To go to church to broaden my childs choice of school

[AwkwardAadvark]

Hello
I live in an area where the comprehensive schools aren't great. There's only 1 I'd be happy for him to go too. We also live by 2 religious schools that I'd be happy with. Issue is these schools require church attendance. It's a while off but I do worry about these things. Do I start going to church to widen his choice of school?

Not a great example to set to your kids... mum is a fake ...

My children go to a faith school and we attended services, volunteered etc to get them in. There are plenty of people not of the school's faith who do these things as well because it's an academically good school and they want their kids to go there. I think it's fair enough as long as they're willing to embrace the school's ethos 🤷🏻‍♀️

What I don't like is people who send their kids to a faith school and then complain about the faith element of the school and actively try to ensure their children don't have to participate in it 😬

Yanbu if you feel it's the right school for your DC.

There is no requirement to have faith - criteria have to be specific and objectively measurable and it's impossible to measure the magnitude of someone's faith. You just have to be physically in the church for the appropriate times. You could sit there listening to atheist podcasts or playing tetris on your phone for the required number of Sundays and you would meet the criteria.

I met the faith school criteria as I go to church anyway but we put the faith school as 3rd choice because it was actually not the best fit for DC for numerous reasons.

Completely agree - no place for this kind of religious closed shop in state education.

But the OP states that church attendance is a requirement. And baptism is still a pre-requisite for many Christian schools. How likely is that these schools will attract practising Jews, Muslims, Sikhs etc? Such schools are less diverse pupil-wise and any teaching about respecting others will be theoretical rather than based on exposure to the different beliefs of your peers and friends.

Do that if you want to. Check that church attendance is the only option for admission, the ones near me have a certain number of local places or other criteria. It gives options that allow you to apply without lying.

I was in a similar position but there's no way I could have lived with myself by lying that I had a faith. I think modelling honesty and integrity to your children is important.

Exactly this.

What aspects of Christianity are you opposed to?

Murder / killing being wrong?
A bit of adultery on the side is alright, right?
Lie is ok?
How about false witness - perjury?
Greed is good and oh I wish I had her money, jewellery, husband?
Try to do the right thing, the moral thing? To help the poor, those less fortunate.

Which of the above are you opposed to?

Don't overthink it. "They" don't drill onto your head at a church service. The minister/ priest reads part of the bible. They discuss it in understandable terms. You sing a few hymns. Perhaps you learn or hear what the church believes. You don't submit to mantra chanting dogma. You are not forced to marry or be with Big Chief Man.

My NDN’s did this, even got their DC baptised and as soon as their DC got a place in the school, they stopped going. Had a real spell of them getting up early every Sunday to go to church that suddenly dropped when their DC started school.

I don’t really care about people doing this tbh, the church must know it happens.

How do people who do this explain it to their children?

Pretty easily.

If you are willing to put in the time to go to church every week...Why not?

Vicar has to sign a form to say you go, usually. Better start quite a while before your year of attendance required though .

It's practically compulsory in some areas. Our village junior school (but not the infants, bizarrely, despite also being CofE) gives priority to those who attend church so if you actually want to get a place, you go to church - regardless of your actual religion, or lack thereof. It's just a ridiculous hoop you have to jump through. The nearest junior school that doesn't give church attenders priority (despite also being CofE) is an 8 mile round trip and you would be unlikely to get a place due to the distance cutoff.

What is so bizarre is that all of the schools in our villages are CofE but its a complete lottery as to whether they select on church attendence or don't. Some do, some don't. It's all to do with whether they are "grant maintained" or "grant controlled".

"If we hadn't taken you to church, you wouldn't have got a school place in your own village and the council would have assigned you one miles and miles away where you didn't know anyone and none of your friends went."

@weAllWanttheBest please don’t put just one preference on your application form. Doing that will not get you a place, simply because you haven’t put any other preferences.

If you don’t get a place and have any other schools listed, the authority isn’t obliged to find you a school place thereafter.

All our local church based schools when I was a teen were rubbish, one’s improved a lot and is a mixed boy and girl Catholic comprehensive.

Do what you like. I ended up going to one rubbish girls school then transferring to year 3 of a local private convent. My DB and an ex of mine went to different Christian brother/monks schools and they all hated it and didn’t do well there.

@Magnastorm @LaerealSilverhand

Fair enough. Not something I would do-or expect my child to lie about. But you do you.

Or you could take the perspective that it’s a great example. Mum values education and is willing to go out of her way and make effort to get the best results, therefore education and working hard must be important.

Who's lying?

If a parent fulfils the criteria for the bullshit religious selection process by sitting through a tedious church service once a week for however long it is, then there is nothing dishonest about that at all. In these days of dwindling church attendence I'm sure most places will be happy to have someone else to try to indocrinate and get donation money out of each week.

Thankfully I live in a country where this shit isn't a thing anyway, but the problem here is the fact that state-funded schools are allowed to openly discriminate, not that that parents game the system.

Do local C of E or catholic feeder school students get priority for admission? They do for our local religious secondaries so you may find that you're still some way down the list.

It could happen if the child pretending to be religious lived closer to the school than the one not pretending….

You know what they say, if you can’t pay the fees, get on your knees!

I don’t agree with it, and don’t feel it would send a very good message to my child.

I tend to think that a child that has support at home and wants to learn will do well in any school.

At both of my DD's Catholic schools, church attendance is not a requirement for admission as the admissions are dealt with by the local council who have no knowledge of if you attend church or not. The criteria is based upon the usual looked after children at the top of the list, followed by children who have been baptised Catholic in one of the feeder parishes, then other baptised Catholic children as the top 3 points. All school admission, faith or not are done via the council online with a supplementary form done for faith schools, providing details of baptism and a copy of documents has to be provided. I'm sure there are at least 50% of pupils who have never stepped foot in church since the day they were baptised.

They just go to whatever other school is available, and do their best with whatever teaching is on offer.

It's interesting reading this because where I live in South East London several schools have closed down or merged.
This is a mixture of low birth rates and families moving out of London but several of the schools that have closed were C of E or RC schools.
Two were among the oldest schools in London (St Martin's in the Field and Archbishop Tennison).
St Martin's had been undersubscribed for years and many of the pupils weren't practicing Christians (there was a high level of Muslim pupils as it was single sex and many parents preferred that).
Mumsnet often feels like a parallel universe to me for many things but this obsession that some people have with getting into the "good church school" seems to be the opposite where I live - or the schools wouldn't have closed down due to lack of pupils would they?