To think faith schools should be forced to change their application process?

[storminborehamwood]

Most people accept that you can't discriminate against someone for their religion. So why can faith schools do it when it comes to kids getting a place?

AIBU to think state-funded faith schools should be forced to remove religious criteria from applications?

I know state-funded faith schools get extra funding from religion and that supposedly justifies giving priority to kids with religious ties.

I just can't understand why it's illegal to mark someone down for a job application based on their religion, but it's okay to do it for a school application.

So basically people want the Jewish schools with the good marks to admit their children and to be exactly like a Jewish school but not Jewish. That way they don’t have to send their kids to the actual non denominational school. Like they would like the local kosher shops to be waitrose so they don’t have to shop at tesco.

Ok so it's a local issue with certain dynamics. That's fair enough.

My comments in general still stand though.

@NiceGerbil - re the Jewish holidays questions presumably because it’s inconvenient for non Jewish people to be off for Jewish holidays as they will have to work. They are scattered throughout the year. Re the kosher food, lots of Jewish schools have “milchig “ kitchen so no meat. Some people not of the Jewish religion are intolerant of that. Not everyone of course. But Jewish rules don’t necessarily suit lots of non Jews and so they can get angry and upset because they think that these things shouldn’t be done in state schools. That they should only be for “secular” (they mean Christian secular) types.

Also @NiceGerbil - what do you mean by “certain sects”? Do you mean Jewish sects? Or other religions? Or are you talking about catholic schools in NI, etc?

Generally religious schools are supervised pretty strongly for “British values” (well those of non Christian religions are). I think that’s fine and schools should have certain basic matters they teach kids. But that’s not the same as just saying all religious schools = bad.

I'm picking religions at random here for the sake of simplicity:

The Catholic children who attend Catholic school would still have to be educated somewhere, probably at state expense, if that Catholic school didn't exist or if it didn't have room for them because it was filled with Protestants, Muslims, Jews, etc. So long as the state isn't giving the Catholic school any more money per student than it gives secular schools, I don't see the problem. It's not costing taxpayers any extra.

I'd rather think about the more general points raised tbh.

If a Jewish school is undersubscribed then non Jewish children will get a place. If it's taken then the parents will have made that decision.

Same as a non RC parent sending a child to an RC school where the religious side and beliefs are key.

On the general points that I put above though. What do you think?

It's not about money.

It's about all the stuff I put upthread.

A closed Christian sect and a closed Jewish sect that are both fairly local.

What is the problem with schools having students from a range of religions?

I think it’s crazy that religious schools exist at all.

Who in their right mind would want children divided up by religion instead of learning together?

And yeah, I know plenty on none Christians apply for catholic and CofE schools. But they are still majority Christian and reinforce the idea that Christian is the ‘default’ (and I’m not sure there are very many none Muslim children at Islamic schools or none Jewish children at Jewish schools? Though happy to be corrected if I’m wrong).

Surely if your religion is so important you can just teach your children about it at home?

Why do we think religious schools do better though?

It's only some religious schools which do better, you know. My area has far more 'Christian' faith schools than proportionate to the numbers of regular churchgoers. Some do well, are oversubscribed so can apply selection. Parents undergo that mysterious preschool or year 5 epiphany and start attending church. The school prospers by having more kids with parents who are invested in their education.
Other schools faith schools are undersubscribed ... they can't apply selection. Their supposed ethos doesn't seem to make any impact on their ratings.

So a parent who lives near the first school who can't or won't attend church to secure a place for their child may find the child gets allocated a place in the second school. Fantastic.

YANBU OP. Discriminating against someone because of their religion (or lack thereof is wrong. Discriminating against a child because of the religion (or faked religiosity) of their parent is outrageous.

Just to be clear @NiceGerbil - no one is saying it’s a problem for non Jewish kids to be at Jewish schools (and indeed it’s relatively common in Uk in areas where not so many Jews as in borehamwood). But the issue is if people are not supportive of a school’s Jewish ethos but want to send their kid there because the kids at that school do well academically. That tends to be bad for the school.

Also @SusieBob - us Jews are taxpayers too. We have no less (and no more) right to schools than you do.

It's not about Jewish schools!

It's about faith schools full stop.

@Just10moreminutesplease -Jewish people want their children educated in our religion. It’s a fairly involved religion so lots of education needed. I consider many Jews to be in “their right mind” regardless of their wish to educate their children in religious schools.

