to wish that pushy parents would stop pretending to be religious in order to get a place for Lily at the faith school?

[Caroline1852]

If these schools are "better" it is because parents are clamouring for places, thereby artificially raising the standards. Left to their own, the number of faith schools would dwindle dramatically. There are nearly 5,000 C of E schools, most of them oversubscribed, yet bottoms on church pews are falling (save for a lot of red-faced couples and their 10 year olds). I have nothing against faith schools by the way.
Grrrr it's that time of year again!

UQD - Actually you are quite wrong about the requirement to get God or lie in order to attend a faith primary. My two sons (now in secondary schooling) have both attended faith primary schooling (they both attended a top of an LEA league table C of E (controlled primary) in the North of England, then when we moved south a couple of years ago the youngest attended a different top of its LEA legue table C of E (aided primary). I would not have lied to get them in there.

Caroline - read my post again. I am talking about a situation where you are faced with the choice of only a faith school.

Anna - why does anyone "need" a faith school? I have never had this answered to my satisfaction, and I'd echo madameplatypus's bemusement in her post of Fri 05-Oct-07 20:59:16. It's not the same as a demonstrable, proveable need like all the other things you mention (disability, maternity, rosds etc.)

UQD - we are talking about perception of need.

Just because you don't perceive a need doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Let's take epidurals during childbirth. Some people would/do argue that no woman needs an epidural to give birth ie no-one ever died from the pain of childbirth. So why should the NHS (ie the taxpayer) fund epidurals?

UQD - I thought your complaint was that faith schools were not open to all?

I have just had a look at a couple of LEAs admissions policies. Where the faith school is VC (vountary controlled) - which is the vast majority of village primaries -the admissions criteria is the same as for non faith schools (1. Looked after children, 2. Medical reasons, 3. A sibling link 4. Distance from home front door to main entrance of the school. It seems you only need lie or demonstrate the required faith to get into a VA (voluntary aided) school.

That's just daft, though. You have to back up the "need" with evidence. Otherwise people could start claiming they "needed" all sorts of special provision in their children's education.

The state education system cannot and should not attempt to accommodate every unproveable superstition claimed by each and every family who pay tax into that system.

What people want to teach their children at home is up to them - the fact that I think it's a load of baloney is neither here nor there. You can't stop me telling DD that "The Hobbit" is true as we read it together at the moment - but imagine how stupid it would seem if I started asking for this to be reflected in her schooling, and if it had had any effect on the admission procedure put in place by our City Council.

No, YANBU. And while we're at it, why does everyone place so much importance on the school? A good education, IMHO is a combination of a good school, a motivated child, and parents who encourage, support, and help all they can. Getting into a good school does not automatically mean your child will do well.

My non-faith school's nickname was "Prampushers" as we had lots of teenage pregnancies. The school didn't have a good reputation, but I was bright, and my parents pushed all the right buttons and I sailed through 10 GCSEs without a problem.

Personally, I was baptised Catholic, but am not sure what I believe, if anything at all, so, I did not get married in a church, and my dd is not christened.

My brother did the whole "let's pretend to go to church to get ds christened" and I think he's wrong, and a friend at work openly admits her dd is christened simply for educational purposes. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Where is your backbone people? Stand up for what you believe - or don't believe - in!

I have a number of issues with faith schools, including faith/ putative faith influence over admission, and the fact that faith/ putative faith should have no influence over what they are taught once there.

But I have been over this. Time and time again. What, realistically, can I add?

UQD - Christianity is integral to our State, so we don't need to "prove" it in order to justify using taxpayer's money to support it.

You are confusing your own (non)-beliefs with those of the state. You don't happen believe in Christianity but the state does.

How very convenient. Here's what the British Humanist Association says, anyway:

?To expand state-funded faith schools is to increase discrimination in school admissions against pupils and their parents and to increase employment discrimination against teachers. It means more pupils will be segregated by religion and ethnicity and denied the right to a fully balanced education or to school with children from different backgrounds and learn with and from them.?

