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.

Can anyone clarify the waiting list issue?

OP, maybe ask the local authority about the waiting list.

CristinaR, it's my first 3 choices that I am not able to attend for these reasons. One of my DC's goes to the community school but I have issues with it. Eg not changing reading book for 6 weeks and other stuff. I just don't see why the community schools and the few faith schools with open places have to take on all the non-English mother tongue pupils, it should be evenly distributed.

CR, the local authority say they have nothing to do with the waiting list and only the school can tell me. I am happy with the 4th choice, I just think the system is wrong. No Muslims, Jews etc allowed..unless of course they attend church? Disrespectful to all parties.

Op's not interested unless they're the outstanding ones she craves, though.

So think it is right that attending a particular church gets you a better education, paid for by the state?

Further up the thread a poster has suggested faith schools provide 90% of the funding and the state just 10%. This is wrong according to a Freedom of information request the most these schools pay is 15% with many paying only 10%. Also most of the school's contribution apparently comes from parents not the church.

From accordcoalition.org.uk/2013/12/27/faith-schools-in-england-now-almost-entirely-state-funded/

As to the ludicrous idea that if faith schools were told they could not discriminate on religious grounds in their admission criteria they would just close that just isn't going to happen.

Plenty of faith schools don't even have these criteria at the moment and recent reports show some schools that do are abandoning the requirement because they are fed up with people pretending to be religious to get places.

Personally I'd like to see faith schools gone all together. If you want a religious education for your child go to church or Sunday school. As that is unlikely to happen due to the cost of the land and buildings then the next best thing is to make religious discrimination through admissions unlawful.

If a religious school only has a single class entry, but the area doesn't have enough school places, and the government wants them to add another classroom and become bigger, should the diocese pay for this or should the government? Because the government could spend money and build its own school, but its much cheaper to add classrooms to an existing school.

Currently the school pays about 25% of the cost of building and the state 75% but there are some faith schools where the state is paying more than that so the state is currently paying most of the cost.

My personal opinion is that if you're running a faith school you should stump up at least 50% of the cost of everything until such time as you can stump up 100% and then you can do what you like in your school. While tax payers are funding it then discriminating against children on the basis of their parent or parents' religion is wrong.

The state paid nothing towards our school's new hall. The diocese paid 90% and we raised the remaining 10%.

That's good. Your choice (to discriminate by religion), you pay :)

Actually, if you read more of my posts, you'd see that our village infant school accepts all those who LIVE within the parish equally. AFTER that it is those who are religious.

You're still missing the point, Moving. The only reasons non religious parents want their kids educated alongside Catholics or Church of England kids is because the have traditionally proved to be of superior standard. (Usually, it's not universal).
In op's case, (again, as in most cases), there is a perfectly valid choice of a non faith school, right there in the community.

Maybe you should look at it from the perspective of, not - why are those church people keeping all the outstanding schools for themselves, the miserable bastards; but - just what makes them outstanding in the first place and wonder why that's not replicated in the secular schools?

What are you on about FloggingMolly? Did you even read my posts?

just what makes them outstanding in the first place and wonder why that's not replicated in the secular schools?

Apparently it is keeping the undesirables out.

Not in our local schools it isn't. We have three local RC schools including a secondary. They are not "Outstanding", but a quite acceptable "Good" and take a range of children beyond the Catholic intake. Two of the schools are known for taking children who have been excluded elsewhere and have a good track record with helping those children make a success of their education.

Am sure some RC schools are very selective, thinking of the likes of The Oratory etc. our local ones are not though and they take a good number of children from non religious backgrounds too.

OP, if you have a good non religious school locally I'd go with that tbh.

In my LA the C of E primary schools have a faith criterion which applies to any faith. The stipulation is that the faith criterion will only apply if the school is the nearest CofE school to the family home. So in some of the schools most of the children are Sikhs, Moslems or Hindus.

