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.

@onlychildhamster - also agree re. USA. Taking religion out of their state schools don't seem to have made the USA a secular utopia of tolerance.

I can’t speak for other faith schools but my son should be going to the local CofE school.

I think that faith (well, more specifically, attendance at one of two local churches) is either 9th or 10th on the list of factors they’ll take into account. From memory the priority list is ‘looked after children’ (ie children in care), then children of staff who fill a ‘hard to fill’ position at the school, then children for whom the school is the closest school who have a sibling there already, then children for whom it’s the closest school, then children for whom it’s not the closest school but who have a sibling there, and a couple more that I can’t remember before you get to church attendance.

In other words, faith only used to differentiate if they’ve got spaces left after awarding school spaces to all the children who are actually eligible for proper reasons. A kid who lives next to the school won’t miss out on a place because a kid from 5 miles away attends the local church. And that seems fair to me.

Am I the only one who finds it offensive when PPs refer to religious teaching as brainwashing? Yet pushing their own atheist beliefs on children is apparently fine?
And why should children be left to somehow discover a religious belief on their own?
Do you also advocate leaving them to discover maths and literacy unaided?
For those of us who are practising Christians, our faith affects our entire approach to life. It is not something we and our children just do for an hour on Sundays, and should be made to ignore during the school week. I am sure this is true of other religions, too.

@Babdoc

Am I the only one who finds it offensive when PPs refer to religious teaching as brainwashing? Yet pushing their own atheist beliefs on children is apparently fine? And why should children be left to somehow discover a religious belief on their own? Do you also advocate leaving them to discover maths and literacy unaided? For those of us who are practising Christians, our faith affects our entire approach to life. It is not something we and our children just do for an hour on Sundays, and should be made to ignore during the school week. I am sure this is true of other religions, too.

Good point, my son has always gone to Catholic school, s and now says hes atheist so hardly brainwashed, i have also brought him to beleive in whatever he chooses as long as he appreciates others have different beliefs to him.

I think when children are young they will always be guided by the beliefs of their parents, not just on religion but on most life issues. The key as far as I am concerned is ensuring they have the skills needed to discuss things and make up their own mind as they get older. Ds was christened as a baby, by the time he was about 8 he was sure he didn’t believe in any gods and at 11 that is very much his firm view BUT I have made sure that he understands just as we respect his views he has to make sure he respects the views of others.

Most state funded schools don’t receive full funding from the government. They do fund raising and parents are asked to pay monthly into the fund.

If schools give parents hoops to jump through to get into that school then parents will jump through them. The parents that do, tend to be much more invested in their child’s education.
Parents are a crucial factor in child success, it is this that makes a difference in faith schools in my opinion, so many like minded parents.

Behaviour in catholic schools tends to be much better, in my experience, and this has a big impact in secondary schools.

You could argue about grammar schools. Those that are financially able can afford to pay for a load of tutoring which discriminates against those who can’t.
Or any private schools, why should those with more money get a better education that those who don’t? There is discrimination everywhere.

@Babdoc

Am I the only one who finds it offensive when PPs refer to religious teaching as brainwashing? Yet pushing their own atheist beliefs on children is apparently fine? And why should children be left to somehow discover a religious belief on their own? Do you also advocate leaving them to discover maths and literacy unaided? For those of us who are practising Christians, our faith affects our entire approach to life. It is not something we and our children just do for an hour on Sundays, and should be made to ignore during the school week. I am sure this is true of other religions, too.

Atheists beliefs? You mean like, not teaching children that God is real?

You've said some pretty offensive things about atheists in the past.

Atheists and humanists can set up their own schools with their own ethos. I guess historically the schools were church schools and then got funded by state. I guess the state could pay for all of it and the electorate could decide what types of schools they want…

Maybe the govt should fund schools with lower grades better and give proportionally more help and funding to those schools which take on previously excluded children or children who have difficulties which need extra support.

C of E schools get more funding than Catholic schools they have to make up the short fall. The whole point in Catholic schools is the religious ethos they carry within their school journery throughout the school, having their holy communion, attend M
mass within the school, celebrating religious events so of course they their faith should be a priority in regards to a Catholic school in order to facilitate that, not have children who don't practice the faith. They tend to be the better performing schools because of the ethos they stand by or they are in my area. Children can still apply but priority goes to faith, siblings in the school and catchment area, alot of people apply for the Catholic schools as they are popular.

If course religious parents should raise their children within their religion. It would be hypocritical not to do so. However religion should stay out of state funded schools. In many rural areas there will be no schools within a reasonable distance which are not religious. This isn’t a case of families wanting to get into the oversubscribed religious school but of simply having no option but to attend a religious school many of which are undersubscribed.

