to believe Faith schools should be privately funded ?

[Peetle]

I should explain my interest. The nearest primary school to my house is about 250 yards away and involves crossing two not very busy roads. It is a faith school. The next nearest is about 300 yards away, across a major road and in the middle of a council estate. It's ofsted report full of phrases like "higher than average English as a second language", "higher than average free school meals", etc, etc. Other local schools are over a mile away and we're likely to be out of their catchment area.

To get into the faith school families have to attend our local place of worship regularly for two years, know the officials and prove regular financial donations to the establishment. Of course, once these families have got their first child into the school they stop attending and donating. I also know of families of different and even contradictory faiths attending purely to get their children into the school. And I frequently see people picking up their children in cars, suggesting they live considerably further from it than we do.

We have no hope of getting into this school, not being hypocrites and not wishing to give our children the idea that it's alright to be dishonest about something if you want it badly enough.

My point is that I don't mind people wanting to give their children an education in their chosen faith, but I object to my taxes funding a school I can't use and which encourages parents to profess a religious belief they don't hold purely for the purposes of entry.

I'm all for the gaity of nations, but, REALLY, juggling?

[for juggling, insert circus skill of choice]

Well, exactly. The level of demand for faith schools means that there's no political will for them to be abolished or to bear the costs of providing the additional school places that would then be required. And this demand is out of proportion to the number of people who are actually regular worshippers in this country.

Which doesn't contradict my point that it's not the churches fault that this situation has occurred and that it's up to LEAs to provide more alternatives.

And the RC church has been disestablished in this country since 1536, so I don't think that's necessarily the answer......

Right I have to go. Not getting enough work done...... Obviously lacking that Protestant work ethic

Thanks for the debate ladies.

Treats - but we still have AN established church, so the promotion of faith within the political establishment remains. They just now have to be seen to promote all faiths in order to promote their own. The RC church certainly benefits from the CofE being established, as opposed to a secular state, when it comes to having religon based arguments being given consideration.

But on faith schools, I don't know that it is the churchs FAULT as such - they have just exploited the situation to advance their own ends - as any other organisation would. But we should stop letting them do it, and CERTAINLY stop it increasing.

Treats - re: 14:11

Ditto.

It's something that puts me off moving to England. I don't understand how the state can justify funding religious schools.

In Scotland we have no CofE (obviously) or equivalent. Most schools are non-donominational. In areas where there are large numbers of Catholics there are state Catholic schools, but they almost always have worse results than the non-don schools and I've never heard of anyone trying to fake a religion to get into one.

If you are in the catchment for a school, you get in simple as that. If you move out of catchment but have a sibling in the school it would be only in the vv popular schools where you might not get a place.

Even for v popular schools, because of the falling school rolls, you still have a good chance of getting a placement request.

foreverastudent: non-denominational means basically Church of Scotland but they won't discriminate, the schools are open to all comers. The amount of religious focus in an individual school depends on the head teacher's commitment. It's not possible to run a non-denominational school without any acts of worship, afaik. The govt decrees that they will be mainly based upon the teachings of the Ch of Scotland.

Peetie is right, right, right. Especially considering the disastrous funding cuts that are being put through in other areas which I would have thought were vital to everyone in society, not just those who follow one particular belief system.

Document on religious observance in Scottish schools.

(Just the first link returned by google, but clear enough!)

YABU
It sounds like you have only come up with this stance as you are jealous that the faith school is better, rather than out of an ideology.
I don't know why faith schools are better, but I think that parents jump hoops to get in because they are better, not the other way around
I would only agree with a ban on faith schools if private schools were also banned, as they discriminate against those who don't have pots of cash

I wonder how much of an issue this faith school thing would be if all schools in the country were good/ excellent? It seems to me that the problem is primarily the failure of many non-faith schools, which results in some parents choosing to be deceitful. IMO there should be good faith and secular schools so that everyone has a choice.

