To think it is time to secularise all state-funded education?

[fideline]

Just that really.

YANBU

Most fabulous NN award goes to IrrelevantSquirrel! [digression expression]

Are we going to be told where distance takes precednce over religion in CofE admissions policy, then?

Are you planning to buy the school buildings off the church or build replacements?

Considering that I am a taxpayer and I'm paying for the maintenance / repairs / upkeep already yes.

And then there are the schools built under 'building schools for the future' entirely funded by the taxpayer/government.

As a teacher I would also like to be able to apply to work in any school and if I was good at my job be promoted. I can't because I don't follow a certain religion. A head of department / year /a school should be that because they are the best person for the job, not how they spend Sunday mornings.

how our children might be forced to pray and punished if they do not

Not might, are.

Do schools force vegetarians to eat meat? No, we would be appalled, but praying that's OK.

I also believe a school's prime purpose is education, not following a particular religion.

Under the admissions code the school can only apply a religious criterion after the others have been applied.

Huh? have a look at this admissions policy. You have to click the link and download the policy, but here is a summary

www.btrcc.lancs.sch.uk/index.php/admission-information-top.html

CATHOLIC PUPIL WHO:
a)is a looked after child or previously looked after child

2.CATHOLIC PUPIL FOR WHO
LIVES IN A NOMINATED PARISH, AND WHO AT THE DATE OF
APPLICATION:
b)is enrolled at an Associated Primary School
c) is enrolled at a Roman Catholic Primary School
d)is enrolled at any other Primary School
3 CATHOLIC PUPIL WHO:
e)is a sibling
4.
CATHOLIC PUPIL WHO:
f)is enrolled at an Associated Primary School
g) is enrolled at a Roman Catholic Primary School
h)is enrolled at any other Primary School
5.NON-CATHOLIC PUPIL WHO

i)is a looked after child or previously looked after child

6.NON-CATHOLIC PUPIL WHO:
j)is a sibling
k)is enrolled at an Associated Primary School
l)is enrolled at a Roman Catholic Primary School
m)is enrolled at a Denominational Primary School situated
within a Nominated Parish
n)is enrolled at a Denominational Primary School
o)is enrolled at any other Primary School

So if you are not RC you are in at least the ninth category, in addition you are not just competing who live near you, but any child within traveling distance. There are school buses from near by towns.

I'm Catholic and was brought up attending Mass weekly and doing catechism classes outside school. I attended both secular and religious schools and honestly? I don't think it made a difference.

As a Church attender, I wouldn't mind if my children went to a secular school or a Catholic school - I personally believe that the Christian values worth having are those that are shared by all nice human beings, whatever their religion!

I'm very happy to teach my children about their religion outside school hours, and would rather that they mixed with people of other faiths and no faith in order to have broader minds and a more balanced outlook on life.

Niminy, you excelled yourself there with your odd claim that selecting for religion is forced on CofE schools.

Also i note that you seem to be comparing not wanting your religion to have control of tax payer funded schools with homophobia. That might work at some kind of rally with the audience all worked up, but probably not here.

You also seem to have forgotten that some of the people you are opposing are Christian too. This is not about opposing Christianity, but about any religion being able to hijack the education system for their own ends. You would leap to be secular I'm sure if the alternative to secular schools became schools for Muslim boys only. Or if they were all controlled by the Westboro baptists.

I absolutely think that all schools should be secular and I would vote for any party who made this part of their manifesto. IMO, religion is be a personal belief and the state should not fund it in any form. All state schools should be equal and anyone who wants a faith education should have to pay for it.

However, I do think that religion should be taught in schools as a subject - it is a very good way of learning about the world, the people in it and would make everyone aware and considerate of different beliefs. It should be taught alongside ethics and philosophy.

If the original raison d'etre for church schools was to educate the poor, perhaps they should try to return to that rather than continue their selective admissions which - whether they intended it or not - favour the middle classes. (for those of their schools which are good and oversubscribed.).

However, if you read a bit of history on the whys and wherefores, the original provision was usually specifically to educate the poor to be good Christians. Which in its time was doubtless considered an entirely noble cause, but few seem to want to admit to nowadays.

I've just looked up the criteria for the CE school DD2 currently goes to:

Category A: Children in Care and children with a statement of Special
Educational Need

Category B: Children who will have a sibling/have siblings attending school at the time of their admission school. Half or step-brothers/sisters, foster or adopted children or others permanently living in the same household will be regarded in the sibling criterion.
Category C: Children eligible for one of the ten places available on faith grounds (note from me - this is out of an intake of 60)
as outlined in appendix A.
Category D: Children who are ordinarily resident in the catchment area. Details of the catchment area can be obtained from the school or from Local Authority’s offices in Bury St. Edmunds or see appendix B - Catchment Area Map. Living within a school’s catchment area is no longer an absolute guarantee that a place is available at your catchment school.
Category E: In cases of exceptional reasons accepted by the Governing Body (Trustee Directors) and because of the nature of some ‘exceptional
circumstances’, the Governing Body (Trustee Directors) do not have to disclose reasons of acceptance due the confidentiality

It used to be that everyone who wanted got a place, but with the booming birth rate the school had a waiting list for the first time last year. Between faith and sibling criteria I would estimate that only about 20 children would have got in on catchment rules.

