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?

School ethos refers to the framework that a school sets to facilitate learning in a safe, ordered and secure environment. It reflects the schools beliefs while its values helps set a good and tolerable school environment.

I have taught in State and Religious schools and some (not all) state schools have no ethos at all, some don't even have a statement or motto to have the heart of their school. It's an important part of a school and it is what can enable the school to be a community and it unifies.

You do know that faith schools are state schools, don't you?

"One would presume that these people in general pay taxes. Therefore they are entitled to faith schools to educate their children."

So why am I not entitled to a secular school to educate my children?

Aaargh! They are not ENTITLED to a faith education! Go to church and have a Christian home life full of prayers and the right 'ethos' and 'values'. Children don't need it drilled into them during the school day if you are fulfilling their spiritual needs as a family.

I'd honestly be very interested given most of the stats I've seen have referred to analogous areas. I know some pro-faith-admissions groups say 'well, we do it by parish, so it's different' but the result of that approach is a comparison between apples and hamburgers and the truth is very neatly obscured.

It doesn't alter, though, that mainstream church congregations are themselves demographically skewed.

Mereisa, I pay taxes! Lots and lots and lots of them. Where am I 'entitled' to send my child to school that doesn't take him out of his local community and put him and me at a significant disadvantage compared to churchgoers on our street?

Or do you think Chridtian children are intrinsically superior and this deserving of more choices in the education system?

Hospitals were also set up by the church. We realised decades ago the folly of saying that, in a world of universal provision, state-funded hospitals should be allowed to pick their patients based on faith. Why are schools different?

If faith schools would care to stop taking money from the taxpayer, and stop counting the school places they provide as part of the local provision for all children, I'd be content for them to admit whomever they please.

The idea of 'entitlement' is massively logically flawed anyway. What if you're CofE and the only local faith school is RC? Is the state required to build you a faith school to fulfil the entitlement you believe you have?

Unless the answer is 'yes', you are accepting that you're entitled to nothing. The anti-universal-admissions posters on this board would be a lot less irritating if fewer of them admitted that they were hugely lucky and fully prepared to take advantage of an historical anomaly, rather than some sort of virtuous, sensible policy that should never be challenged because it's brilliant for society.

"The people pay taxes argument annoys me. 1/3 of schools in the country are Christian. 1/3 of the people in this country actively worship. One would presume that these people in general pay taxes. Therefore they are entitled to faith schools to educate their children."

One third of the people in this country vote Labour. Therefore they are entitled to schools for the children of Labour voters where they don't have to mix with the children of Tories.

And so on...

Incidentally Mereisa, where did your 1/3 churchgoing figure come from? The figures I've seen are that 2/3 hadn't attended church at all in the last 12 months, but the other 1/3 weren't regular attendees. And the figures included NI which has very different attendance rate, I think England was about 14% attending regularly.

In areas like mine, parts of those congregations are those who felt they had to attend church to get their children an education, so the figures aren't completely reliable anyway.

The same research showed that 40% said they had no religion. Where are the schools giving those people preferential treatment, given their clear entitlement based on the proportion of the population they comprise?

Everyone else - hugely sorry for the poor etiquette and triple post. But those stats sound way off.

The historical anomaly often meant that poor Catholic immigrant congregations funded Catholic schools because their children would not have been taken in elsewhere. There was a huge amount of anti-catholic prejudice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ironic that now that the schools are perceived as doing well a new manifestation of anti-catholic prejudice now decrees that they shouldn't exist.

Ironic that now that the schools are perceived as doing well a new manifestation of anti-catholic prejudice now decrees that they shouldn't exist.

I think you'll find that it's being discriminated against BY Catholics that leads people to think the schools shouldn't exist.

"Ironic that now that the schools are perceived as doing well a new manifestation of anti-catholic prejudice now decrees that they shouldn't exist."

Now that really is a seriously bizarre thing to say!

Unless you think that it's fair to use today's children to settle some kind of historic score?

It's not "anti-Catholic prejudice", abra1d (though I'm surprised this old chestnut took so long to come up on this thread).

And no one is saying they shouldn't exist. They are saying they should admit everyone without discriminating on faith, or that if they refuse to, they shouldn't be funded by taxpayers.

And the majority of faith schools are CofE. What historical wrong is being righted there?

Catholic schools aren't being singled out. All schools that discriminate based on parental faith or church attendance are.

I do genuinely wonder why the people of faith won't answer questions.

Thats a really interesting point Loletta. Why should religion and education mix?

I currently teach in a religious school and can see no advantage in it whatsoever. Apart from as a means of control.

Moral and ethical beliefs should be taught at home and/or at church or a place of worship.

I find it absolutely abhorrant that it my current school books have actually had pages torn out of them as parent objected to their content. (im not in the UK). I have taught religious education in the UK. And I think this is essential so that kids can understand and learn about different belief systems. This is the only place religion has in education.

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.

Could you explain to me then, why RC schools used to ask that a child be baptised as part of its entry criteria, but when we suddenly had mass immigration from Poland and other former eastern bloc countries the criteria suddenly changed to 'Baptised before 6 months'?

Because it is obviously a total coincidence that these immigrant communities traditionally baptise children at 1 year old and the change had nothing to do with attempting to keep the ESOL numbers down.

This criteria may obviously affect children from chaotic backgrounds as well.

One of the RC schools by me also gives priority to RC children who have a parent work at the school and then at a lower rank non RC children who have a parent at the school. So that would be teachers' children then, and not a way of creaming off more MC children.

I bet there is not a single person on mumsnet who would mind if children of religious parents were taught about their faith OUTSIDE of school time. People's objections to Faith Schools are nothing to do with objecting to the religions themselves.

Whether it is their intent or not, Catholic and Church of England schools have students who are disproportionately better off:

^Research by The Guardian published in March 2012 found that 76% of Catholic primaries and 65% of Catholic secondaries in England had a smaller proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals (a government bench mark for deprivation) than the average for the first half of their postcode. Encouragingly, the figure for Church of England secondaries was 40%. However, the Church has a much smaller presence at the secondary stage, compared to the primary – the figure for its much more plentiful primary schools was 63.5%.

Comprehensive secondary schools with no religious character admit 11% more pupils eligible for free school meals than live in their local areas. Comprehensive Church of England secondaries admit 10% fewer; Roman Catholic secondaries 24% fewer; Jewish secondaries 61% fewer; and Muslim secondaries 25% fewer.

The correlation between religious and socio-economic selection holds even if we focus on comprehensive CofE schools alone: those that don’t select admit 4% more than would be expected, while those that fully select admit 31% fewer.^

A lot of posters have made reference to the fact that many schools were originally set up by the church when there was no other provision. True. They were set up, both Catholic and CofE, with the express mission of educating the poor.

That mission seems to have changed a bit.

Italics fail!

I wonder very much why the people of faith have all vanished without answering any of the difficult questions. I do hope it's because they are all busy, and are intending to come back later.

They must realise, surely, that "I'm a tax payer and therefore I am entitled to a faith school for my child" doesn't actually stand up to scrutiny as justification?

Hakluyt - I didn't see any difficult questions. The 61% figure for Jewish schools (actually the figure for the highest school) is principally because the Jewish schools were set up in places where Jews lived 50 years ago, which remain deprived areas. if the Jewish schools moved to where most of the Jewish community live now, the figure would fall dramatically, because very few locals would be on FSM's, but it would take businesses out of an area where jobs are at a premium. Would that help anyone?