To expect fair application to faith school?

[ordinaryriffraff]

I am slightly disturbed regarding a statement made by MIL.
She suffers from delusions of grandeur so please can you help?
She recently suggested that the school governors and head teacher go through applications made to local faith based school and are thus able to "keep riff riff out".

Can any teachers, especially head teachers let me know if this is actually something that happens??? Or is this yet another fantasy in MILs head?

Faith schools not selecting riff raff, I don’t think so grandchildren were accepted and I am a bit coarse round the edges!

I don't see diverse Muslin faith schools either

Fantasy in your MILs head, but to be honest a fairly common fantasy. My friend applied to a local faith school, not a church goer, she insists they got in because her child has a very “classic British name” so they would know they were middle class. Apparently, friends have been shocked she got her child in. The school is outstanding but not oversubscribed so her child will have got in the standard route.

I have another friend who wrote a long statement in the “any additional comments” section about his wellbeing and what they could contribute to the school. and that’s why her child got in. It’s not her catchment school, but it’s big and she’s not far away - so again she will have got in the standard route.

Some faith schools, but not all, will demand evidence of church attendance - the all-important vicar's letter - and any additional volunteer work you've done for the church to cherry pick people who love jumping through hoops.

This is why you get middle class families rocking up to the local Polish church or Greek Orthodox to get their 4 Sundays in and the letter signed.

You hear mummies withering about it at nursery school.

Personally I think both the discrimination and the faking are abhorrent.

But if your school does this - check the Admittance Criteria online - she's not entirely wrong.

Schools have admissions criteria. First is looked after children , then practicing Catholics. If you don’t meet these first two criteria you will be lower down the listing.
schools check proof of faith and the selection is done by the local authority.

why would you be miffed? That's plain old batshit hilarious. I'd be saying oh Mil that's a good one tell me another one do

This statement is not correct. Under the admissions criteria, schools are not allowed to take into account parents' volunteering a their local church etc. The relevant criteria for C of E schools are number of years of church attendance and frequency of church attendance. C of E schools do not usually consider infant baptism as a criteria because not all Christian denominations have this. It is more common with Catholic schools though.

I have previously been a school governor and served on the admissions committee. At our school we handled the applicants and selection directly, so your MIL is partly right - we did go through each application line by line. But only to ensure the school’s admissions code was applied to the letter. We could not and would not ‘keep out the riff raff’ - all we were doing was ranking the applicants in order according to the policy and double and triple checking that it had been done correctly.

This makes for an interesting read. Dd got my first choice of primary school for Sept, a CoE, that I chose because it was the closest and outstanding. Mainly because it is the closest, and I need to get to work for 8.15.

I sent back the SIF blank, except for a cursory tick of the Christian box. I guess I will the riff raff, as a single mother! I hope I am not judged

A voluntary-aided school sets their own admissions.
The over-subscription criteria of a school near me seems to be based on the worshipping commitment of the parents. Eg the higher the commitment the more likely the child is to get in. Distance is the last category to be considered. All laid out in the admission document set by the governing body. So in a way, mil is right where some VA schools are concerned.

*I will be the riff raff, even! The school is heavily oversubscribed as well. Even I was shocked, I put it as an 'aspirational' choice 🤣

Many of them exclude children based on the fact that the child's parents aren't of a specific religion, so I can't see why they wouldn't take it a step further. Not exactly very inclusive are they.

Ok, the school will have an Admissions Policy.

Somebody will have processed all the applications and will then pass the 'this might be a special circumstance' or 'they've just come from Ukraine so don't have a priest's reference' or 'there isn't quite the usual evidence, but we've been given this which might suffice' or 'it says 1 year, but this is 1 year + 1 day', that kind of thing. Then the decisions are acted upon by the Admissions person, they're ranked and forwarded to the LA so they can offer places in accordance with preferences.

Nobody's got time to sit through 980 separate applications. And it's never for 'riff raff'.

