To think secular groups should be allowed to object to faith school admissions?

[RockUnit]

The education secretary, Nicky Morgan, wants to ban organisations from objecting to faith school admission procedures, to “stop vexatious complaints against faith schools by secularist campaign groups”.

link here

According to the article linked to above, the government will carry out a public consultation on the proposed changes.

[maydancer]

Distance is better than religion which is better than race
well that's your opinion, it doesn't make it fact, or even the next man's opinion

[chilipepper20]

well that's your opinion, it doesn't make it fact, or even the next man's opinion

no, that's not just my opinion. That's the "opinion" of the UK legal system in every sphere outside of education. That's the opinion of the EHRC, and the UN convention on human rights, that religious discrimination is a big no no. you are right, however. Unfortunately, that's not everyone's opinion.

[chilipepper20]

just to clarify, you don't think it's better to discriminate on distance than race?

[chilipepper20]

I teach in a faith school. We do NOT teach 'religious superstition' as fact.

how do you introduce christian (assuming you are at a christian school) ideas? are they taught as christian myths? the resurrection, god, the son, etc etc. Because I can tell you I was certainly taught about greek myths, and they were labelled as such.

[MeMySonAndl]

I'm with Pilgit on this, if the school was built using money of the diocese to support their own chuchgoers and the extended community, it would be unfair to forget why the school was founded and by whom and demand to fully adhere to non religiously based admissions.

I think this is a bit like being a vegetarian in campaign to get the owner of local steak house to stop serving meat. If you don't like what is served, choose another restaurant.

There is also the argument that they are using public funds but I wonder how many local authorities would be happy to take on the full financial responsibility of sustaining the school 100% and buying the land and the buildings that the school occupies.

[chilipepper20]

I think this is a bit like being a vegetarian in campaign to get the owner of local steak house to stop serving meat. If you don't like what is served, choose another restaurant.

really? is it? I'd say restaurants are private companies and have no obligation to serve everyone.

Also, does that argument apply to Tescos? Tescos owns a lot of land, but they are not allowed to discriminate in their stores.

I think we are so used to this kind of discrimination we are forgetting what it really is: blatant discrimination. We don't let tescos do it.

[Mumoftwoyoungkids]

Laws change. When my dad started work it was illegal to be gay. By the time he retired it was illegal to discriminate against people due to their sexuality. When my parents married spousal rape was legal. Now it is not.

It used to be legal to discriminate against people for their religion. Now it is only legal to discriminate against children for the religion of their parents.

[Mumoftwoyoungkids]

Chilli I cross posted with you as I hadn't pressed refresh. You said it much better than me.....

[FoggyMorn]

There shouldn't be ANY tax payer funded religious schools, and people certainly should be able to complain about them.

[diggerdigsdogs]

All state funded schools should be secular. France is right. There is no place for religion in government or school.

Those who want a religious education should pay for it. or take their kids to church every Sunday and be responsible for their own religious education.

(On a side note I'm pro monarchy and pro a CofE monarchy so how's that for contradiction).

[MistressDeeCee]

Let them complain

Uphold the complaints so they can clamour to get through the door of a faith school that teaches "religious superstition" (ignorant phrase) that they claim to actively dislike, and wouldn't want taught to their children

Maybe they can get things changed so no religion is taught

Then give it a couple of years when they realise that anybody can apply and get in, including "overseas faiths" as it were, they'll be whinging about that too. All those potential spaces gone, just like that, when they thought they and their little darlings would be a shoe-in. You'd hear the wailing and hand wringing from a mile down the road

[sashh]

I think this is a bit like being a vegetarian in campaign to get the owner of local steak house to stop serving meat. If you don't like what is served, choose another restaurant.

Only if the vegetarian has to pay for their own food in a vegi restaurant and a portion of the steak eater's bill and for the vegetarian's meat eating children to be banned from the steakhouse.

[ReallyTired]

"Only if the vegetarian has to pay for their own food in a vegi restaurant and a portion of the steak eater's bill and for the vegetarian's meat eating children to be banned from the steakhouse."

????

The tax payer pays for every child's education who wants to attend a state school. Going back to your analogy why would a vegeterian want their child to attend the steakhouse? I could choose to send my child to the local catholic school, but I don't want to.

I suppose what is unfair about faith schools is that religious family has equal priority with a non religious family for community schools. They have a wider choice of school than non religious families. What is an issue is lack of access to decent schools rather than the faith school. If St Bloggs was in special measure then I imagine that the athetist parents would not care if they chose to give priority to those with faith.

It would be an interesting experiment if kids on free school meals were given admissions priority over all non statemented/ non care kids in all state schools. I am sure that this would lead to a greater social mix at the "outstanding" schools.

[chilipepper20]

Then give it a couple of years when they realise that anybody can apply and get in, including "overseas faiths" as it were, they'll be whinging about that too. All those potential spaces gone, just like that, when they thought they and their little darlings would be a shoe-in. You'd hear the wailing and hand wringing from a mile down the road

you figured us out. I guess the ruse is over.

