to expect a catholic primary school for my catholic children?

[Mixedupmind]

No idea where to put this so I've put it here
We are moving to west sussex in a few months time, just in time for reception applications
Now there is only one catholic primary in the borough where we are moving to, compared to 3 where we currently are ( London )
Am I being unrealistic to think we will get the school place?
My sister in law today has made it very clear she thinks we are!
There are 2 intakes for each year so 60 children, we will live 0.4 miles away from it and are practising Catholics.
We want this primary as much as we want the catholic secondary college so it's important we get the primary as its a feeder school.
If for some reason it becomes over subscribed could we appeal for religious reasons?
And would this mean we may get offered a catholic school in a different borough miles away?

Clean hankie
Cheers for that info that's good to know, I'm not sure how sister in law appears ( used loosely ) to know so much as she lives in Chichester so kids certainly didn't apply to burgess hill schools but apparently only the gattons or st wildreds are any good?
With st Paul's catholic college over taking the other secondary in the area hence more people trying to go down the catholic route
However as I said this comes from someone not living in the area

charley I wonder the same. Faith schools aren't at necessary. It would be better to give children the choice of choosing a religion (if they want one at all).

I don't know how their system would work OP, but it sounds like they would have a good chance of getting in. Although I suppose you'd have to wait and see.

We have a catholic school here which is really easy to get into and in fact people in our village get sent there as overspill from our small 30 pupil intake primary.

I went to catholic schools and I'm sure if you are indeed catholic your current priest can do you some kind of a reference which will help.

Tbh, people pick their school on the one nearest, and not on the Ofsted rating (Gattons for example is outstanding but the junior school it feeds is a Could Improve, doesn't bother anyone!). Manor Field puts some people off as it is so large, but it isn't necessary one to avoid, just more to do with personal preference. I would visit them all and pick the one you get the best vibe from.
I can understand the secondary school view though. Yes, there will be people worried following the recent rating of Oakmeeds but I don't believe it will increase the applicants for St Wilfred's.
The fight for Faith schools may be harsh in Chichester but certainly isn't in BH. In fact, I couldn't tell you where the next Catholic school is!

One thing I will say is even though your odds of getting your first choice sound really good think really really carefully about your second, third, fourth etc choices.

Where we live in the last 12 years all catchment children have got into our first choice (and we were catchment) and our second choice is seriously undersubscribed due to there being nearly twice as many places as catchment kids (most of the catchment area is an enormous field with planning permission ) but we still debated our 4th and 5th choices for hours.

If the worst happens you want it to be the best possible worst not a really bad worst!

The reason people dislike faith schools is that they split communities. Some children are unable to go to the school they live next door to and end up being bussed miles away, others can get in but have to be driven. It ruins the who community feel of a school and can leave some families with basically no "choice" at all about schools.

Also, generally in the UK it is illegal to discriminate on the grounds of religion. If I announced I old rather have Sarah on my team than Supatra as Sarah was a "good Christian woman" like me I would be disciplined or even sacked. (Or - far worse - be sent on a "diversity course".)

But it is ok to do that to 4 year olds?

Yes you are being unreasonable. I am surrounded by Catholic/Roman catholic secondary schools and little of anything else in catchment which limits my choices to a couple of schools which annoys me. Not a lot I can do about it though.

You will be a category 4 admission so should be fine unless huge number of siblings ... Assuming you within parish boundary

I would also add do look at schools. We are RC and would have definately got in our RC school but we didn't like it as much. Was 2nd choice and we got 1st

I'm not sure I get the obsession with wanting to send kids to faith schools. My Dad's a vicar and half the family are ministers, missionaries and lay preachers. I didn't got to a faith school and no plans to send my DD to one either despite having three on our doorstep. She will hopefully go to the nice multicultural school at the end of the road that has a swimming pool. I'd far rather she mix with a broad range of kids Monday to Friday and we can do religion on Sundays.

Queen I am with you there. I really wanted a local multi faith multi cultural education - not a formal white middle class only school

You are in the first category of acceptance; practising catholics in the catchment area.
They will have a waiting list if you need to be on that, and there are other good catholic schools within travelling distance that are also feeders for St Paul's.

'not a formal white middle class only school'

St Paul's is very ethnically and economically diverse school, so that won't be a concern. If you mean formal in the sense of uniform, discipline and expectations of behaviour, you are right on that score.

It sounds as if you're very likely to get in and be fine, so in that sense whilst you can't exactly expect you can hope.

In general I don't think anyone should expect a school with a religious affiliation to exist - I do not see what place it has in education. If parents are really set on that then private providers or home-schooling are options. So whether appealing on religious grounds is technically possible I wouldn't know, but to me it is in another sense unreasonable. I am quite strongly against faith schools of any kind.

I am interested in the idea of 'pretending' to be Catholic, or any other religion. For much of history people attended church because they had to, and even now many lifelong church goers attend to be part of a social/business community. Who knows who had/has faith. I know what you mean though, and yes it happens.

I would genuinely like to know, do you particularly want this school (and the one it feeds into) because they are better schools generally, or it is really important to you that the schools be Catholic? If so, why? I am honestly just interested to know what advantage that has in your eyes. Hope you don't mind my asking.

To be fair I don't think at Paul's could be described as diverse, I'm sure it was less then 10% ethnic groups when I last checked the ofsted.
But then I hear burgess hill in itself isn't very multi cultural and boycotted a polish shop that opened there?
We don't know the area at all to be honest and have only spent a few days there since my husband got offered the promotion but I have to say he was def the minority being mixed race rather than white British on those days

www.stpaulscatholiccollege.co.uk/news/section_48_inspection_report%5Csection_48_report.pdf

The % is now around 19.5%.

That's good to know, I must have been reading an old ofsted report.
I wonder which groups these children are from out of curiosity as apart from a few Chinese people I didn't see any other people that could be described as ethnic minority groups on all my visits there which was quite shocking

Most classes have children whose families originally came from the Philippines and from the Kerela area of India, there are a number of white children who are EAL from majority catholic countries.

Ah okay, I have to admit I was a little dubious after hearing that they had boycotted the polish shop and have a high number of UKIP members in the area!
My husband is black mixed but born here so our children are olive skinned / dark hair and I was concerned they might receive some racist comments

The possibility of racist comments is sadly possible in any town or school in the country. It's the school and communities response to it that is significant, and having worked in a lot of different areas, I wouldn't count mid Sussex as a hot spot. All the schools I've taught in have had very robust responses to racist comments and behaviour.
There are also a number of Spanish/Italian and generally dark haired and olive skins around.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post!
Such a massive move for us so unnerved in general :)

It seems unlikely that there would be more than 60 catholic 4 year olds living within less than 0.4 miles of the school.

I can understand why you wouldn't want your child to go to a school of another faith but I don't understand why your children need to have a Catholic education, surely they could go to a mixed faith/non faith school?

I agree with the poster who said visit first. A number of Catholics in our catchment choose the C of E school as a preference.

All education should be completely secular if paid for by taxpayers. You have no "right" to a religious education on the public purse. If you want it, pay for it. I don't want to have to pay for bigoted sexist brainwashing.

I think YABU to be worying about something that isn't a problem yet, and your SIL is being u to make you worry! Is she in charge of admissions to primary schools in that LA?!