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?

Quite easily I’m sure… name (think Jayze from another post instead of Henry), family relationship to another child in the school, nursery or pre school attended, address etc. Lots of ways for people to make a snap judgement. Mainly name and address though I would say. Headteachers I would hope don’t have the power to do that though as it’s overseen by the council.

There is a secondary school where my sister lives that is known for having a very expensive and fancy looking uniform. Whilst the rules have now been changed, I don’t think the school has relaxed them as such and it’s their way of keeping out the riff raff as they would stress about affording the trips and uniform. From what she said, it’s having the desired effect as parents from low income families tend to choose the other school close by.

There is a secondary school where my sister lives that is known for having a very expensive and fancy looking uniform. Whilst the rules have now been changed, I don’t think the school has relaxed them as such and it’s their way of keeping out the riff raff as they would stress about affording the trips and uniform. From what she said, it’s having the desired effect as parents from low income families tend to choose the other school close by

The government policy on this is clear - it shouldn’t be happening. Uniform should not be single supplier, and should not be so expensive that it represents a barrier to entry. But there are no enforcement teeth to that policy (began under New Labour, continued ever since)

Without enforcement teeth, it won’t change - and it’s not limited to faith schools.

CAB used to campaign about it (and other hidden costs of state schooling) not sure if that’s still an active one though.

I want her to go to the CoE locally. So as of next month it's back to church we go to get the requisite 12 months in. Otherwise we'd be last on the criteria for that school. We may get in on distance; but DD wants to go there. So we've had a discussion about what that means in terms of commitment to pretty much guarantee us the place. Which is twice per month, for 12 months.

I agree with previous posters who say it does exclude children where their parents aren't on the ball, or can't organise themselves.

This post explains better than others how faith schools keep the ‘riff raff’ out. This poster sounds like an an aspirational parent who knows exactly what she wants for her child educationally; she has a Christian belief but would not normally attend church on a regular basis.

Less aspirational parents might also choose the school, may also have Christian beliefs but may not know about the churchgoing requirement or may not be organised enough to pursue it.

The government policy on this is clear - it shouldn’t be happening. Uniform should not be single supplier, and should not be so expensive that it represents a barrier to entry. But there are no enforcement teeth to that policy (began under New Labour, continued ever since)

But it is happening and it seems to have got worse during the years the policy has been in place.

Yes, and that’s why the absence of an enforcement regime is a key point.

For as long as that exists, it’s toothless

Less aspirational parents might also choose the school, may also have Christian beliefs but may not know about the churchgoing requirement or may not be organised enough to pursue it

or unable to pursue it. If you work on Sundays, for example, it becomes much harder to be participating in church services!

Yes, another way they do it is by having a very expensive extra curricular programme and making parents feel their child won't fit in if they can't participate. Same with the big expensive annual school trips.

I can only comment on our church and DS' RC primary but the majority of our church was non white and that was reflected in the school admissions.

But the admissions criteria is clearly stated and that's why they apply when offering places.

Churches have services other than on Sundays!

Or you could go to the early morning or to evensong. Which those who were in the life of the church would know.

It’s why RC schools are more diverse than the national average (or were when I last checked) because of the fairly high proportion of those newly arrived in the country go to church, and just apply to the church school as a matter of course.

I'm a governor in a CofE school, we decide on our own admissions criteria (they have to be approved), and we manage our own admissions, not the local authority. However, we follow the admissions criteria rigidly. There would never be any motivation or opportunity to "keep out the riff-raff".

Church attendance is a high priority on the list of criteria.

Mass takes place on more than one day a week; at my current Church it's 5 days a week, at my last (big) Church, Mass was held 7 days a week, and on some days more than 1 service (e.g. 2 on a Saturday, 3 on a Sunday). If people truly want to attend Mass, lack of accessibility is a weak excuse.

Yes, but as others have said, requiring church attendance does "keep out the riff raff" because regular church attenders are going to be families committed enough to getting DC in that they'll attend regularly (you must have people who only attend to get in?), who are aware of the need to do that and live a lifestyle that makes getting there regularly possible.

This is exactly it though. You're excluding all children who have parents who want excuses won't jump through those hoops, so you end up with a cohort of students with far greater parental support than an average intake would have.