[chilipepper20]

The tax payer pays for every child's education who wants to attend a state school. Going back to your analogy why would a vegeterian want their child to attend the steakhouse?

the nice salad bar of course.

What difference does it make? of course, you know the answer, as you gave begrudgingly gave an excellent reason in your next paragraph.

One problem is the disparity between schools. but if we could magically make all schools great, we probably would. We can "magically" stop faith schools from discriminating.

[thebiscuitindustry]

Removing selection (in its broadest sense) from the system would mean you would end up with all state schools being mediocre, rather than reanging from excellent to very bad as they do now.

Not necessarily. If there were no selective schools (or independent schools for that matter), many parents whose children were now in non-selective state schools would put their efforts into improving them where needed.

[thebiscuitindustry]

And their money.

[ZedWoman]

I teach in a faith school. We do NOT teach 'religious superstition' as fact.

Me too.

I teach science in a CofE school and I teach the approved National Curriculum for science.

As an aside, one thing that often perplexes me about the faith schools discrimination argument is that people often claim that in no other aspect of life can institutions discriminate. However, I have never seen objections on MN to schools being able to discriminate on the grounds of sex.

[chilipepper20]

As an aside, one thing that often perplexes me about the faith schools discrimination argument is that people often claim that in no other aspect of life can institutions discriminate. However, I have never seen objections on MN to schools being able to discriminate on the grounds of sex.

many people have objected.

However, I certainly understand why the objections are more muted. Reasons include they don't give any particular protected group an edge and they don't take up 35% of the state education system. The trouble is that because of the sheer number of faith schools odds are high that a person can't attend their local school (or someone else gets priority). While the principle of not discriminating is violated by gendered schools, they don't favour any particular group and they present a much smaller problem practically.

I teach science in a CofE school and I teach the approved National Curriculum for science.

I asked the other person above the question of how christianity is presented at school, and they didn't answer, so perhaps you can. How is the resurrection presented? is it presented as anything other than myth?

[ReallyTired]

Relgious families pay taxes as well. You are paying for their child's education as much as they are paying for your child's education.

How would stopping all faith schools from discriminating on religion make all the state schools great. Selection by house price is a greater issue than selection by religion.

Going back to your steakhouse analgoy, does not make sense to improve the salad bar at the vegeterian restaurant than to make the steakhouse cater for vegeterians? I could have chosen a catholic primary inspite of being C of E. I chose a community school in special measures because I did not want the catholic teaching.

[chilipepper20]

Relgious families pay taxes as well. You are paying for their child's education as much as they are paying for your child's education.

yes... but as you pointed out they get far more selection than we do.

Here's a little experiment we can all do to see how much privilege the religious actually have in this ridiculous system. Would religious people go for a system where upon application you had to choose faith or non faith, and if faith is chosen, you get anti-priority at non-faith schools?

My guess is you would 0 support for this from the religious, even though they STILL have an advantage of the non-religious.

How would stopping all faith schools from discriminating on religion make all the state schools great.

did anyone say it would? it would stop selection, which may flatten the quality disparity.

Going back to your steakhouse analgoy

it's not a particularly good analogy, so perhaps we should just stick with the topic. Restaurants don't have the same roles as schools.

[ReallyTired]

"here's a little experiment we can all do to see how much privilege the religious actually have in this ridiculous system. Would religious people go for a system where upon application you had to choose faith or non faith, and if faith is chosen, you get anti-priority at non-faith schools?"

I don't think that the truely religious parents would mind that. I think that such a system would be completely fair. In my county there are two church schools close together. One of them (St George's, Harpenden) is one of the most over subscribed schools in the country and the other (Townsend Church of England School, St Albans) hardly anyone wants. It would be really amusing if parents whose children failed to get into St George's were forced to have Townsend at their second choice. It would force parents to really think if they wanted a faith school or not.

Often people with real faith cannot access faith schools because of those who are really good at faking religion.

[ZedWoman]

How is the resurrection presented? is it presented as anything other than myth?

The resurrection is presented in the same way that it is (or should be) in any maintained school - as a religious belief held by followers of that religion. In RE (not my subject) the students study Christianity alongside other world religions. They also look at the different beliefs of different groups within the religion - such as the difference between the beliefs of evangelical Christians and the episcopal church on the creation story and homosexuality. I can't see that this would be different in a non-faith school.

[chilipepper20]

I can't see that this would be different in a non-faith school.

that's great. that is, a bare minimum, of how it should be presented (as long as long as facts are presented as such). I guess you can't speak for other schools though.

It sounds like from you experience, RE teaching is the same at faith and non-faith schools. So, why the discrimination then? What is the difference then? Because, certainly, I have no objection to the teaching of RE.

[ReallyTired]

My daughter's community school is throughly christian. It has more christianity than the C of E schools that I attended as a child. The local priest does assembly once a week and they also go to church. I like my daughter getting to mix with children from all kinds of relgious backgrounds.