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.

[bananafish81]

It is simply not fair that a colleague was in the situation where out of 4 primary schools in her area, 3 were faith schools - therefore giving her a choice of one (failing) school. 

She pays her taxes and yet her access to state funded schools is massively restricted 

Stupid question from me. If a faith school does not teach outside the non faith based national curriculum, what exactly makes it a faith school?

I ask this as someone from a Jewish background, but consider myself atheist. I have family members whose children attend Jewish state schools and I find it absolutely abhorrent. They have Hebrew lessons in school and apparently do not teach comparative religions (she didn't know what the Christmas story actually was, and they sent a letter home to her parents to ask them not to celebrate Christmas in any way as the kids needed to know they were Jewish)

Boils my piss. Hebrew lessons should be paid for privately or organised via the synagogue. It's not the taxpayers job to fund specialist religious instruction during school time. What lessons are being sacrificed to accommodate this within the school timetable?!

So what makes a Catholic school a Catholic school in terms of the school environment if it's not within the lessons itself? And why can this not be taught in Sunday school? Genuine question. 

[chilipepper20]

My theory is because these problems apply in different measure in different places, and of course in many places neither is problematic.

we deliberately chose to live in a part of London that has very few faith schools. We did, however, get bit by distance. We are near a very sought after school, and would have gotten in any year before the year we applied and did not get in. That was 3 years ago, and I am still pretty bitter, mainly because of all the "talk" of parents cheating to get their DCs in. A school, which have a tiny areas where distance kicks in, have hordes of children being dropped off by car. Makes my blood boil. So, I get that distance sucks.

But that doesn't have anything to do with the faith criteria. It is as clear cut as it sounds. Just because it isn't a problem in most of the country doesn't make it ok. if tescos had a christian first policy in hiring and they said that it only ever kicks in in in 3 stores in one part of London out of their 2000 (or whatever) stores across the country, there would be outrage.

And that's before you start into the areas of the law on property ownership.

that is a concern, but not a reason not to try. If the CofE does withdraw their buildings from the state system, they will have to find money to upkeep them. they will be in a difficult situation.

[chilipepper20]

Boils my piss. Hebrew lessons should be paid for privately or organised via the synagogue. It's not the taxpayers job to fund specialist religious instruction during school time. What lessons are being sacrificed to accommodate this within the school timetable?!

this wouldn't bother me at all. Learning another language is incredibly useful, even if the language itself is somewhat useless (let's face, hebrew isn't going to give you the edge that spanish or mandarin will). And learning (key word: learning, not practising) about religion is also useful. if faith schools were places where history and RE had an emphasis (emphasis, not exclusion to all others) on a particular religion, I wouldn't mind that at all. It's the preaching that I object to. It's telling children they X religion. it's the selection.

[bananafish81]

The Hebrew lessons aren't linguistic though. They can't speak it at all. It's study of Bible passages and Jewish scripture

It's religious instruction not a language lesson

[bananafish81]

And their religious instruction doesn't include comparative religions. They don't know anything about Christianity. I think comparative religions study is great. This is not that. They're being schooled in the following of Jewish law.

[samG76]

bananafish - religious instruction is paid for privately. Hence the high voluntary contributions at most Jewish schools. And Jewish schools seems to get on fine academically "despite" the time devoted to kodesh....

[bananafish81]

That makes sense, thanks for clarifying