AIBU to think the school shouldn't be offering places to children in other boroughs first?

[frutilla]

Many local kids, living in the parish have been refused places. But the school is offering places to kids in neighbouring boroughs and have told me they can offer places as far afield as they wish ahead of local kids.
They have refused to even tell me my DS's position on the waiting list though the council said they should tell me. Instead, they say it's a very fluid list and irrelevant.
Council admissions dept said I can fill out a complaint form but only against next year's criteria.

No need moving - I know enough about church finances thank you.

So an aryan school is giving places to foreigners..... sounds v. logical to me .

So... tell us about the uniform? And do the children goosestep march smartly when out and about?

I'm'my not disagreeing with that point, that I indeed made myself FloggingMolly. I'm suggesting the State changes the law.

I apologise if I wasn't clear enough I thought it was an obvious point.

Jeee:

Aryan and foreign aren't mutually exclusive concepts! There is a Catholic school near to me with a large intake of Polish and other aryan Eastern European children who could

Sure, the State can change the law. But then the churches can just opt out of running the schools. Or run them privately.

How would the State educate all those children then?

Anewme please tell me you know Eastern European and Aryan are not interchangeable terms? That rather a lot of Eastern Europeans had a pretty bad time under Aryan supremacist rule in the not so recent past because of their ethnicity?

Yes, I know that.... Anew, it's just the OP's stance sounds rather unreasonable to me. Not to mention completely illogical, as in one post, the school has only 18% non-English pupils, when other schools are 60-80% non-English, while in the next post immigrants are taking all the places.

Yes, MakeItACider I think people forget that (with the exception of the handful opened in the Blair years) these are not state-owned schools run by religious bodies, but are religious body-owned schools operating in conjunction with the state.

I agree they need to change criteria.
If there is no non faith school for a village or 2 then 1 needs to be built as people shouldnt have to put their kids in a faith school if they want a local school.
I would stop funding to faith schools and they can then choose to withdraw from their indoctrination of young people.
If parents want this they can choose private education.

I was referring to the other faith schools offering places to newcomers of the right faith. Those are RC.
This school is CofE and mainly white not to mention mainly blonde.
Yes I did get a place at 4th choice which is CofE but offers open places.

Dear God, is hair colour now a selection criteria now!

I know a C of E school which is predominantly Muslim (and probably not in an area you would expect).

Willow - in lots of areas if there is a religious school (especially C of E because they tend to have less strict religious selection) a parent may not have a chance of getting their child into a community school. This is as often pointed out on MN because all schools in England are considered to be "broadly Christian", so if they will offer your child a place that may well be your closest school.

Some C of E schools do offer a percentage of Open places, some don't, and some don't need to as all within the local area get in/usually get in.

C of E on the whole would like to open up places, sometimes existing parents would resist this - as it would change the "character" of the school.
The RC church on the whole wants to restrict places to those who are RC first, even if the school would prefer to be more open.

Sorry about the two "nows" but I feel OP has just lost all credibility with her arguments.

The problem is OP's arguments are incoherent.

What she's actually saying is that she doesn't think it's fair that her child can't go to their local outstanding school which is part of the community that she's lived in all her life because the school uses religious criteria for admissions.

But then she's making personal and judgemental comments (not to mention inaccurate comments) about the pupils who attend the school or who are offered places, rather than expressing a coherent stance about the religious establishments/admissions criteria involved.

In regard to 'the church owns the land' argument, I always think it's worth considering exactly how the churches acquired the land in the first place.

The emphasis throughout op's argument is on "outstanding", christina.
Faith is only an issue as that's her barrier to admission... You notice she hasn't actualy said if there is a multi denominal school in the area; just that all the outstanding schools are faith so her kids don't qualify.

denominational

Even if you call it religious discrimination it doesn't make it any less wrong.

'your faith doesn't make you a certain race so therefore they can't be "racist"'.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Most religious Jews are also ethnically Jewish.

And there's a large overlap elsewhere between religion and ethnicity. There aren't all that many white Sikhs, for example (and Sikhism is actually regarded as a racial group by the law - but that's another story).

I wish people would stop treating the OP as completely unreasonable for wanting to send her child to the local school. Most of us prefer to send our kids to local schools if possible - it's more convenient, it usually means our children can walk to school and it also means they make friends with other kids in the local community.

It's not reasonable of a school to give priority to children outside the borough on the basis that they practise a religious faith. It stops the school from being the focus of the local community, it forces local people to send their children elsewhere and the result is a religiously narrow school that denies children the opportunity to mix with children of other faith backgrounds and none.

I see people moving in from other countries and being admitted immediately!

That's actually pretty unlikely to happen. Faith schools generally require more than just a baptismal certificate, they demand evidence that the family are practising members of the faith, usually from someone like a parish priest. Therefore it's a pretty small chance that people from abroad will have been worshipping regularly in a C of E church, and if it's another religion it may not be so easy to get the required certificate from a priest in their original country as they won't be used to the system. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the numbers involved will be very small.

It may not be reasonable hackmum, but it is lawful under current legislation.

There may well be a non faith school in the community as well, hackmum.
It would be a rare community indeed that had nothing but RC / COE schools in a community that was neither.
Op's not interested unless they're the outstanding ones she craves, though.

I can appreciate OP being annoyed that the school won't tell her her son's position on the waiting list, though.

That would be unlawful in a non-Church run school. Is is okay for church schools to operate such shady admissions procedures?

You've got to love the way woo schools, paid out of the general taxpayers' pocket, get to discriminate against the general non-woo taxpayer on the grounds that the non-woo taxpayer doesn't have an imaginary friend.

it's worse than that.

While I understand a church prioritizing their own people (though vehemently object to this), they can even woo prioritize (i.e. our own people, other christians, muslims, sikhs, hindus, etc, and then atheists).

your faith doesn't make you a certain race so therefore they can't be "racist"

correct. the right words are "religious discrimination on a mass scale".