If an aided school is to have any major building work done, 90% of the cost is born by the diocese, and 10% of the cost is funded by the school itself. The government doesn't pay anything for new gyms, extra class rooms etc.

Cider, that's not what the DfE guidance says. You've got your figures the wrong way around. Governing bodies and their trustees are only required to find 10%. I'm sure if they want to spend more or don't qualify for a grant because it's not essential capital spending that's nice, and lovely for the kids that the church has money to splash around, and up to the governing body. But it's neither the norm nor a requirement.

Faith schools distort catchments and discriminate against children based on religion and class (both CofE and Catholic schools that select on faith are shown to have intakes more MC than their nominal catchments). Many parents would love to have the option to avoid them, but live in places where getting any school is a bonus.

I'd be happy to hear arguments about faith schools being allocated church places relative to the funding they put in, averaged over 5 years. And once those 2-3 places are full, the other 60-odd places follow the LA criteria.

And I'd count younger siblings of those admitted under the faith criteria as part of the faith quota. It's a great wheeze of church schools, to pretend they have places put aside for non churchgoers but hey presto! They're 'unfortunately' full of the younger siblings of children admitted under the faith criteria.

Flogging - what makes church schools 'better' is well documented. The effect only happens when faith schools are oversubscribed and select on faith, and are therefore able to de facto exclude children from the most deprived and or/chaotic backgrounds, as well as from non-English-speaking backgrounds in many cases, by setting criteria that ensure they admit disproportionately middle-class children whose parents are organised, settled and committed enough to jump through years' worth of hoops to ensure their child a place.

In the main, I suppose, Jassy, but; we have a certain amount of Irish Travellers passing through our local Catholic schools. Their backgrounds are the very antithesis of settled and non chaotic.

They still fulfil the faith criteria, so they get their place.

It depends on the faith criteria. If it's 'baptised before 6 months' then it's slightly more open. However the majority of faith schools are CofE, and they (and many RC schools that select) tend to have an attendance criteria.

Statistically, schools that select do 'better' than schools that don't.

Religious schools that don't select do no better on average than non-religious schools. It's nothing to do with faith and everything to do with cherry picking.

our local ones are not though and they take a good number of children from non religious backgrounds too.

are they oversubscribed? If not, they have to take kids in.

you'd see that our village infant school accepts all those who LIVE within the parish equally. AFTER that it is those who are religious.

so, your school complies with the general non-discriminatory laws everyone else has to comply with THEN moves to a discriminatory criteria? how noble... perhaps the school should get a medal.

Of course it isn't racism.
The Church funds part of the school.
Do you feel the same about Muslim schools? Or Jewish schools? (Or is it only Christians who are racist).
Go to a multi-faith school which reflects your values.

fruitla, I meant the issue about the school refusing to tell you what position your child is on the waiting list.

Certainly, it is illegal for wholly maintained schools to do this - appeals have been won because someone was top of the waiting list for a couple of days, but not offered that place..

The Church funds part of the school.

john lewis funds 100% of john lewis, yet we don't allow john lewis to discriminate based on religion.

There are specific laws which allow faith schools to have faith criteria (and which do not apply to John Lewis) and I think that there are other areas where such organisations can prioritise their congregations.

Part of the issue in apparent oversupply (or is that stranglehold?) of faith schools in some areas is that, when councils chose to sell off school sites for development, they could of course only sell those they owned.

VA schools are 100% owned by trustees for the faith community which (apart from the few newly created ones) bought the land, built and operated the school, and then entered into an agreement with the state to form a component of state education. The Government has over the years, increased the funding (some assistance for capital spend before the 1944 Act; 50% when Act passed, increased to 75% then the current 90%). And in the years following 1997, new ones were opened, with even greater levels of state funding.

If the state no longer wanted those schools in the state system, fair enough. But that's a lot of schools you'd need to close. About 10% of schools are RC, and about 5% CofE VA. A further 10% are CofE VC.

How would you find alternate school places if you remove 15% of schools from the state sector?