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.

About 1/3 of schools although not now funded by the church, the buildings and land they are on were passed to the LEA on the legal condition they retain their religious character -indeed they are subject to regular inspections by the diocese to ensure this is the case.
To separate church and education, the government would have to find the land and funds to build one in 3 schools!! There's no way round it!

I think that unless you live locally and might want to send your child to a school then the admissions code of st blog's school 50 miles away is none of your business.

I think it's all our business if schools are operating unlawful admissions codes. Some of the admissions arrangements that have been successfully challenged to date have been really quite blatant, and schools will get away with them repeatedly if it's left to local groups (a) to find out about them and (b) to get themselves organised enough to bring a challenge.

I also think the fact that this is aimed solely at secular groups and not generally at vexatious complaints is dreadful.
I joined the national secular society on the back of this - religious discrimination is school admissions is completely alien to the idea of making education equally available - the fact that the schools can follow discriminatory employment policy is disgusting.

We have a severe shortage of secondary school places as it is, where on earth do you expect all the kids that are currently in faith schools to be educated if you remove faith schools?

There's no need to remove faith schools; all we need to do is remove faith criteria. The churches can then decide whether they want to continue or not - if they don't, I suspect there are plenty of Academy Trusts who would be happy to take over.

I suspect the issue about buildings being passed over on condition that they retain their religious character could be dealt with on the basis that religion would still be taught in the schools in question.

[[https://humanism.org.uk/2016/02/26/department-for-education-acknowledges-87-of-objections-to-school-admissions-labelled-vexatious-by-education-secretary-were-upheld-by-adjudicator/ Here] 87% of the cases the government called "vexatious" were actually upheld.

It's useless discussing this on Mumsnet because people of faith defend their privilege so fiercely. They either refuse to accept that they have privilege or accept it but just shrug and say "So what? Deal with it". It's such a very unpleasant attitude. The ultimate I'm all right Jackery.

Sorry, link

a couple of people up-thread inferred that faith schools were largely middle class. It would be interesting if the class of every area which had a faith school were to be published as my personal experience is that they are just as likely to be in working class areas. My nearest two faith schools, one CofE and one Roman Catholic are surrounded by mostly two up/two down terraces and council properties with a smaller number of semis and new builds. Curiously enough the Catholic school is outstanding while the CofE school is good despite their intakes being from exactly the same areas. Can anyone explain that?

maydancer has it spot on :

About 1/3 of schools although not now funded by the church, the buildings and land they are on were passed to the LEA on the legal condition they retain their religious character -indeed they are subject to regular inspections by the diocese to ensure this is the case. To separate church and education, the government would have to find the land and funds to build one in 3 schools!! There's no way round it!

So Church schools aren't wholly funded by the state. The State didn't want to buy them from the churches, so this is the price the state has to pay.

There simply isn't the public appetite, or money, to force through the compulsory purchase of church school land. It is tough to those parents who have no link to a church where the church schools are often the nest schools, and I'm fortunate not to have been affected by it.

I have one child (an atheist, like me) in a church school, and another in a secular school.

Undersubscribed faith schools reflect their surrounding area and are no better or worse than any other school in the same area. Oversubscribed ones tend to have a higher % of engaged parents prepared and able to jump through the required hoops. That is why oversubscribed faith schools tend to be "better". Because, like all overtly or covertly selective schools, they have a higher % of engaged, involved parents. And that often means middle class ones, because they have the time, the education, the self confidence and the awareness to deal with sometimes arcane admissions procedures.

Hmm...The idea that Religious schools are funded by the church is not entirely true.

From humanistlife.org.uk/2014/06/23/ten-facts-about-faith-schools/

"Voluntary Aided schools have 100% of their running costs and 90% of their building costs met by the state, with the remaining 10% building costs being paid for by the religious organisation. But this comes to about 1-2% of the schools’ total budget and so is typically fundraised off the parents in much the same way that all schools fundraise. Furthermore it is waived for big building projects (through both the Building Schools for the Future and Priority School Building Programme schemes). And other types of ‘faith’ school do not have to pay a penny – including Academies which have converted from being Voluntary Aided."

But before Church schools there was effectively nothing. The state wanted to take them over, but did't want to buy the land and buildings. So the deal was struck.