You can see why so many parents believe the myths and tall stories around school admission: some of the posts here show a clear lack of knowledge and understanding about the process. The vast majority of it is detached and algorithmic in nature. Some schools are able to make adjustments to the order of those algorithms but they absolutely cannot affect things at an individual parent level. Equally, the vast majority of things parents claim "got them in" are just coincidental rubbish that they spread as gospel truth.

Jolly good reason for no faith schools then isn't it?

Actually it's an argument for more. Most Muslim faith schools are private, not state, which means they select their applicants and are subject to much less scrutiny. Those in the state sector have the same admissions criteria and oversight as Christian state schools. If you felt that there was an issue with diversity in Muslim faith schools, the way to fix that would be to open more state faith schools thereby reducing the community demand for private schools.

Abolishing all state faith schools would just give rise to more private faith schools (or potentially free schools) and would cost the Government a fortune in the process.

Faith schools have admissions criteria just like any other school, the difference is that the admissions criteria excludes those DC who's parents lack the time, resources or wherewithal to ensure their DC meet the criteria.

At our school, RC DC must be baptised in an RC church, and not in the year before admission. At a stroke, this rules out anyone who hasn't organised themselves to do this.

Next, the DC have to have a form signed by the priest to say they regularly attend church. Priest will only sign this if DC has a certain number of stamps in their Sunday School book. Again, this rules out anyone who hasn't organised themselves to do this.

Then there is the usual criteria of looked after DC, SEN DC, teachers DC and siblings, all of whom must also meet the above criteria, before any other DC are considered. From memory, our school has about 8 different priority listings in the admissions criteria; I don't think they ever get past number 3 or 4 before all the places are filled (2 form of 30 entry).

My DC's school is very diverse, which I was pleased to see, and all the DC I have met are well-mannered and polite, even at their young ages. Our school is outstanding, and I know from discussions with the teachers that parent support and engagement is extremely high, which also helps the DC do well.

Your MIL may have come to her conclusion based on an entirely different thought process, however faith schools admissions criteria is reviewed and approved by the governors on an annual basis, and any DC's parents could appeal if the governors have not applied the policy correctly.

*DC whose parents

For a few years now some parishes, including ours, had so many parents cluttering the pews that they had three times as many 'devoted Christians' as places. So they increased it from 4 weeks to a year's attendance. Then it had to be with parents, not grandparents. Then they added in stuff about 'how involved you are with the church community.' Some complained it was going too far but the vicar was back to signing tens of letters instead of nearly a hundred, and the school had fewer fakers to sift through.

It shouldn't be happening, or be legal, but it is. There's the Fair Admissions Campaign trying to get government involvement in ending the discrimination, but there's been no meaningful change in years. Just cross Nigerian and Romanian priests wondering why dopey middle class parents keep sitting in services before the application deadline.

That's the goal!

What a baffling idea they are, really. Children should be educated together.

Abolishing all state faith schools would just give rise to more private faith schools (or potentially free schools) and would cost the Government a fortune in the process.

Abolish private schools too. How about the utterly revolutionary idea that all children should receive a free, decent education, with a mixed group of their peers? Finland have gone some way towards this.

”Then they added in stuff about 'how involved you are with the church community”

That is a breach of the admissions code. They should use only countable measures such as baptism (or other means of demonstrating church membership if infant baptism is not a rite in that denomination, or feature of that faith) plus attendance.

How much free time you have to do the flowers or the cleaning, or how much inclination to be on the PCC are not permitted, and should definitely be complained about.

Abolish private schools too. How about the utterly revolutionary idea that all children should receive a free, decent education, with a mixed group of their peers?

if you don’t consider that we have a decent, free education system currently, how is abolishing private schools going to help achieve that?

It all depends on the admissions criteria. In our local catholic school there is nothing at all about distance on the criteria.

If you fall in the last category to be admitted then it is randomly selected rather than done on distance.

Your MIL might have been right in the 70s but the law is very strict about school admissions now. The only schools that are able to blatantly keep the riff raff out are called grammar schools.