to think faith schools should be banned?

[fluffymouse]

Not just because they aren't inclusive or diverse, but also because of the local impact.

My nearest school is a faith school. Every day when I drive to work, I see dozens of cars parked along the street of the school with parents dropping off children. They park everywhere on a very narrow street including double yellow lines and the zig zag lines outside the school. It seems like nobody walks to this school, as it quite simply does not serve the local community.

Local people have no chance of sending their children to this school unless they are off the faith, and they have very strict criteria for this. Meanwhile locals also have a lot of congestion to put up with. There is obviously also a big environmental impact.

Aibu to think that state schools should be inclusive, and not exclusive based on faith grounds, as all tax payers are contributing towards their running costs?

But Stanley, it's mostly funded by the taxpayer. If it was entirely funded by the church, fine. But why does the child of a churchgoer have more rights and opportunities to state-funded education than my child, unless the churchgoer thinks my child is less deserving of an education - a second class citizen? Where is the tolerance and respect in that?

I dislike the notion of a faith school. Ours seems very much bound by the diocese rather than people who are well versed in educational issues.

We got a place there because we live near it - we're not Catholic. Many children there won't be the right religion. They'll still be partaking in religious activities and I have some strong doubts as to whether it's the right place for an agnostic child.

But our options are very limited due to the Kent Test system which IMO is just bollockz.

But loads of things are funded by the tax payer , including me, which I have no personal use of, there are loads of things which don't get funded which I think should. Tax gets allocated centrally, no one really gets a detailed say on how it is spent. The RC church has effectively done what the gvt is now allowing groups of parents to do if they want- get together and form a free school, which is tax payer funded but has more control over its affairs, including admissions. There is a free school in my area has outrageously cherry-picked its prime area of responsibility to only include the rich kids. Faith schools at least don't do that. If parents locally don't like the state schools on offer then they can set up a free school themselves, and obtain the funding. You can't blame the church for doing something entirely legal just because you get no benefit from it personally.

I've just had another thought about why people might think it's Ok.

Do they think that faith schools are wholly or even mostly funded by the Church?

StanleyLambchop, that's an interesting idea. So you'd be ok with a free school saying "no catholics" or "no jews" ?

What if that became popular and there were no schools in the area available for Catholics? Would they have to renounce their religion?

I revert to my hospital question. Imagine you lived next to a NHS hospital which had a RC criterion for admission. You needed a hip replacement, and were on the waiting list, but you never got to the top because other people who also needed hip replacements but who were also RC always jumped the queue and got in ahead of you. Would this be OK?

YANBU. I have no issue with faith schools if they're private, or extra-curricular (ie sunday school). But it shouldn't be that the local kids can't go to their local school because their PARENTS are not of a particular faith. It's so discriminatory I cannot understand how anyone can think this is OK.

Because after all, the first hospitals were all religious foundations.......

That's hugely disingenuous, Stanley. Education and health are two areas of universal provision by the state. You are arguing that the child of a churchgoing parent has a greater right to a local, state-funded education than the child of non-churchgoing parents, and that this is an acceptable state of affairs.

And yes, church schools do largely cherry-pick rich children, looking at the demographics of church populations (disproportionately AB) and the proportion of FSM children at church schools compared to the local population.

And do you have any idea what goes into the setting up and running of a free school, and how many parents conglomerates have set up a free school, rather than companies? It's well beyond the reach of most ordinary people.

If you are fine with a two-tier system of education that gives more rights to the children of the religious, and disproportionately excludes the least advantaged children from those schools, have the courage of your convictions and say so - but don't pretend there are easy alternatives.

Hak, that's a very good analogy.

If you are fine with a two-tier system of education that gives more rights to the children of the religious, and disproportionately excludes the least advantaged children from those schools, have the courage of your convictions and say so

I believe I have said so, actually, in my previous posts. I support faith schools. What I don't agree with are the comments on this thread that the requirement to be baptised Catholic (I have only mentioned Catholic schools in my previous posts as I only know the RC system) means that schools are cherry-picking the most MC children. All the RC schools in my area are of very mixed backgrounds, the only thing they all have in common is their faith at baptism. I don't believe they do cherry-pick or cream off the best, or exclude 'chaotic' families or any of the other things that have been mentioned on this thread. I accept that schools are different in each area so the way things are organised here, and the situation I see around me may be different in other areas, but that is the same with all schools/admissions so everyone's comments are going to be influenced by their own area.