Even in cities, in a London borough, 30% of the school places may be in religious schools. Most of those schools will be C of E or Catholic but maybe 10% of pupils are active members of those religions and the rest actively practice another religion or are from secular families. This means children will be forced to take school places in religious schools they do not want. Also means little Johnny from the atheist family gets to go to crappy religious school two miles away rather than good local religious school while little Janey who is religious and lives next door to crappy religious school instead gets priority over Johnny and travels to good religious school. So Johnny is hit two ways travels two miles to get a religious education he doesn’t want.

The simplest thing would be for parents to educate their children in their religion on their own time or for religious organisations to fund independent schools for children whose parents want them to have a religious education.

I’d also abolish grammar schools personally but they are only based in some limited areas already.

Private schools are not state funded (although their charitable status should be abolished) and people can spend their money how they like. I don’t think we can abolish all advantage but state money shouldn’t be funding religious education.

The state provides a service for its benefit, the education of children. It doesn’t fund Steiner schools (as a rule) or Montessori or democratic schools, if I don’t agree with the National curriculum then I can home educate or privately educate. Religious parents can do the same.

@Hoowhoowho If C of E voluntarily makes its schools private, then we can begin to talk about Catholic/Jewish schools doing the same. But we both know that would never happen.

@Namenic

Atheists and humanists can set up their own schools with their own ethos. I guess historically the schools were church schools and then got funded by state. I guess the state could pay for all of it and the electorate could decide what types of schools they want…

Maybe the govt should fund schools with lower grades better and give proportionally more help and funding to those schools which take on previously excluded children or children who have difficulties which need extra support.

The flaw in that argument is that the ethos of humanists tends to favour fair and equal access to education with no discrimination or privilege. Setting up their own schools would be counter to this.

To an extent any school that requires parents to do something other than fill in the basic forms will get better results!

Well they can set up their own schools with that ethos then Errol - so it can be open to everyone but no religious assembly/specifically religious teaching from a belief point of view? If they are popular, then people will be attracted and they can set up more. I guess it’s the academy system that we have…

And I guess it’s down to what the electorate want.

Atheists, Humanists etc can set up their own fee-paying schools, but that's not the point. In the UK they cannot establish voluntary-aided faith schools with the advantages that status confers. Tried and been turned down.

....and UK law still requires that all state schools have a daily act of worship, broadly Christian in character.

@Namenic

Well they can set up their own schools with that ethos then Errol - so it can be open to everyone but no religious assembly/specifically religious teaching from a belief point of view? If they are popular, then people will be attracted and they can set up more. I guess it’s the academy system that we have…

And I guess it’s down to what the electorate want.

Actually, they can't.

Its nothing like a GPs surgery.

It's not that a faith school is identical in every way to running a religious NHS GP surgery. It's that when taken in the context of all the many, many state-funded services people can expect to receive in a modern diverse liberal democracy (schools, police, prisons, waste disposal, child protection, national security, hospitals, driving tests, etc.) state faith schools are a weird outlier, because the majority of services in the majority of liberal democracies are provided in a secular manner — not "atheist" or "humanist" but secular, that is, provided without religious influence or favour, for the benefit of people of all faiths.

Absolutely ridiculous statement.

While faith schools (in England) are free to have an admissions policy that gives priority to children based on faith, if I recall correctly they are not actually allowed to exclusively give places to that faith if they receive applicants from other faiths who meet the other admissions criteria.

A lot of people don't know about this though and therefore don't bother applying, so faith schools generally don't receive very many applications from other faiths.

There's nothing to stop you still applying to a faith school, especially if you meet the other admissions criteria such as living close by.

We aren't Catholic but my DS got a place at an over subscribed RC primary school.

Inspectors often take a dim view of schools who give places to children from the last admissions criteria over those who meet the first criteria, where the only difference is faith.

@MattyGroves

Where we were previously in London, our two closest schools were CofE. The next furthest was an excellent secular school. We wouldn't get into the CofE ones because we aren't religious. We were too far from the secular one. So our kids would have ended up at a school further away still while parents drove their kids to the school just over the road from our house. Sensible? Fair? Basically religious parents get a wider choice of schools.

I also just don't see why the state should fund religious schools anyway - parents can teach their children about religion on their own time without excluding other children from their closest school.

Did you actually apply though or speak to the schools or did you just assume that because you aren't religious your children wouldn't get in?

Did you actually apply though or speak to the schools or did you just assume that because you aren't religious your children wouldn't get in?

Looked at their admissions stats, spoke to the schools. Total no go. Most London religious schools seem to have basically zero non religious pupils. We were literally a stone's throw from one and still wouldn't have got in.

We moved house to an area with more secular schools. The Catholic schools in our area even put looked after children who aren't religious below anyone from anywhere who is religious. I am sure Jesus would approve.

....and UK law still requires that all state schools have a daily act of worship, broadly Christian in character.

How often does this still occur in practice?