To have not chosen an outstanding Catholic primary?

[MakingABoobOfIt]

So, primary school applications are done. We are lucky as we live in a rural area and so have a choice of schools, however most are not great. I haven’t chosen the local catholic primary as an option - even though its outstanding and less than 5 minutes walk from our house. I feel very strongly about DS not being Catholic educated, as I have serious issues with the Church, however I’m starting to doubt my decision as lots of local mums insist you ‘wouldn’t even know it’s Catholic’ 🤨 Having been Catholic-educated I very much doubt this, however I’m worried I’ve made a bad decision - should I have ignored my own issues to get DS into an outstanding (and by all accounts lovely) school?

First communion prep is carried out by the Church and not the school, in my London borough anyway.

My DC is at an outstanding Catholic primary school but there is nothing outstanding about it so I’d encourage those to take the Ofsted hype with a grain of salt particularly if associated with a faith school.
We are practising Catholics and the expectation is that children are educated in a Catholic school. I’m not clear why anyone would apply if not Catholic; leave the spaces for those who want their DCs to be educated in a RC school and have no issue with a faith based education. I doubt anyone will be forced into a place at an outstanding oversubscribed faith school.

Meh. My kids go to a catholic school. We are not catholic and there is a high proportion of non believers there (lapsed, atheists or practising other faiths). The children spend time visiting mosques, temples and Cofe churches. In the 7 years i have had children there it's never been an issue for us.

Depends where you are Iggity and it is a recent change even in many parishes where that now is the case. It changed where we live between my 2nd and 3rd children.

@MAFIL yes I know it varies. I grew up in NI and it happened at school however in Rep of Ireland my niece/nephews also happened at Church. I just assumed schools don’t have the time.

The CofE school might be very hands off right now.

But it only takes a new Head to come in promising the Governors doing the interviewing all the Godly Wonders they could possibly imagine, bringing the Children to Know God's Love etc, etc, ad nauseum that says what the Diocesan members want to hear at interview, for everything to change.

The music is better in RC schools, anyhow. No sodding My Lighthouse or anything else trotted out by Hillsong ever again

All schools pray, teach RE and practice collective worship Catholic or not.
They really don't. I know that technically the law says there must be a collective act of worship every day but that is widely ignored by many, many schools (I would say the majority of secondary schools that are not faith schools).
In the school I work at each year group has assembly once a week or once a fortnight, depending on the year group, and no-one has prayed in assembly for 15 years.

I realise it may be different in primary schools

@KatyCarrCan yes we're in the UK. The curriculum is followed, but by the bare thread minimum. So for example they were rotating the faiths in RE, and literally did a page in the textbook on each. My daughter was really interested in Hinduism from this brief encounter in lessons so I took her to the library to learn more. Pastoral support is more for signposting. They have careers advice, but the school does not support the c-card scheme for free condoms which is available locally. Advice/counselling is provided by the school reverend, who is old and I can imagine rather old school! Evolution was completely missed although I am assured it is covered in the secondary phase! So in summary, the school is very old school. It was recently invited to join a multi-faith academy (most schools are academies in my area) and the board of governors could not agree on the move and therefore the school is currently in limbo. We also cannot opt out of mass, which my kids hate, but we cannot object to their attendance due to being at a faith school.

all schools must carry out daily collective worship
I have worked in 5 schools and none of them had daily collective worship. Admittedly these are secondary schools so it may be more prevalent in primary schools, but even then there is a big difference between mass and morning prayers (which they had at a catholic school I visited) compared to singing a song or two in assembly.

We didn't put any faith schools on DS's application. We're both atheists so we dont want him to go to a faith school, there's nothing wrong with that.

Ofsted ratings don't mean that much. A friend of mine, who is a teacher, said it's just a tick box exercise and doesn't mean your child is getting a well rounded experience.

You didn’t even put the catholic school on your list and only put schools outside the catchment? The first one you put is CoE.......It is a surprising decision

When our moved to our town, we were told that our local school was an outstanding one. It's a big school so didn't expect any issues getting in but due to its popularity we were told that we couldn't get a place and DD only had a place in a school further away that had just come out of special measures. I was very upset at first until I visited the school. They got a new Head and I had a very good vibe about it.

