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.

[quote CayrolBaaaskin]@Just10moreminutesplease - the view that religion should not be taught in schools is not a view I share. Not is it a view that the vast majority of Jews in the Uk share (I can only talk of my own religion). For us our schools are an important community hub. As I said though our religion has a lot of learning needed - practically it would be difficult if not impossible for me to teach all that at home.

As I said I think religious state schools are an important part of diversity and tolerance. Of course they should be inspected and teach within limits. But I think it’s a great thing we have such schools and I hope we can continue to have them.[/quote]
It’s not that I don’t think religion should be taught in schools. I think children should be taught about all world religions in a none biased way so that they, hopefully, grow up to be tolerant and are free to make up their own minds about their religious beliefs.

I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

I have massive issues with faith schools full stop esp that get state funding.

I am concerned about the reports going back years about what some schools are teaching and how.

I cannot see how that is not ok.

The fact that those children are s different faith/ a different group of the religion, so ignore that is not a position I'm going to adopt.

And my list put that way down anyway so why the focus on this in particular.

In areas where it's predominantly faith primaries and most schools are over subscribed. The result is children not of those faiths and ticking certain boxes in terms of adherence etc. Are discriminated against. By having a place only miles away.

@NiceGerbil - I am not not concerned about religious schools in that I think all of them are great. I am not concerned about the existence of them in general because many are very good and the government have standards to enforce on them the same as any other school. If some of them are not up to scratch it doesn’t mean we should ban all religious schools any more than we should ban all schools of a few are failing their ofstead inspection.

If there genuinely aren’t enough places of course more should be provided by the government but as we have already established that is nothing to do with religious schools.

@CayrolBaaaskin well I think their criteria is orthodox Jewish children. As I converted in the Liberal denomination, I can't join an orthodox synagogue! Or have an orthodox rabbi sign off on whether I keep kosher or shomer shabbat. I once asked my MIL if the rabbi was willing to sign off everyone who asked and she said she didn't think so, he had to have a reasonable belief that you were frum. So that rules out all the Jews who drive to shul.

But anyway it's not my ethos either :) and DH attended a Chabad primary school and they only taught in Yiddish. No English or Maths. They are now Ofsted regulated but classified as 'inadequate'.

@NiceGerbil - not really. Basically children of one particular religion are going to a more suitable school and others are going to another more suitable school. There is no discrimination

@Just10moreminutesplease - Jewish kids are taught about other religions (in some Jewish schools but perhaps not all). However they are taught most about Judaism. While that wouldn’t suit your kid (presumably as an atheist or agnostic) it would suit Jewish families. So I think it’s best to have schools for everyone including Jewish people not just for you or indeed me.

What agenda? As someone else pointed out upthread, this is only an issue if the school has to turn away a child of the faith it's intended to serve in order to accommodate a child not of that faith. Teaching non-Jews about Judaism or anything else isn't the purpose of Jewish schools. Teaching Jews about Judaism is. A religious Jewish school shouldn't have to turn away Jews who want to attend just to accept non-Jews who don't even want to attend a Jewish school, it's just that (according to you) there's no non-Jewish school nearby. If you're correct about that, the problem is the lack of secular schools. That problem is neither the fault nor the responsibility of any religious school, because they aren't the ones in charge of building them. The non-Jews not admitted to the Jewish school can go wherever the Jews you think they should have supplanted would have gone if your preferred policy was actually the rule.

You believe that my 50% Jewish school that had no noticeable religious affiliation had an unsuitable education?

Ok.

@onlychildhamster - legally it’s practice. Ultra orthodox schools can ask you live a certain way and some do (no tv etc.). But they cannot (whether state or private) demand the children are halachically Jewish. So if you and your family chose to live that lifestyle you could send your child to those schools. I have nieces and nephews and cousins in those schools. But I wouldn’t choose them for my dds because they’re not right for them. But I have no problem with them as long as they are keeping up to standards (and in fact many ultra orthodox schools are very good academically).

@NiceGerbil - I have no idea of any 50% Jewish school or how suitable it is for anyone. What I did say was that it makes sense for a Jewish school to select Jewish children over other children as that’s what it’s there for. Of course Jewish state schools must offer places to children of all religions and cannot select unless oversubscribed

They shouldn't exist.

They can also discriminate in their staff selection and promotion.

They change their entry criteria to get the 'right' kids in, RC schools used to not have many ESOL kids, until Polish people started to move tot he UK, suddenly you not only had to be baptised but baptised ASAP after birth and within a year of birth.

Then there is what is taught, as well, outside the RE classes, the language(s) taught, the history or the perspective of history, some subjects may not be available at all and others might be compulsory (Yes I am bitter about spending 3 years learning to cook and clean).

Faith schools also may offer counselling or pastoral care that is faith based. In VI form a student made the mistake of telling a teacher she thought she was pregnant, she was told if she was she could have the baby and stay in VI form but if she had an abortion she had to leave.

I totally understand people wanting their children to share their faith but I think that could be accommodated, maybe have secular schools across the board but with a half or even a full day once a week where children can attend a religious school or the school could provide religious instruction.

I think study of world religions should be a secular subject.

But state religious schools are inspected (more rigorously IMO than secular) and required to comply with certain standards.

Ofsted inspect all schools but faith schools have a separate inspection of their RE done by a member of that faith.

[quote CayrolBaaaskin]@Just10moreminutesplease - Jewish kids are taught about other religions (in some Jewish schools but perhaps not all). However they are taught most about Judaism. While that wouldn’t suit your kid (presumably as an atheist or agnostic) it would suit Jewish families. So I think it’s best to have schools for everyone including Jewish people not just for you or indeed me.[/quote]
But this is exactly where we don’t agree. I don’t believe it is right to teach children primarily about one religion at school, from a viewpoint that this religion is the ‘right’ one. As far as I can see this is divisive and I believe society is a better place when people see that we are all more similar than we are different.

