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

[fideline]

Just that really.

Check this out for a fabulous list of entry requirements... Cardinal Vaughan admissions

I know someone whose oldest son got in but the younger brother didn't because he hadn't been baptised before 6 months, despite being brought up in exactly the same honestly RC family. However he did then have the choice of about 4 other schools, none of which my child could apply to.

I can't believe we are still indoctrinating children with a load of made up fairy tales
Do you not think that you are being a bit offensive to Christians (which according to census data is the vast majority of people in the UK) not to mention those of other faiths to be so dismissive of something central to their lives.If I posted that I your children were little shits-that is not even anywhere like as bad.

Apparently 1 million children attend Church of England schools. A quarter of all primary schools and 6% of secondary schools are Church of England schools.

Around 15% of the population attend a church at least once a month, according to research reported here, although figures of between 10-12% are also reported. The total UK population is 63.7 million, so the number of people who attend any Christian church is somewhere between 6.3 and 9.45 million. However, it needs to be borne in mind that the average age of church attenders is now between 50 and 60.

The number of young people under 18 in the UK is 13 million, of whom 6.1 are under 13. The number of children educated in Church of England schools (just under 10% of the total, but more like one seventh of those of primary age, because most CofE schools are primary schools) far exceeds the number of children who attend church. (Don't forget, all families who attend church to satisfy an admissions criterion will be counted in the church attendance figures.)

It cannot be the case, then, that Church of England schools are only admitting the children of church-going Christians. In fact, the reverse is true: that overwhelmingly Church of England schools are serving the communities of which they are a part, as they were set up to do.

Obviously you'll get a place in a crap faith school. You will not get a place at a good one, even if you live right on their doorstep if you are not the right religion.

Did you actually read the admissions criteria posted? All place religion above distance from school. Which rather negates your claim that they have had the selection forced upon them. They could easily place religion after distance. Why don't they?

TBH, I really can not understand why people think it is acceptable to discriminate on the basis of religion in this way, let alone expect the state to find it.

Fund. Not find.

I don't think any of those who are for religious discrimination have answered whether they would be happy being excluded from an exceptional NHS hospital because they aren't say, Jewish.

I stand corrected, and apologise. There is a significant difference in terms of admissions between Voluntary Aided and Voluntary Controlled Schools.

VA schools (1957 in number) are their own admissions authority, and normally give priority to Christian children.

For VC schools (2307 in number) admissions are controlled by the local authority, and the school must abide by the local authority admissions code. These schools fully reflect the local community.

I assume the examples quoted relate to VA rather than VC schools.

I am totally in favour of secular education.
It is not true to say we have a choice.
The vast majority of parents have little or no choice over schools.

The State should not be subsidising religion and should not allow children of different faiths or none to be discriminated for or against in faith schools admissions.

The Church of England has admitted that it's schools are recruitment grounds. Meanwhile, with so many CoE and Catholic schools already in existence and their numbers increasing due to Michael Gove's policies, it is then difficult to deny other faith groups their own schools.

Do we want all these different faiths and none living separate, parallel lives, because their children never mix at school?

The Fair Admissions Campaign has produced a great deal of data on how faith schools that use religious admission arrangements also tend to have far fewer children eligible for Free School Meals (a marker of deprivation) than their local population. So, far from some of these faith schools helping poorer families, they are using their admissions criteria to keep them out. It's not a good moral example to set.

Niminy - what your statistics show to me is that there is an overprovision of CofE places versus the number of 'Cof E children'.
If non-churchgoing children are attending it's likely to be despite it being a church school, not because it is one. Hobson's choice.

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?

The requirements are explained here. Well, that's the first thing which could easily be done away with in non-denominational schools. Something along the lines proposed in Scotland in a joint call from The Church of Scotland and the Humanist Society of Scotland maybe (I don't know whether this sensible idea got anywhere or not).

I assume the examples quoted relate to VA rather than VC schools.

Yes. Given that a proportion of CofE schools are VC anyway, why on earth can't they all become so? That'd help.

Niminy - what your statistics show to me is that there is an overprovision of CofE places versus the number of 'Cof E children'.

But they are not CofE places: they are simply places.

They are places at a specifically CofE school. It may be the only place offered to, or accessible on grounds of travel to someone who has serious objections to a Cof E (or RC or whatever faith school) being the provision of state school for their child. It's not a neutral option.

The overprovision isn't evenly spread across the country - it's particularly dire where I live in Lancashire.

Loads of language, literature, art and music is either inspired by Christianity or refers to Bible stories.

I'm not sorry I learnt enough at school to "get" most of the Biblical references in, say, The Messiah or the Sistine chapel. It didn't make me a believer.

You could have heard those stories in RE or English, though. Why did it help that you were presented them as fact?

Loads of language, literature, art and music is either inspired by Christianity or refers to Bible stories.

yes, and I - and everyone I've come across - are firmly on the page that teaching about Christianity, as part of a balanced religious, philosophical and ethical 'RE' curriculum. Secularisation does not necessitate ignorance - far from it. In fact it's non-Christian faith schools which are least likely to provide that particular aspect of cultural coverage, not the non-doms following the SACRE.

I think that there is a huge difference between learning about religions and their impact on many other areas such as art and architecture (Christianity does not have a monopoly in this) and having to worship.

I am happy for school time to be given to study of religions especially where it is comparative. I am not happy for school time to be given over to worship.

Telling children who have no faith to worship is essentially telling them to fake that faith which is lying really. I dont want my children to be taught to lie.

CountessOfRule, it didn't help. I was simply making the point that I would be sad to see the Bible off the curriculum completely.

Why should I pay council tax to pay for local schools (if I've got this wrong and it's some other tax I PAY that covers education, then I apologise but the point is the same) only for those schools to then be able to DISCRIMINATE and not let my children attend them because we're not that religion/not religious enough?

If churches want to control who goes to the school then they can fund the school in my opinion.

Schools are paid for by central government, but that's not really relevant. And TBH I don't care whether the parent is a taxpayer or not - why should a school be allowed to discriminate against any child on the basis of whether their parent attends a church/temple/mosque or not? Have any of the supporters of this anachronistic system even tried to answer that simple question?

"CountessOfRule, it didn't help. I was simply making the point that I would be sad to see the Bible off the curriculum completely"

So would I. Who wouldn't?

I'm curious about the "vast majority" of people on the census being Christians. I'm not doubting the figure, but it really doesn't tally with my life, am I living in some parallel universe? I'm convinced that many people must put that because that is their family's background, or because they were baptised as children, rather than because they are actually actively believing Christians.

No time to catch up now, but according to the CofE , in 2011 weekly attendance was barely 1 million.
I've read that two years later it's actually down to about 800,000, but I went with the higher figure since it makes the point anyway. The Christian population is mostly a myth now.