To think faith schools are great and it’s only the admission cheats that make them unfair?

[Wondermule]

My second controversial post in a few days. I don’t need a hard hat at this point, I need a bunker and full ghillie suit. But here goes.

Inspired by a thread, where a poster happily shared that they lied about going to church to get their kids into a Catholic school, before denouncing the admission system as deeply unfair...

I would like to put to the good people of mumsnet that actually, admission by religion is a really good idea. And it is only the people that cheat the admission system that keep it unfair for others.

Religion is a great criteria for school admissions. It doesn’t indicate intelligence; it isn’t an indicator of wealth; it would keep sibling groups together; and the ethos and PSHE would be generally in keeping with the parents’ beliefs.

The reason why faith schools are ‘better’ are because of non-religious people with intelligent kids cheating the system to get their kids a place. This then perpetuates the cycle - the kids perform well, the school becomes more desirable, so more people cheat to get their kids in.

So aside from depriving genuine applicants of school places, they are contributing to a system that they denounce as unfair. Whereas if they stopped playing the system, schools would actually be more mixed in terms of demographics, more equal, and there wouldn’t a stampede for just a few of them.

Phew! Thoughts please?!

Just to reply to the comments in this thread about diversity - the Catholic education service census released each year shows that Catholic schools take in a higher proportion of minority ethnic pupils when compared to all state schools. If course this is not diversity in terms of religion but the world wide reach of the Catholic Church means that the schools are diverse in terms of ethnicity. I don't have any idea about Church of England schools and they could show a very different picture.

No one wants to cancel RE blackberry.

It's separate to what is being discussed here.

@NiceGerbil I think a few posters did!
I think admission issues are very area dependent. The schools I have had connections to or worked in have had a wider social and ethnic mix than surrounding schools. That might not be the case in all areas although as a pp said, Catholic schools are overall more ethnically diverse.

@Llama33

Just to reply to the comments in this thread about diversity - the Catholic education service census released each year shows that Catholic schools take in a higher proportion of minority ethnic pupils when compared to all state schools. If course this is not diversity in terms of religion but the world wide reach of the Catholic Church means that the schools are diverse in terms of ethnicity. I don't have any idea about Church of England schools and they could show a very different picture.

But only Catholic minority ethnic! That's not diverse. Catholic children need to mix with more non-Catholic children from different minority ethnic backgrounds.

I said in my post that this is not diversity in terms of religion. I didn't actually give an opinion on whether Catholic children need to mix with non-Catholic children. My post was a statement of fact about diversity figures in Catholic schools.

There are many schools in this country where the vast majority of children are white. In these schools children are likely to be Christian or of no faith. Presumably these children also need to mix with children from different minority ethnic backgrounds. This is a whole other debate

There's a surprising number of people on this thread who either don't understand that religion doesn't stop you paying tax, or don't understand that the state gets its funding from taxpayers (yes, I know, borrowing, but that's just the money of future taxpayers).

There are other arguments against religious schools, and you can use the "state funded" argument to argue that they should be in proportion to the religions in the population. But I don't think it's a good argument against the existence of religious schools.

Zevia

Why? We’re equally suspicious of all religions, whoever their constituents?
I dont understand what you mean by your second question but, for about the 6th time, the average Christian family in the UK is far wealthier than the average Muslim family. Ovviously Christians in the UK are also far more likely to be white.

I am highly, highly doubtful that segregating children who are more likely to be rich and white, from children who are far more likely to be poor and brown, would reverse the current wealth gap.“

Sorry, misplaced question mark. My second sentence was a statement. Our family is dubious of religion, full stop. Don’t care who’s practicing it. Don’t have a religious faith or believe faith schools should exist.

Teach religion as a comparative subject, by all means, because the philosophies are interesting and it’s useful to understand where other people are coming from. That can be done without the indoctrination.

So how should admissions be dealt with in a way that is fair and equal?

But why would religion be anyone's first thought when coming up with a way to be fair and equal? Most people in the country do not even follow an organised religion. There is no need for schools to be teaching religious doctrine; that should be something parents provide for their children outside of school, if they want it for them. We wouldn't have schools based on parent's political views that taught based on those beliefs.

If you want total fairness, admissions should be random, so done by lottery.

Honestly I'd like every school to be really good so admission by postcode would work. Clearly that is unfortunately being affected by people perceiving certain schools as better and gaming the system by buying houses close to those schools and therefore (arguably) making those schools actually be better. Arguably.

Education and religion should NEVER mix.

