school admissions. ..I am being reasonably unreasonable

[NamesNick]

I want to encourage dd to be anything she wants. to nurture her through life.

and I believe schools have/should have the same view I.e 'you can be what you want, don't let anything hold you back, follow your dream etc'

however my experience is now...yes, you can do all of these things...as long as you fit into our specific criteria.

I feel like this is a massive contradiction which irritates me slightly.

I dont like the 'tick box' criteria.

but it's not the school admission criteria that is treating your dd differently from her step sisters, it's the fact that you (her parents) made a decision to treat her differently by not getting her baptised as a Catholic, when the older siblings were. Not sure how you can blame the school, or the admission criteria for your choices

Anyway OP, whether you had your child baptised/attended church etc could well turn out to be irrelevant - one of my DGC has been bought up as a Catholic - mum's family have all attended the same church regularly for 40 years - and still failed to get a place at the local Catholic primary school -- on distance grounds (by about 200 yards...!)
The CofE school seems to be doing a grand job - despite the fact that the family have never been over the doorstep of their church - mad, completely mad...