to think that the only primary school in town should NOT be a religious one?

[BornSicky]

I live in a rural area, but the population of the town is about 3000.

The only primary school in the town is CofE and it is very religious. Just been in there today and there are bibles out on tables, quotes tacked to the walls, little prayers posted up and around with moral epithets etc etc

I live just a few minutes walk away and the only other primary schools in the area are a good few miles to drive and pretty oversubscribed.

It really annoys me that the school is the only option if you live here and either can't drive or don't have time to drive out to another school.

I thought there might have been a way to exclude a child from the religious activities, but it's all permeating, and even then to do so would be pretty hard on a child who didn't get involved.

Poor show from the LEA to not have a mixed faith or no faith school, or AIBU?

There are two issues, really, which are:

1. Are faith schools a good idea?

Answer: No (in my view, and that of a lot of other people)

1. Is there anything you can do to get rid of them?

Answer: No, not really, as they make up about 20% of UK schools, and in almost all cases, the buildings are owned by the churches. So you can't close them down, and it would be hugely expensive to buy the buildings back. The most you could do really is to make them operate a fair admissions policy that means they can't discriminate against children of a different religious faith. But this isn't the issue in the OP's case.

As an aside to that, there was an interesting case a couple of years ago in Scotland where there was a campaign by local Muslims to get the RC primary to become a Muslim school, because the majority of kids attending it were Muslim. Don't know what happened.

As said totally with OP whole system is crazy. What is amusing is that even with the huge number of church schools church attendance is still falling off a cliff so they are not being very effective at getting them young and getting bums on pews are they?!