Just to correct you too, I personally know Muslim kids in Jewish schools which are under subscribed. Jewish people are not as a general rule bigoted (of course some are same as any other people).

My school was maybe 50% Jewish and 30% Asian.

No problems at all.

' It’s a fairly involved religion so lots of education needed. '

Again I would raise the widely reported issues in some faith schools around this.

@NiceGerbil - the ops op is clearly about Jewish schools if she is talking about borehamwood (which I think she might be….). Anyway intolerance to the Jewish religion is not that different from intolerance to other religions (although there are obv some differences).

Don’t like religion- don’t send your kid to a religious school. Many people do, hence why religious schools are so popular. We pay taxes too. We are just as entitled to schools that meet our needs

@NiceGerbil - great. I don’t know what widely reported issues you are referring to. Do you mean extremism?

Generally Jewish languages and education is likely not to be all that interesting to non Jews. And it’s a lot of work to learn Hebrew etc. But it works for many (eg lots of Muslim families find kosher food advantageous, etc).

OP doesn't give any indication like that whatsoever.

OP has only posted once and I can't see at all how it can be interpreted in meaning Jewish schools and borehamwood.

The vast majority of religious schools in UK are Christian.

?

Extremism? What the hell?

Where did that come from?!

Also just to be clear- my dds go to a religious school. I a progressive Jew and moved to a very specific area to ensure we were in catchment and that they could get the Jewish education I wanted. It’s something I want them educated on. It’s key for me that they learn about our religion that they learn Hebrew and that they celebrate our holidays and don’t grow up feeling weird or different.

I want that for other religions too. Of course I agree that there are basics that religious schools should comply with but there are standards in the Uk and inspections.

I think allowing people to practice and be educated in their own religions is just the basics of tolerance. I am absolutely supportive of it.

[quote CayrolBaaaskin]@Just10moreminutesplease -Jewish people want their children educated in our religion. It’s a fairly involved religion so lots of education needed. I consider many Jews to be in “their right mind” regardless of their wish to educate their children in religious schools.

Just to correct you too, I personally know Muslim kids in Jewish schools which are under subscribed. Jewish people are not as a general rule bigoted (of course some are same as any other people).[/quote]
I’m sure people of all religions want their children to learn about their faith. I just don’t think school is the place for it.

Surely it’s better for children to grow and learn together rather than be separated based on their families’ beliefs?

Thanks for clearing that up for me. In my area it is only Christian schools which have a significant number of children from other regions applying (studied this as part of my degree but sadly only based on local data). Unfortunately this just means more children than I initially thought are growing up seeing themselves as ‘other’ to the religion they are primarily exposed to in school.

I don’t believe any collective of people are “as a general rule bigoted” (though obviously there will be individuals in every religion who are so).

@NiceGerbil - hmm I suppose maybe I think she in borehamwood because her user name is @storminborehamwood.

What is your issue with these sects schools? Extremism in Muslim schools in Birmingham was something reported in media.

The thing with Jewish schools in the UK is that now they are not able to discriminate against children of mothers who underwent non orthodox conversions. So now the criteria is attendance at X number of services (which anyone can attend). This is because the Jewishness of a child is determined by their birth- traditionally, you would determine someone's Jewishness by their parents' ketubah/marriage certificate but of course not all Jews would have this- there are Jews who only have a civil marriage and there are Jews who married in a masorti/reform ceremony (so their ketubah is not recognized by the orthodox). However, despite this, I have never heard of any non Jews trying to 'game the system' and getting their child into a Jewish school. I heard of children of reform converts (kids from my synagogue) attending a less religious Jewish school like JFS. I imagine Yavneh would be similar as they employ the same criteria. The more religious Jewish schools are able to filter out the less religious children and indeed the reform converts because they ask for a letter from an orthodox rabbis certifying you keep kosher (which many Jews in the UK do not strictly keep even if they belong to an orthodox synagogue).

Also as someone whose husband and sisters-in-law have exclusively attended Jewish schools, the reason for the good results in Jewish schools is private tuition. Yes middle class kids in any desirable comprehensive have the same tuition, but almost all children who get into a grammar school would choose the grammar school over the comprehensive. Many Jewish parents would choose the Jewish school over the private/grammar school, due to reasons like kosher food, antisemitism, Jewish holidays etc. So you get a lot of kids who belong at the top schools in the country at the Jewish school and this drags up the average mark.

Local closed Christian and Jewish sects.

Your extremism comment was strange and unhelpful.