Catholic secondary schools -how do you get in?

how ridiculous!! no school or organization should be allowed to discriminate in this way against ANY children!! surely they are all equal and therefore should all be given the same opportunities in their education. i fail to understand what kind of religion thinks that this type of discrimination against innocent children is ok. and what on earth can be considered wrong with allowing the child to decide when slightly older whether they want to be baptised or not? most catholic schools right now are jam packed with non catholic children who have probably never been inside a church in their lives before or after their 'baptism', because this is what this prejudice has caused. therefore the catholic schools are jam packed full of people with no morals and lots of lies and prejudice! how can this be right?

TessaK -- the problem with your suggestion is that in almost all cases (certainly with Catholic schools) the church or some subset thereof (religious order, diocese, whatever) will actually own the school buildings and the land on which they stand.

So unless the government was prepared to buy all the schools and land from the religious authorities at their full market value (and eg. my dc's primary school may be an ugly scruffy building but it is situated on a beautiful and desirable site amid prime London real estate, so the price tag would be eye-watering) there is no way they could take over the schools, even if the political will existed.

As zmum says, if an authoritarian govt did try to force that through, the churches would withdraw their schools from the state system and probably run them as quasi-independent schools on a shoestring budget with lots of volunteers, probably subsidised by charging fees to people who wanted that kind of education but weren't members of the church.

zanzibarmum - there is no need to close the schools, just convert them to community schools. They would still get government funding but the admissions and employment policies would change, becoming the responsibility of the LEA and the legal loophole grounds they have for discrimination would go. They would not get away with religious indoctrination under the guise of the 'ethos' of the school either.

So the school would be able to hire the best teachers, not just the most religiously 'suitable' and parents would not have to lie to get their kids in. Children living in the local area would all be eligible regardless of the beliefs of their parents. So it would be fairer for everyone.

Laurascarycakes - can you PM me please?

Tessak - thank you for your comment. I am not saying that community schools aren't value-based communities but I am saying that perhaps parents do not perceive the strength of those values as able to challenge the dominant values in the wider celebrity, 'now' and 'me' obsessed society. Celebrity in a catholic school would be someone like St Therese which does give pupils a different perspective of what is important than Jordan provides.

You are right that better schools are needed but I don't believe the way to do that is by closing 7000 schools with a religious character.

frogs - do you have a ds at william ellis? mine has just moved up from it into laswap and our experience has not been the badgers arse, as you so delicately put it.

zanzibarmum - Thanks for your calm and reasoned response.

Maybe you're right that more private Catholic schools would open but they would very likely be stricter about taking only Catholic children (or, more accurately, the children of real Catholic parents).

The ethnic diversity of these schools really does depend on the area - as I said, some are much better than others.

As to their values, I don't like the implication that having good values comes only with religion, that unbelievers don't have them. I also don't like the other baggage that comes with religious values.

I suspect that what most parents want is more good schools, not more religious schools. The education system is far from ideal at the moment and opening more faith schools (as this government and the Tories intend) is not the answer.

The fact that some religious schools are teaching creationism either overtly or covertly is worrying. The fact that some religious schools want to be able to say homosexuality is wrong is also worrying. As is the fact that some of them do not want to give kids full sex education. Catholic schools in Scotland were dead against girls being given the HPV vaccine because it would make them 'more promiscuous' - even though it has been shown to save lives.

You're right that Accord is made up of a mixed bunch but there is other research that comes to the same conclusions.

Agree about the better ethnic/social mix at catholic schools - one of the big positives for me as we live in a fairly white middle class area. As dh and I are not from the UK originally I didn't want my dcs to stick out as the only ones with "foreign" names - my dd now has many classmates with lovely names far more exotic and unusual than hers!

To return to the OP.

You do not need any instruction to be baptized - you are maybe thinking of Confirmation? - so ti's not a matter of when your son "gets it".

A lot of Catholic Secondary schools require evidence of infant baptism, or very strong reasons why this did not take place in order to avoid the "baptism of convenience' syndrome.

They also require evidence of commitment to the faith by both the child and its parents - I suspect a catholic father who did not have his child baptized soon after birth would not go down well.

As wouldn't not sending said child to a Catholic primary school because there's a better school across the road!

My heart bleeds for her.

Not.

Frogs - that's not fair. Fiona will be furious.

William Ellis is rough as a badger's arse.

z'mum is right re catholic schools and ethnic/social mixes. This seems to be true of even the most desirable catholic schools (LOS, CVMS etc).

Most catholic schools in inner london will have 50%+ non-white, more if you count eg. Spanish/italian/south american kids as non-white. At my dd1's catholic secondary school only 1 child in a class of 32 had four UK-born grandparents, and that's an upper-end of the league-tables school. I assume the picture is similar at other catholic schools.

Tessak - at least you are honest: that you want no state funded faith schools. Be in no doubt though that if the state kicked the church out of education parents would form low cost private Catholic schools as happens in other countries as the purpose of Catholic schools is to support parents in bringing their children up as Catholics; with the emphasis on 'support'.

As for social and ethnic diversity I am sure you find more of this in an average Catholic school (polish, irish, caribbean, Philipines etc) than many other schools in similar areas particularly where admission is determined by postcode and ability to move house.