My situation is very similar to the OP's: our only local schools are faith schools, C of E and RC. We are life-long believers but not RC and not currently attending an Anglican church - ironically for most of our lives, we have gone to C of E's. After years of non-attendance because we were fed up with the church, we are now members of a fab church which is all about love and community, and we've decided not to be hypocrites by rocking up to the Anglican churches just to get a school place. Yet we haven't a hope of getting into our local schools because of the people who are so desperate for a place at a good school that they are willing to lie their way in.

The churches make themselves look like fools by accepting this deceit. They ought to, instead, go by the same state policy of serving the nearby community. Surely that's what the Church should be about, in the first place?

mrsruffallo - That's not what the research shows. See my links earlier in the thread.

If church schools were privately funded then they would effectively be private schools, and then parents would pay to send their children there. Many church schools are good, so this would reduce the number of good schools available in the state sector.

Sorry don't have time Coalition
What part is not true
All very well attacking faith schools which supply an excellent level of education for poor pupils, but why not attack private schools too which exclude poor students across the board

I wonder if faith schools weren't achieving such high standards there would still be such a fuss made about them?
I very much doubt it

It seems as if when people are concerned to get the best education for their child, they don't care if it's a faith school.

I agree with MrsRuffalo about private schools - they wholly exclude those who couldn't afford them.

YANBU. Divisive, unjust and utterly barking that you should need a letter from a priest in order to apply for your local state school.

And I'm sure someone has said it already, but it is certainly NOT true that all faith schools have to admit pupils of other faiths.

I am surprised about the financial contributions thing mentioned by the OP though. That does sound illegal.

And incidentally, privately funded state schools tend to be far more inclusive, as their imperative is to attract as many paying parents as possible - they simply can't afford to be discriminatory.

But faith schools aren't necessarily better. They might fill the DC's heads with supertstitous crap and have a nice uniform, but the general education might not be all that (I would be worried about thescience teaching), and quite aside from the slightly increased likelihood of nonces among the staff, you could well get institutionalized misogyny and homophobia peddled to your DC as well.
The nearest primary to us is a faith school, by all accounts a nice school and not one which insists on people going to church or even being Christian. However, as I disapprove of faith schools and indeed religion, I didn't even apply for a place for DS and he is now in a really lovely big community school. WIth loads of kids who speak English as a second language, get free dinners (and indeed are hearing-impaired, it's the local centre for hearing-impaired kids). He's thriving there. It doesn;t have the greatest Ofsted report as well as being superstition free (the other thing some people are blinded by - a good Oftsted often means 'whitebread school with self-confident pushy welll-off parents' as much as anything else) but it;s a great school with a lovely atmosphere.

So not everyone objecting to faith schools is doing so out of jealousy.

1 mile does not seem very far to travel for the right school. You should broaden your horizons. If you have to travel 50 miles to the nearest school, I could understand your difficulty.

uneprune- actually that is out of date. religious observance policy has changed in the past year, not that it was ever as full-on as it is in England this is an example of current policy. Basically in practice it means that the minister no longer leads assemblies and the school doesn't go to church for a service at Christmas or easter anymore. Half of the DCs in my Ds's school opted out anyway.
In RE there is no particular mention of CofS. Christianity is all lumped together. I dont think any of the children are aware of any difference between the churches north and south of the border (and I'd suspect the same can be said of most adults).

Altinkum - "so because people have a faith, they now have to fund their own education, well their goes the Britain's stance on multi cultural then!"

No, every child should be entitled to free state education.
But if parents want something different from the standard state provision, they should fund it themselves.
Why should the taxpayer fund indoctrination in school hours? Parents have all evening and weekends to fill their kids' heads with whatever they choose.

Part of the problem is that less than 10% of British population attend church regularly.
But 1 in 3 state schools are faith schools.
Bit of a mismatch there, no? Hardly a surprise the religious side is happy with the status quo.