On this basis alone, YABU.

People can choose faith schools if they wish but the state should not fund them. There are no non-faith state primaries where I live, it's shit

The faith schools I went to admitted on a points scoring basis which disproportionately favoured two parent households/households where one parent had the time to volunteer at mass/clean the church etc. Not so keen on that tbh.

Not a fan of religious schools, I prefer the Scottish system of going to your local school rather than all the admission craziness that seems to go on elsewhere.

That said our local school is naice, not overcrowded, well resourced etc. If it was rubbish I might have different thoughts.

How about:

A child is entitled to a school place at
a) the closest school or
b) if more than one school within a certain distance from their primary residence (probably increasing in distance from infants to FE), whichever school is randomly allocated to the first child in the family.

Oddly enough my mum always went to a C/E church , volunteered, cleaned it each week and went every Sunday. I didn't go to a church school! The only one around was a bus ride away and we didn't have a car. Local schools all the way.
I do think the whole ' catchment' thing needs looking into though. Plus I do think people like the kudos of their child going to a faith school. It makes them a bit more superior somehow. People I've known are oddly braggy about it, if that is a word. They really put the time and effort in to get these places.
The education is much better generally so I can see why to be fair but it's just another uneven playing field isn't it? Something else to divide us up. If it's faith and private you've really made it I suppose!

@CrayonInThreeBits

How about:

A child is entitled to a school place at
a) the closest school or
b) if more than one school within a certain distance from their primary residence (probably increasing in distance from infants to FE), whichever school is randomly allocated to the first child in the family.

The best schools would be in posh areas, then postcode cheating would begin.

I've never understood why faith schools are still a thing. To me, it's like having faith GPs, faith supermarkets or faith motorways.

Wondermule in most densely-populated areas, there would be enough schools to mitigate that somewhat. Usually, the wealth of urban areas is quite patchy. In less densely-populated areas, people just go to their local school anyway usually.

If a school is private , but practices a certain faith do the parents still need to go to church etc? Just curious really as I've no idea and none of my friends or family are privately educated.
Do they have different rules?

I went to a faith school (RC). It did me no good at all, standards weren't particularly high at the time, and I was left with a hatred of Catholicism which has never left me.

My two older brothers were also educated in an RC school, where the boys were systemically physically and sexually abused by the priests and brothers. My brothers weren't, fortunately, but it was an open secret back in the 80s when it happened. Strangely, neither has been too keen to repeat the experience with their own kids....

@Spidey66

I went to a faith school (RC). It did me no good at all, standards weren't particularly high at the time, and I was left with a hatred of Catholicism which has never left me.

My two older brothers were also educated in an RC school, where the boys were systemically physically and sexually abused by the priests and brothers. My brothers weren't, fortunately, but it was an open secret back in the 80s when it happened. Strangely, neither has been too keen to repeat the experience with their own kids....

We’re not discussing whether religion in schools is a good thing.

We are discussing whether using it for the purposes of admissions is fairer than the current system.

Very, very few people on this thread have grasped that.

So for example, I live in suburban home counties, and there are at least four secondary schools within teen walking distance. At the moment, highly stratified by religion and wealth, with vastly different resources and results. But under that system a kid living with me would be allocated a random one of the three state schools (or the private school which would be nationalised if it were up to me ).

@Wondermule
The title of this thread is...To think faith schools are great and it’s only the admission cheats that make them unfair? which to me indicates a discussion on whether faith schools are 'great'. Which I've answered. In my experience, they weren't.

Whereas where I grew up (Northern English town), there was the town secondary school, and everyone went there, probably everyone still goes there, none of this school choice malarkey 😂

I live in Tower Hamlets. Last time I checked, and assuming I've remembered it correctly, about 40% of pupils are "white british" and 40% have a Bangladeshi background. Most schools have a religious affiliation, though not all the CoE one's give preference on religious grounds. (But some do.)

There is not an even split between the two major groups within schools. There are many schools where Ofsted reports say ninety-something percent are Bangladeshi, and presumably to balance that out there are other schools where nearly all the "white British" children are. There are multiple schools in Tower Hamlets (including ironically non-selective CoE ones) where a white British child would be the only one in their class (I know in real life one adult and two children who have been that one.)

I don't think this is a good thing, I would like to see mixing so that each school represents the overall demographics. Selecting on race to ensure an even mix in each school would be controversial, but ending the ability of some schools to discriminate against the nearly half of children from a non-Christian background seems like a sensible way forward.