Not only that but school, in my opinion, should be reserved as a place where children are free to learn and grow through none biased education. And that’s because I think a child’s right to make their own decisions is more important than their parent’s wish to see them educated in a specific faith.

You are wrong to assume I’m not religious by the way. Believing that schools should be secular does not say anything about my personal religious beliefs.

@sashh - that only applies to very narrow definition of teaching of the actual religion and it still has to abide by “British values” etc. the type of thing you mentioned should not be present in any school (faod religious schools can’t discriminate re staff etc).

How is it discriminatory?

If you do not believe in the religion being taught within the school why on earth would you want your child to go there? And why on earth would they want the complications of lots of children sitting out of lessons etc?

My children go to a non denominational PS and will go to a non denominational HS.

But why should all schools be non denominational / secular? Surely it is about choice.

There are plenty of other secular schools for those who don’t subscribe to a particular religion, or for those who don’t want that to be such a big part of their child’s school day.

I’m not bitter that there are catholic schools locally that my DC could not attend - we are not catholic so why would I want them to attend?

@Missgemini

I think we should be trying to improve the other schools that aren't doing so well, instead of being annoyed at the religious schools. Why do we think religious schools do better though?

Because they have children in them whose parents are more invested in their education mainly. On the whole they have less children in FSM.

@Just10moreminutesplease - I don’t know that Jewish schools necessarily teach children that theirs is the “right” religion. But they teach them about the religion. Which is important to Jewish parents. I don’t think it’s about right and wrong though- I’m Jewish but I don’t think other religions are “wrong”. I’m happy to be tolerant towards them ans would hope to get same in return

@QueenFreesia2021 - hear hear. It’s about choice.

I'm imagining the reaction I'd get if I were somehow able to set up a faith NHS GP practice, built on land owned by a local religious group that also gave my practice a bit of extra funding on the side, say, for a monk to come in once a week and say prayers for the sick, but getting the majority of its funding from the state. By putting some extra prove-your-religion admin barriers in the way, I'd be filtering out not just people who have the wrong religion, but also people who find it more difficult to jump through admin hoops. Filtering out those patients might well mean my patients need fewer health services on average, so the patients I do accept will get a less-stretched service. This is totally justified, apparently, because some people want a GP service that will reinforce and conform to their religious beliefs — obviously, it's totally unreasonable to expect religious people to use a generic GP who provides services to everyone, and get their religious health-related concerns (prayers, religious guidance, rituals etc.) dealt with at their own community-funded religious institutions. Even if I'm the closest NHS GP practice to you, you might have to walk past my surgery to get to the one you're allowed to register at, the one that takes all the people who can't jump those hoops. Perhaps you'd prefer not to use my surgery anyway, because you'd rather not have a particular religious slant to your healthcare. But that doesn't mean that it's okay that you have to trudge past the nearby state-funded faith GP, with your dicky hip and your COPD, to get to the more distant, more stretched GP that a) will accept you and b) won't be pushing religion at you.

@ClumpingBambooIsALie not sure how it is like at other faith schools but UK government only pays for chol (secular) studies at Jewish schools. Parents have to pay for Kodesh (religious education).

[quote onlychildhamster]@ClumpingBambooIsALie not sure how it is like at other faith schools but UK government only pays for chol (secular) studies at Jewish schools. Parents have to pay for Kodesh (religious education).[/quote]
And?

It’s discriminatory because

As an example, there may be 1000 school places in an area, if 500 of those places are in religious schools and 800 of the potential pupils come from secular families or families of religions not represented by those schools (the vast majority of U.K. religious schools are C of E or Catholic) then schools are being paid to teach kids in a religion their family does not subscribe to. This is obviously unacceptable

There is a huge barrier for entry to many, particularly oversubscribed religious schools l, ie regular attendance at religious services. This therefore includes families who can ‘fake religion’ but excludes families who whether due to language barriers, substance misuse, mental illness or other vulnerabilities cannot play the system. They could be committed to the particular faith but life means they won’t be attending a service weekly or 42 times a year or whatever the system is. Basically faith schools exclude the most socially vulnerable.
This therefore particular in areas where most schools are religious puts an unfair burden on surrounding ‘secular’ schools as they will have more children who need a lot of support and it turns faith schools into elite institutions for ‘families like us’. If you want that pay privately.

The only argument for keeping religious schools is the complex history of school funding in the U.K. Churches own and maintain school buildings throughout the country and despite overall this being a relatively small financial contribution to the education of the pupils. To buy or replace all these schools, particularly in rural areas where they are often very undersubscribed would be a massive financial burden for the state.

@ClumpingBambooIsALie so it's not comparable to the GP surgery given that the religious aspect which isn't the state's responsibility is funded by the parents/community.

@Hoowhoowho or you can look at it the other way and see that even if faith schools are selective, they are much more accessible than grammar schools (which select based on academic ability) or private schools (based on family income). Attending a religious service is free after all.

[quote onlychildhamster]@ClumpingBambooIsALie so it's not comparable to the GP surgery given that the religious aspect which isn't the state's responsibility is funded by the parents/community.[/quote]
I was quite careful to specify that the extra religious stuff I invented (monk coming in to pray once a week) was separately funded.

No analogy is going to be perfect, but I think analogy is the only way to express to those who are used to it just how anomalous the state-funded faith school system is. What would you think if your nearest NHS GP wouldn't take you because you're of the wrong religion?