to propose this brilliant plan to make faith school applications a bit less unfair?

[ArcheryAnnie]

So there's always a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between people who support faith schools giving priority to people of that faith, and people who think it's unfair. How about this for a solution?

Say in a particular borough there are three faith schools and three non-faith schools. Children in families of that faith can apply to all six schools with a fair chance of getting into any of them, and children of no faith (or a different faith) can apply to all of them, but only have a fair chance of getting into the three non-faith schools, and a very low chance of getting into the three faith schools. This obviously means that children in faith families have greater choice than children from non-faith families, which isn't fair.

In order to get into a faith school in a faith place (a priority place) you usually have to fill in something like a clergy form, which bumps you up the list and marks you out as a faith application. You aren't forced to fill in this form and apply for a faith priority place if you don't want to: even if you are of that faith and are applying to a faith school - you can just throw your lot in with the rest of the non-faith applicants and hope for the best.

How about that, if you fill in a clergy form for a faith school in order to get priority over children from non-faith families, you then don't get priority in the non-faith schools? So in the non-faith schools, if there were two applicants for whom other things (distance, siblings, etc) were equal, the one who hadn't applied for a faith place anywhere else would be the one to get priority.

This would level the playing ground, and give all the children an equal chance of a school place of their choice. And faith families would still be a bit better off than the non-faith families, as the faith families could choose to thrown their lot in with everybody equally, or go down the clergy-form, faith priority place route.

Faith schools are unacceptable full stop. Education should be secular like France. Region is a home/private matter.

Errorofjudgement I'm in total agreement with you.

How about school can't only exclude children for as many spaces as they can fund themselves, any spaces that use government funding should be open to all and given on whose nearest. If the school want to exclude then pay for it.

In Scotland you go to the nearest school unless your dc go to the Catholic school of which there are very few (3 in our large city). The year before they go to school you go to your nearest school to register and that is it.

The problem is that very often the religious schools get better results. It's not because the relevant deity is somehow smiling on the school and their GCSE exam papers, it's because jumping through hoops to get into a school acts as a form of social selection. Those who are middle class, well educated and have the time / knowledge / resources to dedicate to gaming the system like going to church until the week after school places are allocated are at an advantage over those without those resources. www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/mar/05/faith-schools-admissions

As an atheist, why shouldn't my child have access to the schools that get the best results, simply because of their (lack of) religion, which is a protected characteristic. Why should it be illegal to discriminate on the basis of religion in almost all circumstances, but when it comes to schools it's A-OK?

How it works in Scotland is that you are allocated a place at your local school (primary and secondary) and you are more or less guaranteed a space there. When new housing is built, it's allocated to a school. Either one with existing space or the builders of the housing are required to upgrade a school to provide the space required as part of the contract. They usually have to build the capacity first before the houses.

The school you are allocated is usually but not necessarily the closest. If you want to attend a different school, you submit a placing request. If there is room for all requests then they are granted, if there isn't then there is a priority system (Special requirement, looked after child, sibling, single parent, distance etc) to allocate available spaces.

Then there is a catholic school system which works in a similar way, you can either apply to your allocated catholic school or non demon school. catholics get priority in catholic schools but others can submit a placing request. I'd get rid of that system as well to be honest but it doesn't seem to dominate and cause as many issues as the faith schools in E & W. In my city there are only 2 catholic primaries and about 20 non demon. and 1 catholic High School out of 5.

deste there are many catholic schools in certain parts of scotland so I'm not sure it differs that much from rest of uk really?

Faith schools are a hideous anachronism - sooner we see the end of them the better.

Or people faith apply to faith schools and people of no faith apply to no faith schools - everyone gets what they want

That doesn't work though, senior, because we'd be outside the distance cut-off for non-faith school...

That doesn't work, Seniorcitizen1, when there is only 1 non-faith school to 5 faith schools, and non-faith or wrong-faith children run the very real risk of not getting any place at all (because only one non-faith school) and ending up having to travel out of borough.

The argument about lower priority if your first choice was elsewhere I recall being used in an area where I lived in when single, it being an area with grammar schools. Perhaps the only difference between this argument and that of the OPs proposal is that grammar schools are selection by a test, whereas for faith schools you can not easily tell the difference between someone playing the system and not. Those who 'rediscover their faith' and attend church only when their children grow up, and are noticeably absent when the child catechism classes are not being held.

The state should not fund faith schools. If you want your child "raised in a religion" it should be entirely self funded.

If your going to abolish faith schools you also need to abolish Grammer Schools then, as they are also tax payer funded yet only a few areas in the country have them its a very unfair system

Agree entirely, x2boys.

‘The PinkyBlunder ammendment’ I like it. I’m going to introduce this to my household

Seniorcitizen1 that doesn’t work. There’s less non-faith schools than faith schools in most areas and more non-religious people than religious people making up the general population. This is why most people get into bother at school admission time.

Levelling the playing field in education is about so more than faith schools. We are an elitist society, we want "the best" and we can only achieve this if there is someone or something of lower status with which to compare ourselves. Take away the faith schools and we'll find another way.

In my town there is a very good C of E school it is actually open to anyone that has a recognised faith be that Islam ,Christianity and different divisions of Christianity etc but you need proof from the Vicar,Priest ,Imman etc that you attend worship regularly what normally happens is that parents normally rediscover their faith around the end of yr 4 and start going to church etc regularly untill their child has secured a place its a farce .

Not all faith schools have faith / church attendance as an admission criterion.

Some church leaders oppose this as they feel the school is for the community and that faith admissions criteria leads to hypocrisy with people attending church just do that they can attend school.

My understanding is gnat this view is now supported by the Church of England.

Faith should be a subject for Sunday scgool, synagogue, mosque etc. No schools should be faith schools as by definition they divide communities.

I agree with rightsaidfred about results.

Would be lovely but in this village you only have one school and it's a faith school - because it's an outstanding school it attracts 'faith' applications from far and wide meaning that kids in the village don't get places and have to be transported to schools in the nearest town that have spaces. There is no 'choice' for those kids.

Wonky if that was Scotland then all the children in the village would go to the school and anyone else who wanted to go could apply for any spare spaces but would be responsible for their own transport. Busing children away from their local schools seems so ridiculous, and costly.

It's not without issues in that housing costs near good schools are higher but at the same time, schools are more representative of their community. Our school was really mixed as the school catchment included a council estate and a new build "exec" type estate and some in between housing. It benefits all the children imo.

Wonkylegs: a good example of where a LA should be able to insist in some sort of veto over admissions criteria.

LAs now have no ability to plan for sensible geographical provision. They may even end up having to provide free transport for children to go elsewhere because the local school FUNDED BY THE LA in running costs, chooses only to admit church goers. Mad!

Schools should be about educating our children in an egalitarian tradition, not about religion.