As for the values of the Catholic faith and its schools (truth, social justice, excellence and personal best based on the gifts we have, forgiveness, peace and the essential dignity of each person regardless of race, colour, sex etc) these are ones which are attractive to parents. It is the strength of these universal Catholic values that plays a critical role in uniting what is a diverse and essentially immigrant-based Catholic community in the UK's Catholic schools.

Of course Catholic schools are not perfect and sometimes fail to live up to these values but what you have to answer is why so many parents would favour a school which espouses these values and the practice of faith over the values of some community schools, which are less clear cut or appealing.

It is easy for the likes of some of the Accord supporters to demand that everone else's child goes to the community school while sending their DC to private schools or postcode protected voluntary controlled schools like Camden School for Girls and William Ellis.

My concern is not especially for SEN children, that was just one example.

I'm not anti-Catholic, just against religious schools being state-funded.

A lot of bile has been heaped on me here so I responded in kind - which was probably not the most adult thing to do but it's frustrating.

I do understand Catholic school values - quite a few of my cousins went to them.

There are issues of cohesion - there has been research that shows it's better for society and for children if they mix with people of all ethnic, religious and social backgrounds, which many religious schools (not just Catholic) don't help.

Secondly, what values are you talking about? Do you mean Catholic beliefs or social values in general, which are not specifially Catholic?

It's not so much about having views about where other people 'should' educate their children, more about social equity and tax payers' money being used to the benefit of everyone. What people choose to believe is up to them and is no one else's business, but when it affects the wider social sphere, that's when it bothers me.

I do also think that children should be taught about all religions and allowed to make up their own minds what they believe (if anything) rather than being identified from an early age by the religion of their parents.

Some schools are better at teaching all the options than others. Archbishop Williams said that a church school is a church, which shows what he thinks their job is. One of the leaders behind a Muslim school in London said that "The ultimate aim of Islamic education is the realisation of complete submission to Allah on the level of the individual, the community and humanity at
large?. Archbishop O'Connor said that newcvomers to schools should be made to feel part of the Catholic commnunity.

So you can see that religious leaders do feel that religious schools are there to create the next generation of believers.

While some schools are more open-minded, it's too much of a lottery to depend on the whim of a headteacher and staff.

So Tessak the thin veneer of your concern for SEN children hides a sad but virulent anti-Catholicism.

I totally understand why parents have strong views as to where their children go to school but I cannot get my head round the idea that parents should have even stronger views as to where other people's children go to school.

Catholic schools aren't perfect but rather than engage in a sensible discussion of their place in the wider education sytem your remarks make clear that your have no understanding of the values that Catholic schools promote. You should visit some to get a better feel for their strenths and their weaknesses.

just came across this, if it helps my DS is at a Catholic primary school and will probably be going to a catholic secondary school ( if he gets in) where we live secondary schools are very oversubscribed and it's basically luck of the draw I think.
most RC schools like to take catholic children foremost but will also take children of other faiths ( or no faith) too, at least they do in my area.
I personally am not Catholic but wanted to just add Tessak your talking bollocks.

Oops sorry unfit, for some reason thought you were the OP

Shag the local priest?

Good point!

Blimey TessaK where on earth did all that come from?! Not exactly unbiased, are you?

unfit we looked at our local catholic school but DH is an atheist - wouldn't agree to say the words for the ceremony. Good on him too, hate the lying that goes on to get into faith schools grrr!

Although on the plus side, I don't think you'd see TessaK's kids there...

I don't want to inflame any debate but the only interview that dh 'failed' was one for a Catholic School who said they had to interview him as he was better qualified than the other candidates but they wouldn't appoint him as he wasn't Catholic.

They told him in the interview that he was the most qualified but that they would take the lesser qualified candidate.

After he became aware of their employment procedures dh wouldn't have worked for them anyway.

It's completely irrelevant but entertaining - they ended up hiring a lapsed gay Catholic (they didn't know he was gay) and the Governors were horrified when they found out.(through facebook)

DH had a lucky escape and they missed out on a married Christian local preacher (in the Methodist church) who is obviously a practising Christian

"If you would like to have an informed debate...then I'd be happy to discuss it after you've read it"

Right after your venomous bile above, I think I'll pass.

Fine, if you want to support a religion that covers up child abuse by priests, that tells people not to use condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS and even lies about condoms letting AIDS through, that says non-believers are less than human and that gay people are more of a threat to the planet than global warming. Yes, there is evidence for all of this.

Your first priority may be to get your children a good education but what kind of moral example are you setting them?

I can't speak for all RC schools and their admission criteria, but following on from the thread I started recently, I contacted the local RC school this morning to see if my CofS daughter would be able to attend, instead of the failing primary she was due to go to.

I was told that the "school welcomes children from all faiths" and she will be enrolled there in January.

Fine, if you want to end your kids to a Catholic school, then go ahead. The Pope thanks you.

Accord, "Working with our supporters across the country to resist the expansion of state-funded religious schools" - unbiased, my arse!

Yes TessaK I read your 'report', it makes no mention at all of RC schools, just faith schools overall, so is entirely irrelevant.