Would you start attending church to get your child into a C of E secondary?

Yes. There's no school choice where I live - one infants school and one junior school. Both are CofE as are all the infants schools in the surrounding villages which feed into the junior school.

Until recently they were all oversubscribed (they were popular with parents from the local town) and it was absolutely compulsory to go to church in order to secure a place. Now of course rolls have absolutely crashed at infants level so anyone can get in - in fact they are already merging classes and talking of closing down some of the infants schools.

This would have been our situation had we not moved out of the area (for unrelated reasons).

We took our toddlers to the superb play group linked to the local church but had decided that no, we would suddenly start attending church to increase our chances of them getting a place at the school. It would have felt very wrong and hypocritical to us.

My experience of having kids at CofE primaries (lack of choice for us) was the opposite. Both mine were confirmed atheists by the time they were in year 3 or 4. We were always super careful not to contradict the school and did a lot of "some people believe". But the school itself did a pretty effective job of killing off belief.

Which chimes with my experience of Presbyterian education in the 80s and 90s... the only kids who emerged from that with strong faith were those who had it heavily at home as well.

I think the risk of indoctrination is higher at primary than at secondary schools.
Primary school kids will swallow everything an adult in a position of power tells them.
Secondary school kids are more likely to brush it off as unsubstantiated bull, especially when they study all the various beliefs, which are in clear contradiction with each other

@sashhProbsbly not enough Jews wanting that school so of course they take who applies locally if they are 2/3 empty! Maybe the Jewish dc are in the grammars? Interesting daily act of worship I would think.

The CofE Secondary I know well is hugely over subscribed and it has a tiny catchment of a few villages. The other faiths are in the town 4 miles away - in the crap schools.

Some religious schools are fairly light touch on religion and dc easily close their ears to it! Most sc follow the lead of parents, not schools.

@crymyeyesviolete have you checked to see if the faith places at the CE school are oversubscribed? They aren't in my area, even though the non-faith places at the same school are massively oversubscribed. This suggests that parents prioritise other options, or struggle to get their child to attend church (I haven't checked, but I assume it's the child that needs to attend rather than the parent in this case).

I do know one family who got the vicar attached to our primary school to sign their child's "regular worship" form on the grounds that he did weekly assemblies in school. They didn't otherwise go to church.

This. Prioritising children whose parents practice a particular faith is simply discriminating against the other children. It does not matter what the faith in question is nor whether the religious community own the land or contribute partially to running costs. It is in no way fair.

No. I'd move house before doing that.

'Stacks' turns out to be not very many. Stats in link below.
https://fairadmissions.org.uk/why-is-this-an-issue/number-of-schools-by-type/

How many is "stacks"?

No I wouldn't start attending another faith to get my children into a school.

We are CofE. The youngst attend a Roman Catholic church as it's the best school for her.
We have had children in CofE schools and they have been great. A lot of parents in the childrens' classes found God for a few years. Good for them.

@elliejjtiny Me neither. I was shocked.

It's a flawed system that uses state money to discriminate against children based on the religion of their parents, distorts catchments and disproportionately excludes kids from the poorest and most chaotic homes, meaning those kids are over-represented in other schools.

Given the rank hypocrisy of the system and the institutions that benefit from it, I wouldn't have a problem with anyone who worked the system to their advantage.

I didn't realise they could do that. I thought it would be
Catholic LAC
Catholic EHCP
Non Catholic LAC
Non Catholic EHCP
Catholic
Non Catholic catchment
Everyone else

I always thought it was LAC then EHCP in every school except schools specifically for students with an EHCP.

Although in my dc school their would be around 10 students in each year who are either LAC or have an EHCP. So admitting those children first makes a difference to those 10 children and the first 10 children on the waiting list but not anyone else.

Yes I would and I did. However I have a religious belief my children are christened and my church is 1.5 hours drive away.

I attended the local church for 2.5 years and continued for another 3 years until we moved. I have not gelled with any of the new churches so stopped again.

I dont have a issue with people doing so.

Local CofE secondary gets high results and has amazing pastoral care. They take all faiths their criteria is christian faith with regular attendance. And then other faith with regular attendance. Both split into 3 times a month and below 3 times a month

Our local Catholic school admissions goes
Catholic LAC
Catholic EHCP
Catholic
Non Catholic LAC
Non Catholic EHCP
(Various other criteria)
How is that remotely Christian? Why should a kid dealing with the utter shitness of the care system get lower priority than a child who's been baptised?

It would depend how religious the school is. For example, i taught in a Catholic school with prayers several times a day, we had to describe evolution as a theory and with a completely straight face say they couldn't write about creationism in the their exams what ever their feelings on it.

But I'm not overly happy about the existence of faith schools. There is a CofE Secondary nearby but they prioritise catchment over faith. (Its LAC, living in catchment, staff, siblings, feeders, CofE, other Christian, Other faiths, everyone else roughly). The school isn't overly religious as its basically the local school... but you can use faith to leapfrog over children.

We did. He was also baptised, not solely to get into the RC school, but because we wanted him to be guided by Christianity.
He is now a practicing Christian because he chooses to be. We are from a Catholic background though.

Ca 1/3 of state funded schools are faith schools and most of them are allowed to discriminate based on religion.

Again, we would never accept state funded hospitals discriminating patients based on faith

It took a legal challenge against the hypocritical bastards of the London Oratory to conclude that using "contributions to the Church" as a criterion for admission was illegal and discriminatory. It's no coincidence that faith schools are socially selective (look up the Sutton Trust reports) and the Oratory all the more so. Let the children come to me. But only those of rich parents, the poor plebs can bugger off, right?

And let's not forget when Grey Coat Hospital (a school, not a hospital) was forced to apologise because it sent letters asking for donations, implying they were necessary to confirm a school place.

Of course. Entry by faith is abhorrent and it’s paid for by taxpayers so just jump the hurdles and play the system the easiest way. Take it in turns with DH. Smile sweetly at everyone and sit still for an hour. Ignore the religious claptrap (listen to a podcast). Job done.

There are stacks of Muslim schools that will never admit non Muslims, too…

Yes, my ds1 would have got into his primary school in the "other Christians who aren't C of E" category. Although as it happens there were only 16 children in his year group because they were one of the few schools in the area that didn't have wrap around care. Now it does and there has been a load of new houses been built near it so it's over subscribed now.

Yes, and I have a good friend who did do that. A church christening and family church service once a month is small price for a good school within walking distance!

I also have a friend who seriously considered christening her kids in a Catholic Church (their Dad was raised catholic), just so they could go to an excellent catholic school

Personally, no, I wouldn’t do that.

However, people do far worse things. In my area, for example, some parents lie on their grammar school applications by providing false residential addresses. They pretend to live within the catchment area to increase their chances of getting a place. That’s essentially fraud. Some got caught recently
https://www.leigh-on-sea.com/blog/detail/southend-on-sea-city-council-stops-294-000-school-admissions-fraud-in-crackdown-on-false-applications.html

No . What kind of school would expect that you have to go to church for your child to attend . My children went to a wonderful Catholic school , (we are atheists ), and we didn't have to attend church .