Do you really think that the state can now simply steal that land from the diocese of each school? They took over fully functioning buildings. They took over much of the responsibility for delivering education. They could only do that by forcibly buying the land, or by coming to the deal that they did.

I'm no advocate for church schools. But similarly I have problems with the state stealing stuff.

"The churches can then decide whether they want to continue or not - if they don't, I suspect there are plenty of Academy Trusts who would be happy to take over."

Can they actually afford to buy the land and buildings? Which, except for a handful of schools that appeared in the Blair years, are owned by the Church not the state.

Just stop selection on faith grounds and let the Church prove that it's it's influence rather than the process of selection that makes some faith schools appear better than non faith ones.

The churches can then decide whether they want to continue or not - if they don't, I suspect there are plenty of Academy Trusts who would be happy to take over

..or , more likely, the church would sell the land to developers

Excellent time to impose a compulsory purchase order!

But it'll never happen. Faith schools are a sop to middle class parents and an appeasement to the Christian lobby. All very murky and unpleasant. And, incidentally, deeply unchristian.

I don't see why my taxes go to educating children in regular comprehensive schools. I would prefer my taxes to educate my child in whichever school I chose to place him.......Oh wait! I do. In exactly the same way parents with kids in "Naice normal comprehensive schools" pay their taxes for their children to be educated in the way their parents see fit. If you were not brought up with Christian values why on earth are you so bitter about children attending schools that encourage Christian values?

"If you were not brought up with Christian values why on earth are you so bitter about children attending schools that encourage Christian values?"

It's not about bitterness, or about values. It's about the fact that people of faith have a choice of 33% more tax funded state schools than people without faith. Simple as that.

"If you were not brought up with Christian values why on earth are you so bitter about children attending schools that encourage Christian values?"

I see little evidence that church schools have any more Christian values than other schools. Believe it or not "Christians" do not have a monopoly on common decency. I think Jesus would be pretty disgusted by the behaviour of many faith schools that do not give sibling priority to children in local authority care. Jesus would be disgusted by the corruption of keeping out SEN children by the use of insisting on weekly church attendence but not making the child with Tourette's welcome in the church service.

Anyway if you are a Christian you want to share your beliefs with the world. There is an argument for giving priority to non Christians do that we can save their souls by them learning about Jesus in a church school. [naughty emoticon needed]

"It's about the fact that people of faith have a choice of 33% more tax funded state schools than people without faith"

And the fact that the religions concerned actually established and own those schools.

You need to cost a state buy-out, if you want to end their ownership.

And as this wasn't attempted during the boom years, I suspect it's unaffordable now. It has to be a big enough sum to make 'reprioritisation' necessary (ie cut something else, but don't use the 'c' word).

What do you want the Dept Of Ed to reprioritise? Because even if some money came from elsewhere to increase its budget, it would still have to cover at least part. And if other Depts are to be cut, which ones?

What ought to happen is that faith schools should have the courage of their convictions. If they are so sure that it's the Christian values that make faith schools better, then they should drop the faith admissions criteria, and see what happens when they are no longer able to operate covert selection.

But they won't. Because they know what will happen.............

No, you cannot purchase it for £1 because most of the school land/buildings are held under church charities and the law requires than on the winding up of a charity, all assets have to be sold off for full market value.

We have no idea whether donations were freely given or not, especially as centuries may have passed.

And the idea that somehow dropping the prioritisation of those with faith means that the faith ethos of the school will not change seems odd.

But do you mean things like the existing situation where Catholic schools with a higher than national average proxy-markers for deprivation have far lower rates of exclusion of black boys than the average (NB: these are the schools the middle class swerve, are typically undersubscribed (so anyone can indeed go there) and sop up pupils left without a place elsewhere).

Meditrina-doyou think it is fair that people of faith have a choice of 30% more tax payer funded state schools than people without faith?

Meditrina-doyou think it is fair that people of faith have a choice of 30% more tax payer funded state schools than people without faith?

For historical reasons, it would simply be too expensive for the state to acquire all these schools.

Get over it.

"Meditrina-doyou think it is fair that people of faith have a choice of 30% more tax payer funded state schools than people without faith?
I notice you don't answer the question

For historical reasons, it would simply be too expensive for the state to acquire all these schools.
I would cost very little to change admissions criteria

Get over it"
What a charming debating style you have