to think that you shouldn't fake religion to get a school place?

[Carrierpenguin]

A friend of mine became catholic when she married her husband, then they split up. She hadnt been religious beforehand, but now she's chosen to go to church every week for the last year in order to get her ds into the local catholic school. She's told me that she doesn't believe in all that 'mumbo jumbo' but the church school gets the best results locally. I understand that everyone wants the best for their children, but this seems a bit disingenuous.

I suppose it's open to all - if you're willing to fake religion you can get into the best school, I suspect that the good results are due to parental influence as you have to be very keen to commit to two years of Sundays at church, presumably this filters out parents who don't care about education, whereas the secular schools cater to all.

I'm not against faith schools or the system, if it gets great results then why not I suppose? Aibu to think faking religion is not ethical though?

Argh- I'm sorry- I expressed myself very clumsily. I should have said, "you ere privileged in that you had a mother who...." I wasn't thinking privilege in terms of money or class or material things- I meant in terms of having adults around you who understood the system and knew how it worked.

It's okay. As you can tell it's a sensitive subject. I do understand your point. I still wouldn't use the word privileged though (too many connotations). "Lucky" would sit better with me. Anyway, we digress!

JassyRadlett: "The difference is, hack, that with faith schools (motivated, disproportionately middle-class) parents can undertake an activity that gets them preferential entry to the oversubscribed school. This leads to better results including around behaviour, which leads to more (motivated, disproportionately middle-class parents) taking the same actions and the 'good' school becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, finds it easier to recruit and retain staff, gets more fundraising revenue, etc."

Well, of course that's true - I'm not denying that. I was really answering Hakluyt's point that it's only oversubscribed faith schools that are better because the very oversubscription (as you point out) leads them to attract more middle-class parents who are prepared to work the system to their advantage. All I was saying really was that this was true of all oversubscribed schools, because once a school is really popular, house prices in the vicinity are driven up to the extent that poorer people are by default excluded from the school. And some schools also try to up their intake of middle-class kids by other dubious means, such as admitting some children on the basis of musical ability.

Don't get me wrong - I'm opposed to the very idea of faith schools because I don't think you should segregate children on the basis of religion and I don't think you should teach things as true when they're not - I wouldn't be happy sending my child to a faith school any more than I would be happy sending her to a school that teaches astrology. Education should be about teaching children to think, to criticise, to challenge, not about teaching them to accept, unquestioningly, a whole load of stuff for which there is no evidence.

It's just that I think this whole business by which an oversubscribed school becomes desirable, and then as a result of being desirable becomes more oversubscribed, and thus more socially exclusive, is quite a large problem, and is not specific to faith schools.

Just wanted to add: the other thing that makes me laugh in all this is that sometimes you do get faith schools that perform very badly and are undersubscribed. Yet you would imagine, wouldn't you, if the fabled "ethos" of faith schools was as wonderful as people say it is that they would be happy to send their children to these schools regardless of their results or their social intake. And yet, strangely, they don't.

It's just that I think this whole business by which an oversubscribed school becomes desirable, and then as a result of being desirable becomes more oversubscribed, and thus more socially exclusive, is quite a large problem, and is not specific to faith schools.

Oh, I agree. I'm quite a fan of either lotteries or other socioeconomic smoothing.

I think it's not a straight choice between faith and house prices though - I think the faith criteria exacerbate the house price problems, particularly where schools rank faith kids by distance (doubling the criteria that advantage the MC kids) or where half the intake is faith kids and half not (for which they pat themselves on the back for being 'inclusive'). The problem with that is that the sibling criteria takes up a lot of the non-faith places - a lot the siblings of the faith kids, leaving only a handful of non-church places - driving property prices nearby sky high.

Near me, you pay up to a £200k premium for a house near enough to a faith school to get in (if you can get in at all) you pay less in house prices to get a near-guaranteed place in a non-faith school.

Yes, Jassy, you're right - it is a double whammy.

Those children with additional needs deserve to have first choice and fortunately they do (at least in theory)

Wouldn't that be a nice thing to believe.

Our local Catholic primary will only prioritise Looked After Children who are baptised catholic, other (non-catholic) looked after children only get a look in after the catholics.

SEn admissions are a bit more liberal - all kinds of catholics get priority but they do concede that but the Admission Committee may take such needs
into consideration as a criterion for admitting pupils when we are oversubscribed

This is a state funded school that has found an apparently legal way to circumvent the rule on priority for LAC. So if a fostered child placed with Catholic foster carers is not a baptised catholic then they cannot go to the same school as teh catholic children in the family.

It is more important to them to protect their catholicness than to give fair schooling access to a tiny minority of children.

I went to a CofE primary back in the day when the entry requirement was that you lived in the catchment area. When did it all become about church attendance.

I have less problem with the idea of state funded religious schools that select purely on a catchment basis (though I still wouldn't chose one).

But admissions on religious grounds I will only agree to when we do the same to hospitals and where, in the interests of fairness, the non-practising/non-religious amongst us get priority at the secular hospitals and the religious get priority at the religious hospitals.

You really can't see the point I'm trying to make?

no. don't have the foggiest as to your point. it seems you are making an equivalence where one doesn't exist.

Well the school shouldn't be using the ability to participate in a bloody drama group as an entrance requirement either. You need money to pay for drama group, the ability to get there, you often need costumes and other stuff, you also need time that many young people won't have (e.g. Young carers).

So, anything that requires money shouldn't be used as an entrance requirement? Ok. Music is out then. Sports are out. I don't know of what school you are talking about, but why is this a problem? You have a specialist drama school for people who like drama? great! Maybe they have excellent drama training for people interested in drama. one problem with the state system is that we think it's possible that all schools should be great at everything. Well, that's not going to happen.