Yanbu. everything else has been said. State funded education should be secular.

An oversubscribed CofE secondary with an intake of 150 near us has a humdinger - it's too long to replicate here but apart from the required looked-after/SN, there's a sliding scale of church attendance for up to 135 of the available 150 places (with sub-priority for anglo-methodists), followed by children of staff (which with discriminatory hiring policy will largely be Christian families), followed by a maximum of 15 children with attendance at a non-Christian faith in membership of UK interfaith network. Finally any others - but as its oversubscribed that's none.

Note that this excludes all children of parents who do not attend those specific religious institutions - so atheists but also any Christians who aren't full members of the 'Churches Together in England, the Evangelical Alliance and/or the “Free Churches Group” in partnership with Churches Together in England' - not sure whether that includes catholics but surely bars Unitarians, JWs, Mormons etc.

Yes, yes and yes again!

We live in NI, where practically speaking there is no such things as a secular school. Even supposedly non faith schools deliver a Christian message. DD starts in primary this year, and I'm rather dreading the conversations of "well, the teacher told us god made the world".

State education is not the place for proselytising. All a bit like Bounty going into hospitals, isn't it?

If people want secular schools, I think (given the diversity nature of Britain) that it would be much more effective to start the schools you want to see; the Free School programme allows for this, and the existing exemption for collective Christian worship could be gently extended

The thing is, people who want secular schools mostly want them precisely because they object to segregation and sectarianism. So setting up their own schools is an abhorrent idea.

Yes. I can't believe we are still indoctrinating children with a load of made up fairy tales.
Plus, it's divisive.

I would like to see religous selection criteria abolished for state-funded schools. Near me, I think about 4 in 5 primary schools give admissions preference to Christians of one type or another. More than half the children are from an ethnic minority that is predominantly Muslim. The religious selection criteria effectively create a degree of not just religious but also ethnic/racial segregation.

One secular school had 97% of intake from ethnic minority, presumably partly as a result of them being disadvantaged in applying to Christian schools. (Though having just googled to double-check I now get a figure of 91%.)

The admissions criteria normally go something like this:
1. Looked after children. 2. Children living in catchment with a sibling at school 3. Children living in catchment without a sibling at school 4. Children out of catchment with a sibling at the school 5. Any religious criterion 6. Distance from the school.

Under the admissions code the school can only apply a religious criterion after the others have been applied.

Only criteria 5 and 6 matter in the vast majority of cases, so what it comes down to is that only people who meet religious criteria have a chance of getting into a school that isn't their closest school.

Back to my massive leap earlier...

It is part of the same thing. Whether you like it or not we are not living in a secular country. Therefore, all these suggestions that the C of E disappears out of education, and the queen steps down as Head of the State/Church are missing the point.

The queen doesn't just carry on being queen for the tiaras, she feels it is something she was ordained to do (part of a religious ceremony). All of this is tied up with our British make up, including schools etc.

and, as the poster said earlier, it was the Christians who founded the schools out of their magnanimous Christian duty, to educate the poor of the parish to provide a better future. They did this because they were organised, and because they felt strongly. So, go ahead, get organised and provide secular schools.

Just don't think that you can wave a wand and take away the links between (many) schools and churches.

So, if this is the tide turning, that's fine, society moves on. But it can't happen overnight or without huge changes to out societal make up.

nonnomum if these church schools were set up by the church, why are they not funded by the church? Why should the state pay towards education that discriminates on the basis of religion?

Church schools being funded by the state has nothing to do with the queen at all. Education should be free of religious discrimination unless paid for entirely by that religion.

Saying "set up your own secular school" is missing the point. Under no other circumstances would discrimination on the basis of religion be allowed.

it was the Christians who founded the schools out of their magnanimous Christian duty, to educate the poor of the parish to provide a better future.

Why do you feel is it the job of the state to fund their magnanimous Christian duty?

Nonno, a genuine question, what defines a secular society? Hardly anyone I know believes in any god(s), and an even smaller percentage attend organised worship. And that's in the backwater that is NI!

Oops, posted too soon. What I'm trying to say is that I feel like I live in a secular society (apart from the shameful abortion laws and our crappy Sunday opening hours here!) but my daughter is about to go to a school that promotes Christian message because there is no secular alternative. That seems a bit odd.

I'm not sure it is currently possible to have a secular school in the UK is it. doesn't there have to be a daily act of worship?

That's right. Non-denominational but not secular.

Which is mad.

I agree entirely