As it is, I grew happier with it as the years went by whereas my neighbours started to complain more and more about the outstanding school. Teachers leaving, poor morale, and overall poor management. The Head left and at the next Ofsted visit, it got a report of requiring improvement. The school has been Outstanding the last 3 Ofsted visit.

My DD next report came back as good and she excelled there. Ofted reports gives you the picture of how good the Head knows what to do to tick the right boxes at that particular time.

If you visited the school and liked it, you were right to go with your gut feeling.

My three are at a catholic school. I like that it’s a Christian school (I’m a member of another denomination) and I’m accepting that they are teaching them some things that are different to my own beliefs (e.g Mary). However if you don’t want your children exposed to Catholicism definitely do not send them to a catholic school. They are very religious and I think you need to be at peace with that. It’s not fair to send them and then be making a fuss over prayers, nativities and RE. So YANBU.

I second @MitziK’s point. I was educated entirely at bog-standard Catholic schools, but, honestly, their take on religion was far more sophisticated and liberal (and secular) than anything my son encountered at a CofE village school with an unfortunately close relationship with a zealous, evangelical vicar, who was a biblical literalist, among other things. I was unpleasantly surprised.

I mean, the nuns taught Genesis as allegory, and were on board with evolution. Unlike the CofE vicar.

You have made the right decision. Ds went to an outstanding Catholic primary school & there was a definite difference in how the catholic & non catholic children were treated, plus most of the parents & children knew each other already from church or being former pupils of the school to the extent of excluding the non catholic children a lot of the time. There was also a lot of bullying & the non catholic children were often wrongly blamed. Ds is still having counselling age 16 due to the poor treatment he received at that school, I wish we had sent him to the local requires improvement school instead.

@adviceneededon you've been very unlucky. I've never known a school to have even one of those issues and yet they're all happening in your school. I didn't even think it was possible for a school to opt out of sex ed completely.

@KatyCarrCan it's not. Like I said, everything is taught as per the curriculum but very very thinly. Sex education is taught through science lessons. It's hardly unlucky when the school gets such excellent results, it's just not how I would have preferred for my children to be taught. I'm very balanced, I work in a very diverse environment and I'm very open minded. At my children's school, things are only seen by one view and I think this is sad in an ever-changing society.

Neither of my dd believe. Both told me from an early age they didn't believe in the god. We never told them that yay or ney it's theory descion to make.

Please tell me you put it as your last choice? Otherwise you could get a truly awful schools miles and miles away.

@Naomh I second @MitziK’s point. I was educated entirely at bog-standard Catholic schools, but, honestly, their take on religion was far more sophisticated and liberal (and secular) than anything my son encountered at a CofE village school with an unfortunately close relationship with a zealous, evangelical vicar, who was a biblical literalist, among other things. I was unpleasantly surprised.

This is very much my experience too. I was raised catholic, went to a convent school etc, everything was all done by rote, kind of went through the motions.

Roll on 20 years and my local Protestant school is much more hardcore, a gay couple left the parish as they were ostracised by weird comments an evangelical curate made. A huge amount of the children's time is spent in the church attending services, and the rector has a very active role in the school.

I'm not sure you made the right decision here.

Why would a Catholic school skip over the teaching of dinosaurs?

If they’ve done so it’s probably got nothing to do with them being Catholic.

Catholics believe in evolution and dinosaurs (officially not just in terms of ordinary members) so that’s all a bit weird.

I put YABU because places at these school are usually like hens teeth, so you don’t normally get to “reject” them!

The amount of intolerance and ignorance of the Christian religion on this thread is breathtaking.

Yy, @Twixes. I had anticipated that the CofE flavour to DS’s village primary would be way more progressive than my own education — we were in the countryside and there was no choice of non-religious school for DS — so I was absolutely taken aback at how reactionary it was. And the Bible as literally true thing blew my mind. That I was standing in the same room as a university-educated 35 year-old-man who said things like ‘It’s in the Bible so it’s beautiful and true’, and the power to say it to my child at assembly baffled me.

I’d had considerable, far more positive experience of the CofE previously, and recognise that not all CofE clergy, or schools, are like this.

We chose a faith school and I really wish I hadn’t. I don’t agree with their teaching, the endless RE claptrap and bible verses. Schools are there to educate not indoctrinate.