The vast majority of faith schools are CofE. And I believe it's a faith schools that have a very skewed proportion of FSM children. The evidence is fairly clear, whatever you choose to believe. And again, the CofE (majority of faith schools) admit their congregations are significantly skewed to higher income demographics.

Again, evidence, not belief.

Why do you believe a child of religious parents is more deserving of a local education than my child, out of interest?

Stanley, how would you explain to my child why he can't go to a local very popular CofE secondary which specialises in music (something he is talented in), while his friend, who has no interest in music, will probably get a place as his parents are church goers?

How would you explain it in words a child would understand?

Neither child is religious, and there is no requirement of the school that the children have faith, only that their parent attends church.

How would you make it sound fair?

Here's some evidence on RC schools:

Almost all Roman Catholic secondary schools select pupils by faith if oversubscribed (the 2002 Education Act prevented faith schools from turning non-adherents away if under-subscribed) and they were found to admit 24% fewer pupils entitled to Free Schools Meals than lived locally.

What's that, if not excluding the most deprived via selection? It certainly isn't representative of the local community.

That ethos of service is starting to look shaky again.

From a report published by the 'fair admissions campaign'

"Comprehensive secondaries with no religious character admit 11% more pupils eligible for free school meals than would be expected given their areas. Comprehensive Church of England secondaries admit 10% fewer; Roman Catholic secondaries 24% fewer; Jewish secondaries 61% fewer; and Muslim secondaries 25% fewer.

There is a clear correlation between religious selection and socio-economic segregation: Church of England comprehensives that don’t select on faith admit 4% more pupils eligible for free school meals than would be expected, while those whose admissions criteria allow full selection admit 31% fewer.

16% of schools select by religion but they are vastly overrepresented in the 100 worst offenders on free school meal eligibility and English as an additional language. They make up 46 of the worst 100 schools (and 67 out of 100 if we exclude grammar schools) on FSM eligibility and 50 of the worst 100 (55 if we exclude grammar schools) on EAL.

The most segregated local authority as a result of religious selection is Hammersmith and Fulham. While 15% of pupils nationally are eligible for free school meals, the segregation between the religiously selective schools and other schools is almost double that (27 percentage points).

The map represents the first time any data has ever been published on the degree of religious selection by faith schools. We estimate that 16% of places at state schools (or 1.2 million) are subject to religious selection criteria. This compares with 5% of secondary places in grammar schools and 7% of all places in independent schools."

You can't blame the church for doing something entirely legal just because you get no benefit from it personally.

I'm not blaming the church, or the parents who send their kids to faith schools. They're just using the system in a way that benefits them, as anyone else would.

It's the fact that it is legal that I have a problem with. That was the point of the OP: faith schools should be banned.

*Stanley, how would you explain to my child why he can't go to a local very popular CofE secondary which specialises in music (something he is talented in), while his friend, who has no interest in music, will probably get a place as his parents are church goers?

How would you explain it in words a child would understand?

Neither child is religious, and there is no requirement of the school that the children have faith, only that their parent attends church.

How would you make it sound fair?*

I would explain that no, it isn't fair, but then many things in life are not. There is no fair way in school admissions. If you banned faith schools, there would still be oversubscribed schools with an admissions criteria which people would question if they could not get their child into it.

If you say that every service funded by taxpayers had to be fair, then great, let's also stop the postcode lottery in the NHS, make all hospitals offer the same service to everybody. But the question is money- how do you fund it?

RC schools are part funded by the church- that is the basic fact that the gvt can't do anything about, because the funding cannot be replaced, it is too expensive. It maybe does not seem fair- but lots of things are not fair- campaign against it if you like, but I can't see faith schools being banned because of that.

I certainly do not think it is valid to ask for them to be banned because of parking issues!!

