Child s education

[the7Vabo]

I made a couple of good mum friends when my kids were tiny.

The best secondary school in the town is the religion both of their husbands are and they had their children baptised as. One of the families vaguely practice, the other family doesn’t at all. It’s very unlikely my kids will get in. It’s possible they may not get a place locally at all and we”ll have no choice the way the system locally works.

Our kids are quite young and they regularly speak about how delighted they are about the school.

I struggle to deal with this. Our boys have all grown up together and I struggle not to feel my son is dismissed as lesser because he is the wrong religion.

I know many will reply schools aren’t everything and not the only input into success. But to me it’s not about success it’s about him having a nice secondary experience. The best school has way better facilities etc.

Im thinking of saving to send kids private even though I don’t think that would necessarily be the best for them as I don’t want to put them in a school where I’m they’ll feel poor!

Meantime I struggle to bite my tongue when my friend again talks about how great the school is. A state funded school that we both pay taxes for and my child doesn’t have the same access to. I can’t understand how people are happy to be so gleeful about benefitting from discrimination.

My baby group met in an area further from me where the best grammar school is located and to be fair lots of them did hammer on about getting their (baby!) Child in. I remember one person stating confidently that their 2/3 year old would definitely get a place as they were such a bright preschooler.

I didn't feel particularly bad about it but I was aware that it was a lesser chance for my dc to get in due to not being in catchment, as well as being super selective.

Fast forward and I'm not even friends with those people. I don't know which schools their dc went to in the end. I ended up prioritising the faith school and my dc got a place there and we are very happy with it. Meanwhile I did recently go round the best grammar school and it wasn't as fabulous as my friends made out all those years ago. So I wouldn't pay too much attention to this boastful woman.

@DexaVooveQhodu in Ireland that isn't accurate. The state gives substantial money, most religious orders are not putting their money in.

They are too busy paying big bucks to avoid paying the money due to the countess victims of clerical abuse. Court ordered over a decade ago. I would be very interested in knowing if the same situation is in the UK.

Would you like your child to go to Catholic as I assume school? The school has good results as most of schools with Catholic values.

Would you like your DC to attend masses every week and have 2-3 h of religion at school not to mention start and end of a day with the Catholic prayers? Few weeks of retreat with priests per year. Yes/No? If not I don't see the problem. Remember that you may not be interested in such curiculum even if you had an access.

It is your bragging friends that are your problem and not the school.

The Catholic church haven't had such power in UK as they did in Ireland or Poland. It was always a minority. Therefore, the abuse was less frequent.
It is also important to look at it from broader perspective; it is not like every school and every Catholic run place is a subject to abuse. Actually, it is a tiny percent in the broader scale

Thank you for that information - in Ireland sadly the abuse and or the knowledge and silence of the abuse was and continues to be epidemic. I must do some further reading on other countries experiences.

It is hard, because any good parent wants the best for their children. If you are good friends could you kindly bring it up and explain that it is hard. That your feelings on it aren't based on your friends but on the system and you feeling your child will not have a good experience because of it. I wouldn't lose good friends over this.

I would ( genuinely) be interested to know if state Catholic schools are run along those lines.
I am Catholic and taught in a Catholic school ( secondary). There was one whole school Mass per term and probably one more for the year group. One prayer in morning Form Time, usually written by the pupils. RE was allocated standard time for a GCSE subject and covered ‘all’ faiths. As for a few weeks of retreat with priests.. well! At most a day per year where the school ethos featured along with other topics.

I would guess that OP is in NI, where Catholic education wouldn't be like that, no. But obviously the picture is very complex here and it's not necessarily as straightforward as just applying to a school of a different religion/cultural group.

in Ireland that isn't accurate. The state gives substantial money, most religious orders are not putting their money in.

@Marblessolveeverything

One big difference between Ireland and the UK that may be important in this regard is that in Ireland Catholic schools are not allowed use the faith of the student as one of their selection criteria.

Schools for minority religions ( eg Church of Ireland) can preferentially select students depending on their faith, but Catholic schools can no longer do this in Ireland.

I don't think it is the faith whatever sort it is is to blame for. It is the power that corrupts.

@Tulipshaped yes, but my issue is I am not Catholic like 30% of the population. Unfortunately only 5% of schools are Multi denominational. So we like the OP experience challenges just in a different way.

Access can state open but the lived reality is very different.

@Pottedpalm
There are various Catholic schools in UK depending on diocese location. They differ in the admission criterias. Some require just a Certificate of Catholic Practice and proof of baptism. But there are some where the priest has to specify if the specific familly attends the mass once a week, once a month and for how many years he has known the family for. Some look even at when the baptism took place and accept only if it was within first two years of child's life. Some schools are coeducational some are not.
The same is with the religious curiculum. One nearby school have 1 h of religion per week and every week a mass. Second has rarely mass at school but 2 h of RE per week. Retreat is in all 4 schools that I know.

So I would say that the Catholic schools vary a lot. But majority have good results.

My sister in law was like this about her catchment secondary school that was Ofsted outstanding. She would drive me mad going on and on about it.
I would just make a rather obvious segue in the conversation every time and that helped a little.
In my head I would just think my kids would be fine and that turned out to be true. My kids had a great time at their lesser school and bit better exam results too. My kids will also get contextual offers at uni which will help them.