?Again and again opinion polls have shown clear majorities opposed to faith schools and their expansion but the Government is dismissing these serious and widespread concerns as mere ?misunderstandings?. The Government has behaved disgracefully, both in its general policies and in the way it has conducted itself in this present announcement, stitching up a statement with religious vested interests behind closed doors.?

"It means more pupils will be segregated by religion and ethnicity" - so what?

"and denied the right to a fully balanced education" - rubbish

"or to school with children from different backgrounds and learn with and from them" - so what?

Well, Anna's responses make it clear that she and I see education as two completely different things. If anyone thinks that segregation is a good thing, or doesn't see how people whose parents believe different things can learn from one another, then I really can't find any way of engaging them in argument. It's not that I can't be bothered, it's just that there is nowhere to go.

can I join your gang, UQD?

I don't think either of those things UQD and I didn't say so - don't put words in my mouth, please.

I just don't think that that is the most important thing at school. It is much, much more important for school to educate pupils effectively at reading, writing, mathematics etc than to provide a forum for social engineering.

By all means. I think I've got to the point where everything I say is going to be a case of "I refer to the answer I gave at X."

"social engineering" oh, has it come to this.....

In what way is it social engineering to say that schools should be open to ALL kids ? WITHOUT prejudice?

"Faith" is social engineering.

Blimey.

At this point I want to be in UQD's gang. And we have some pretty fundamental differences.

Although I suspect Anna and I may have even more...

UQD- faith school don't neccessarily mean segragation. There are more children at my ds's R/C school who don't have English as a first language than at the non - faith school down the road which is predominately white.

UQD - the reason parents pretend to believe in God in order to get their children into faith schools is because those schools are better academically. I fully support any parent who tries to get their child the best education they can.

Destroying those schools won't provide any child with any advantage.

For what it's worth, my child is in a multi-national, multi-cultural, multi-faith school, which is also good academically and has very affordable fees. I'm lucky, I had that school on my doorstep.

But it's still an RC school, so the parents have to either be catholics, pretend to be catholics (difficult, admittedly, as others have pointed out) or at the very least not object to a catholic element in the education provided? And I'm not talking about racial segregation necessarily.

anna - so you are in the private sector, and that's up to you. Parents who don't pay can't control what happens there. I'm talking about state provision only, as I've made clear throughout - I think anyone who wants a religious-based education for their children should pay for it. Their money. Not mine to argue.

Some faith schools are better. Some are not. I've seen the "people want faith schools because they are better" argument knocked down, actually, by supporters of faith schools in the past - who argue that all they want is the faith ethos and damn the league tables.

Of the top 10 state secondary schools in our city, 8 are non-faith. People will try all the tricks to get their children into any "good" schools, not just faith schools.

hi again, just to point out that "Need" and "want" can be a debatable business, so it is better to stick to "rights".
There is such a thing as the right to receive religious education. It derives from the freedom of belief (article 18 of Universal declaration of HR) and freedom of education. The UK (along with many countries) recognises parents' right to educate their children according to their religious beliefs.
I am not saying this is not debatable in itself, but it is a recognised "right" nowadays.

bonitaMia - indeed, and here in France there are absolutely masses of state-supported religious schools

Assume that refers to the First Protocol of Article 2 of the Human Rights Act 1998, Part 2: "No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and teaching, the state shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions."

Okay. well - Amnesty, for one, has argued against this, indicating that this "does not require the government to establish or fund a particular type of education. The requirement to respect parents' convictions is intended to prevent indoctrination by the state. However schools can teach about religion and philosophy if they do so in an objective, critical, and pluralistic manner."

Which is exactly what most sensible atheists/humanists/rationalists want - schools where are children are equally welcome, and where people learn about religion, not "learn religion". Very different things.

This responds to Article 13 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: "The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds."

Even if the next 1,000 people joining this debate agree with UQD, that does not mean that he/they are right. It just means that they agree. The fact is, some people DO want faith schooling for their children. If that matters to them and their requirements can be accommodated within the state sector without costing the state more per capita, then why not?

UQD - oh dear, you wouldn't like the current system in France then.

Religious schools are ones where one religion is taught ie catechism and mass in Catholic schools.

State schools are ones where no talk of religion is allowed