bit like me setting up a I don;t belive in unicorns school.