"You can't blame the church for doing something entirely legal just because you get no benefit from it personally."

I blame the church for setting themselves up as a moral authority, and then putting policies in place which are unfair and which help to perpetuate educational and social inequality.

"RC schools are part funded by the church- that is the basic fact that the gvt can't do anything about, because the funding cannot be replaced, it is too expensive."

Not entirely true. Only a small fraction of operational costs are paid by the church. The main problem is that the church owns the buildings - that's why the state can't take them over.

I always feel depressed by people who respond to any complaint of unfairness with "Well, life isn't fair." If everybody took that attitude, we'd never have had the suffragettes, the anti-slavery movement or the civil rights movement.

Sorry, bold failed there.

As for the facts and figures about faith schools admitting fewer FSM pupils than non faith- do the figures contain data on how many FSM applicants they have overall? As for my DC's school, the places are awarded based on criteria, but no where does it mention FSM, so the schools would not even know if the applicants were FSM until they were admitted to the school. If there are fewer applicants with FSM to faith schools overall, they can hardly be criticised for not admitting them. What do you want the schools to do- if they questioned applicants before hand if they were FSM and then positively discriminated, they would be criticised too!

I always feel depressed by people who respond to any complaint of unfairness with "Well, life isn't fair." If everybody took that attitude, we'd never have had the suffragettes, the anti-slavery movement or the civil rights movement

So why don't you organise a 'movement' against it if you feel so strongly. I always feel sad when people compare posting opinions on a forum to those great movements that actually got things done.

It would be blindingly easy for either the churches or the government to remove the biggest drivers of educational inequality by removing religious selection, and remove that aspect of unfairness.

'Life isn't fair' isn't an excuse not to change things that are easy to change to make them more fair.

Again, saying to my child 'life isn't fair' isn't an adequate explanation to him of why the belief (or attendance at church) of one child's parents means that child is more deserving of a local education? Does being baptised make your child better than mine?

Why should your child get state funding for a local education and mine not?

If a school set up next door to you accepting only brown-haired children, and your child was fair-haired, would it be acceptable that your child would have to travel half an hour to school instead, simply based on their hair colour? Would you be relaxed about it, or angry about an arbitrary system that gives some children more opportunities to a state-required education than others?

Why are the churches working to entrench inequality?

"I would explain that no, it isn't fair, but then many things in life are not."

And would you explain why we should tolerate and perpetuate this unfairness when there is an easy way to address it: by stopping church schools from discriminating against local children from secular families?

"There is no fair way in school admissions. If you banned faith schools, there would still be oversubscribed schools with an admissions criteria which people would question if they could not get their child into it."

Sorry - this is nonsense. Parents question admissions policies which are unfair and discriminatory and they are right to do so.

Where selection is considered unfair in the UK it's generally on the grounds of socially selective catchment areas (house price discrimination) and religious discrimination. Ways round this are to introduce a lottery system, which is becoming increasingly popular, and by having a system of fair banding, so that children from all abilities and social backgrounds across a reasonably wide catchment area can attend an oversubscribed school.

"If you say that every service funded by taxpayers had to be fair, then great, let's also stop the postcode lottery in the NHS, make all hospitals offer the same service to everybody. But the question is money- how do you fund it?"

What about hospitals refusing to treat local people if their parents weren't church goers? That's actually a bit closer to the situation we currently have with church schools. A primarily public funded institution refusing to provide a public service to local people on the basis that their parents don't attend church.

"It maybe does not seem fair- but lots of things are not fair- campaign against it if you like, but I can't see faith schools being banned because of that."

What - we should just accept unfairness towards children because lots of things are unfair? And because it's difficult to change?

weak argument weak argument weak argument weak argument weak argument

I think you'll find that's what the Fair Admissions Campaign lots of us have mentioned is all about. Any many of us are supporting it.

But part of enacting change is about educating wilfully ignorant people on Internet forums who don't believe state education criteria disproportionately benefit middle class children.

What's your basis for not supporting the campaign? Do you think class- and income-based discrimination are beneficial for society?

"So why don't you organise a 'movement' against it if you feel so strongly."

fairadmissionscampaign

Some of us have!