Exactly, and how many families go ahead with communions and confirmations in Ireland because their DC are in a Catholic school and they don't want them left out. I imagine the rates of children taking the sacraments would be far lower if the government waved a magic wand to make all schools non denominational.

Even here in NI, Integrated schools are still Christian, just not Protestant or Catholic. DH's abiding memory is alternating the version of the Our Father that was said in assembly.

All state education should be secular.

But I hope you realise that the 5 percent that is multi denominational has to participate in Catholic practice at school. I would not play down the amount of Catholic practice at Catholic schools. That may be challenging for somebody who is e.g. muslim, sikh or atheist . I can imagine that would be ok for an othodox or a protestant.

@TheChipmunkSong not in Ireland. There is a curriculum that teaches about six religions not engage in practices.

All state education should be secular.

Well but if that is the case then there should be also no grammar schools or any other segregation.

Yes, the Catholic schools exist in UK because they are delivering excellent results and are hugely popular. Catholic schools are hugely diverse as well and a lot of children have parents with foreign origin

@Marblessolveeverything In UK there is also a subject called RE in every school that teaches about major religions and comparison. In many schools it is a compulsory subject at GCSE. But in most of the Catholic schools they have additional hour where they learn Catholic version of religion- catechism.

Of course you’re absolutely right, OP. State schools discriminating on the grounds of religion are exceptionally unfair. Sadly this is also the system where I live. There’s always someone who claims that religious people should be able to go to religious schools but let’s be honest, the people going to these schools aren’t religious, they simply have the resources to get baptised and attend church every week for years leading up to the admission deadline. I would wager than 5% of the kids at our local (outstanding) CofE state school are actually religious. The rest are highly educated, middles class, white families who understand how to play the system. I know this to be true because I know many of the families and I also know many of the families in our local primary school intend to game the system too.

The result is a highly selective school on the grounds of class and race. This is why it gets exceptional GCSE and A Level results, not because Christian’s are inherently smarter or harder working, or because faith schools teach kids to have good ethics and morals as some people like to claim.

Access can state open but the lived reality is very different.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that your DC were refused entry to a school based on their religion? Because that is illegal now for Irish Catholic schools.
Schools take student selections very seriously. For example, if a draw is necessary because of llimited places/too many applicants this often takes place in a solicitor's office to ensure all is above board.

If you mean there's too much religion ( eg first communion prep etc) once you're in the school then that is a problem I agree.

how tedious, there’s not much more boring than school bore parents.

@NicoleSkidman

they simply have the resources to get baptised and attend church every week for years leading up to the admission deadline.
What do you mean by ...resources?

The result is a highly selective school on the grounds of class and race.

Meaning that Polish, Irish and Portuguese are the upper middle class in this country?

Catholic schools are full of people from Ethiopia or India. Catholics are in many places in this world.

I mean they have the wherewithal to read and understand the very long and complicated admission criteria and they have the time and freedom to attend weekly church and make friends with the priest. I know you’re going to tell me that anyone could do this but all of the evidence points towards that not being the case where school admission is concerned. You certainly wouldn’t get a Muslim family going to church and pretending to be Christian because it would not be acceptable to them or the church. Where I live there’s a huge Muslim population and all of the best state schools (primary and secondary) are faith schools which means they are not available to them. How can that possibly be fair?

And my experience is with CofE, not Catholic schools. Although, where I live it’s the same middle class white families also gaming the Catholic system.

@NicoleSkidman I guess the word "resources" was not a most fortunate choice but now I understand what you mean now.

The admission criteria are not that complicated at all. Far more complex are admission criteria to Grammar or private

I know you’re going to tell me that anyone could do this but all of the evidence points towards that not being the case where school admission is concerned

This is not the case because they are in fact not Catholic. In most cases people who suddenly start going to church to get the child to school come from a Catholic background and are baptised but just have not been attending.

You certainly wouldn’t get a Muslim family going to church and pretending to be Christian because it would not be acceptable to them or the church

And they wouldn't feel good at Catholic schools because it is not only about admission, the whole ethos and RE are in line with Catholic practice.

Where I live there’s a huge Muslim population and all of the best state schools (primary and secondary) are faith schools which means they are not available to them.

They are best exactly because they are Catholic. Strip it to non-religious school and the results will be much lower. The thing is that the Catholic curriculum drives them to have good results

Where I live there are also Muslim secondary schools- private.

Well, in the UK you have faith schools, you have grammar schools which are selective, private that not everybody can afford, and great comprehensive here and there but the house prices around them are a barrier for most of people- I don't think only faith schools are to blame. We live in capitalist and segregated society I am afraid

"But majority have good results."

How much of that is down to teaching and ethos, and how much of it is down to the impact of religious selection on the socio-economic demographic of the school?

"Reporting on her research before the Children, Schools and Families Committee in 2008, Rebecca Allen noted that ‘In my most recent research… I was able to show that religious schools have higher ability and lower free school meal intakes compared with the neighbourhoods in which they are located. To give you an idea of the magnitude of those effects, if we take a community school and a voluntary-aided religious school, both located in a neighbourhood with exactly the same levels of deprivation, the community school is likely to have about 50% more free school meal children than the voluntary-aided school.’
This was compounded by research by The Guardian published in March 2012 that found that 76% of Catholic primaries and 65% of Catholic secondaries in England had a smaller proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals (a government bench mark for deprivation) than the average for the first half of their postcode