But even if I conceded this was a problem, it's a far cry from filtering by parents' religion.

Why should a state school ever use factors over which children and young people have no control (most of which boil down to who their parents are) to discriminate against them?

you are just throwing around this word "discrimination" willy nilly. it's not discrimination to filter on ability. In the UK at least, being not good at drama is not a protected characteristic, unlike religion.

The school will inculcate their religion into the kids. They always get them in the end.

If you want your kids to be very different to you, then send them to the Roman Catholic school. It's difficult to avoid learning the prayers and picking up the beliefs if you're praying four times a day and studying religion.

There's always a price to sending your kids to a faith school - they pick up the faith.

There's always a price to sending your kids to a faith school - they pick up the faith.

Ha! Oh that definitely isn't true.

Our faith school also has admission criteria

1. Looked after children whose parents/carers are of X faith
2. Other looked after children

But I really don't see why they bother with these as it's such a small number of children anyway.
Surely more christian to just have "Looked after children" Full stop
Cynical me thinks it gives the impression that family and children need to be members of/ attending specified church

Then it goes on to all the other going to church shananigans for children within their birth families as a number 3, and other things for 4,5,6 etc.

Also children with a statement of additional needs have priority above the list of criteria, but not sure if everyone fully understands this. Hopefully most are aware of their and their children's rights.

But schools have a real responsibility in terms of access to accurate information for all

I told my then 2 year old that we were going to church so that she could go to school. When she asked why she couldn't go to the school that her friends go to I said its because we aren't rich enough to move near to that school. The school your friends go to says you have to live near by to get in, the other school says you have to go to church to get in. we don't live near enough to any schools, so we have to go to church.

I also explained what church was about, well I did as she got old enough to understand. Then, when she had got a school place I gave her the option of carrying on going to church. At the moment she doesn't want to, but she is in love with the Priest, so may change her mind. If she does want to go I will take her.

We did this because the church school is our local,school. If we didn't get the church school, or the MC school ( which we didn't get and didn't want) the other option would be a school with a very difficult daily journey, which would have made our faily and working lives difficult.

Argh have you checked which number the Oratory admissions criteria reached for the past few years? As far as I know, only those that were baptised within six months were taken. Your church attendance may well be in vain.

My friend did manage to get her son in (baptised at 7 months) by compiling a 50-page dossier of medical evidence to support her argument that there were extenuating circumstances (which there were).

Which goes back to the point that the sort of person who has the dedication and education to provide such evidence is more than averagely invested in their child's education.

Munning I agree with your points. I'm really frustrated about our secondary school choices because the number of harder to teach children is so massive in the schools open to us. I find it baffling that any Christian could seek to exclude a Looked After Child living next door in favour of, say Blair or Clegg's children living at least 10 Catholic schools away from the Oratory/Sacred Heart.

It's as ethical as faith schools being funded by the State, yet excluding a large proportion of the children whose parents pay tax that pays for the schools IMO

the faith school in my area (namely Church of England) is welcoming and does celebrate the Ead for example and other religious (and non religious celebrations). They also teach the same curriculum as the non religious state school.

Also going to church for two years doesn't give you the certainty of a place, it just means you will be considered before anybody else who hasn't bothered to go to church for two year. Being baptised doesn't give you any advantage.

farewell it's all about the prestige and Blair will probably give money to the school etc.

The C of E has taken these points on board. To participate in church life, take church groups and all the rest requires you to be organised, able to attend appointments on time ( something many people with disorganised lives and on drugs or without the money or means to do those things) which is unfair on children whose parents are not like that (this is only relevant int he few urban areas with relatively good non academically selective church schools - not the many church schools with lots of spare places which are not up to much). In our area the selective private primaries are much much better than the non selective state religious and secular primary so it's no contest if you are a mother who was wise enough to pick a career which enables her to pay school fees.

The fact schools are better where lots of children want to go there and there is competition proves my political views entirely and vindicates those political parties which decided years ago putting some competition into the schools market would be a good thing. Better schools result.

(You want to get them baptised very quickly in case they die before baptism so a few weeks of birth is better).

The fact schools are better where lots of children want to go there and there is competition proves my political views entirely and vindicates those political parties which decided years ago putting some competition into the schools market would be a good thing. Better schools result.

anytime you have selection you will get better results. you are getting very varied results in the new academies' quality.

Any God who would differentiate in any way an infant who had died before baptism to an infant who died after baptism would absolutely be no God of mine though Greengrow ... which if you ponder further leads you to the realisation that baptism is entirely meaningless, apart from what it might mean to a family and their faith community

On baptism - A recent family bereavement made one thing crystal clear - for me, wherever we're going we're all going to the same place.

You're joking, right? Have you read the thread?

Where I live, there is a shortage of 200 reception places every year. My area is not unusual. Many children miss out on a reasonably local education while kids are driven in from other boroughs because of faith selection.

You'll forgive me if your post of 'I got my kid into a faith school with no problems' may sounded quite smug and dismissive to parents struggling to get their children into any school at all, despite having schools on their doorstep.

Jassey Have you failed to get your school aged child into a school? If so that is dire. I am not sure why you are blaming faith schools though??

As already mentioned I have two children in non faith schools and one who attends RC school. All three schools are best for my childrens individual needs. Why is that a problem for you?

I don't know about Jassy's predicament, but there are definitely "black hole" school areas in London. you can live in places where if you aren't a member of the C of E, your children can't got to school.

Gabby. Was the catholic school your child attends oversubscribed when she/he got her place?