My view echoes others’ - any additional criteria (forms to complete, ££££ uniform, church attendance) create a barrier to entry. I don’t think it’s always avoidable - I can anticipate scenarios where, eg, a dedicated Christian can’t attend the only church services available in the area whether owing to work or childcare commitments, disability or whatever. But I think the only (unattainable?) solution is levelling up.

It happens in many places, fwiw, in odd ways. DH grew up in the Soviet Union with that ideology and it was “known” that the good schools were the ones with a higher proportion of Jewish children and lower proportion of Tatar, Kazakh etc.

Long story short: don't expect fair admissions in an oversubscribed VA faith school, but expect the unfairness to be exactly as specified in their admissions criteria. It certainly shouldn't be the sort of undocumented unfairness your MIL imagines, OP.

so you end up with a cohort of students with far greater parental support than an average intake would have.

What's actually the issue with that? Doesn't having cohorts where there is known to be far less parental support enable the school to put measures in place (that wouldn't otherwise need to be in place) to support the development of the children?

Really? Because it means the children who most need the good schools don't get them.

I'm not sure I understand your post, but how do you think schools without much parental support are able to put more measures in place than the sought after schools?

It certainly helps the schools that have excluded them to look a lot better re results and behaviour.

You are making assumptions as to what a "good" school is. Schools are good when they meet the needs of their local community, not necessarily because of overall results. I'll give you an example:

In a previous school, we were aware that there was a distinct lack of parental support for education. In some cases, this was due to a lack of ability and so the school was able to run literacy, numeracy and parenting support classes for families to access. In other cases, it was because those families genuinely didn't see education has important, so the school diverted more time and resources into supporting children outside of the regular school hours with groups, clubs, supplying regular free books, free instrument leases, etc. There were also other things that school did better than others, such as more extensive behavioural support and they were able to keep children in mainstream who otherwise would have ended up in PRUs.

That was (and I'm sure still is) a fantastic school and was exactly what those children, and families, needed. But you wouldn't find it placing high on any league tables.

It also isn't the school you'd send your DC to? 😉

It great that schools with the most need are able to do some of this work, but wouldn't it be better to spread the load?

It absolutely is if that was what they needed or what my family needed. We were constantly full to the point where we were encouraged to expand in order to increase our PAN and did so.

Spreading the load assumes that "need" only looks one way. All children/families/schools have need and it's about matching those needs up. If there had been fewer parents with literacy and numeracy issues, those classes wouldn't have happened as they wouldn't have been justified in terms of time, money, energy. That school, while fantastic for the children with lower parental support, was crap with complex SEND that was more educational in nature than behavioural. My current school is fantastic with educational SEND: we have the best and most dedicated SENDCo I have ever come across and she has worked to specialise in educational support. Different schools do different things: they specialise in different things.

But we're moving away from the thread topic now.

My post was in response by a PP who has decided to bite the bullet and attend for church for a year (just a year) as she was motivated to get her child into a particular CofE school. A less motivated parent (maybe not exactly riff raff) who works on Sunday will be unlikely to look for early morning or weekday services to achieve the same.

You also can't lump all RC schools together. Some may demand church attendance, others just a a baptism certificate, while the under-subscribed don't ask for anything at all. RC schools may be a bit more diverse as they have wider catchment areas than non-denominational. On the other hand, more aspirational Catholics families may be more willing for their children to travel or to send their kids to an RC school when the reputation of their local school isn't that great.

In our VA LA Faith schools handle their own admissions and the HT will generally be part of the committee looking at them.
The committee have to use the agreed criteria for the school (which will be available online) to process all applications.
So whilst the HT will have seen all admissions there is no way they could sift out those that don't appeal to them.

There would never be any motivation or opportunity to "keep out the riff-raff".
Church attendance is a high priority on the list of criteria.

That is such an oxymoron! While I have no reason to doubt that people of all social classes attend church, there is only a certain type of parent who would go to church for a year to get their child into a certain school when they wouldn't do so otherwise. Those parents are unlikely to be the 'riff raff'.

But surely schools are only as good as the pupils attending them. So if some of the less motivated families were admitted to the 'good schools' and the more motivated families to the 'poor schools' in seven years the good schools will become poor and vice Verda.

So true and worth reposting. Most people assume there is some Machiavellian game plan going on but there really isn’t. It’s quite straight forward - as a rule of thumb: meet the criteria and live nearby and you’ll get a place. All this hand wringing about subversive religious influence is utter bollocks.