to feel disgusted if not particularly surprised , that so many faith schools fiddle their admissions criteria?

[LittleWhizzingBella]

OK we all know it goes on.

But the fact that these people are pretending to be beacons of moral, upstanding, ethical education while ensuring that disadvantaged children are kept outside, makes me feel bloody sick. Have these vile people really not moved on since the heyday of Victorian hypocrisy? How can they be so utterly vile while pretending to be christians?
about Pharisees... story here

I don't know why I'm so pissed off about it, I thought I was cynical and shocked by nothing. But there's something so horrible about them keeping children out of their precious schools because they're not the right type of children.

The reporting on this has been really confusing.

It was covered a little while ago, too, and i think the implication then was that mostly, these contraventions are administrative and fairly innocent - but involve dubious pactices like keeping questions about parents marital status and jobs on tghe admissions form.

BUT many faith and foundation schools DO effectively 'weed out' children who statistically can alter results or socially are thought to be 'not the children of people like us' that so much schools anxiety is centred on. Many faith schools have strict religious observance as first criteria - even to the extent of even specifying that 'in care' children must be baptised members of the faith etc to qualify for the top priority conferred by community schools. If the criteria is 'two years observance at local parish church, at least twice a week'the that precludes families which are highly mobile, have been placed in emergency accomodation or are, for instance, refugees. Ditto admissions procedures which specify nursery attendance as a criteia above proximity. Many faith schools place religious attendance - even of differnt denominations, and then even differnt faith, before any SN criteria.

But I agree with Nametaken that one of the chief effects of all this is to attract the very people who would want these categories to be weeded out...and the people who now most protest this dodginess!

um - I believe that schools often demand attendance twice a month, not week! Though if comeptition f faith school places remains at this level, who knows how high the stakes may go

"The most obvious option is to somehow raise the standards in their local state school and we all need to be looking at ways to achieve this".

The best way to do this would be to stop allowing faith schools to cream off the most privileged pupils.

I think that if a faith school gets 10% of its funding from its church, then it should only be allowed to reserve 10% of its places for congregation members. Please, someone tell me why this would not be fair.

nametaken, it is interesting that you are making a lot of assumptions about people when really you have no idea what their motives are.

Personally, I am in the process of moving from Scotland where everyone just goes to their local school and it all works very well, to England where as far as I can tell it is a major bun fight to get your child educated at all.

I just want my children to go to their local school with their friends who live nearby. I happen to think that the vast majority of primary schools in England are fine. I do not, however, want to have to drive them on a 20-mile round trip everyday to a school with vacancies because the 15 schools in between have already been bagged by parents who have been "doing the flowers" at church for the past two years. But it seems that every time we find a nice house to look at, it turns out that the only primary in the village is a faith school which favours outsiders who go to church over local children. Is it really any wonder that people pretend to go to church? I don't want to do that, but I can't find it in myself to blame people who do.

It is arbitrary discrimination and I am forced to fund it, and my children will have to pay for it.

How the hell are faith schools creaming off the most privileged?? They're 'creaming off' the ones who practice the religion, surely. If that also means privileged then please let me know as I'd quite like a nice big house and I'm sure my parents could have done with being a bit more privileged when we were growing up.

Because they are dominated by savvy middle class parents who play the system to get their children in. I have read reports about faith schools which demand baptism of children within a week of birth. Or which demand to see marriage certificates of parents to ensure they were married in church. Marriage is at its lowest takeup among the poor in this country. Because, as I mentioned before, stats show that the proportion of children having free school dinners at faith schools is half that of community schools; which translates into the fact that faith schools are not educating their fair share of underprivileged kids.

There is a very good report about all this from the London School of Economics, which I posted a link to on another thread like this. It concluded that faith schools perform better because they select the best candidates and not because they are religious. Any school will perform better if it is allowed to select families.

Is that enough of an explanation for you??

Presumably you're also directing your ire at the grammar schools, foundation schools and independent academies who also do the same thing?

Celia2 - I don't see what is wrong with that. if there is no demand - as in your example - then why is the taxpayer funding provision?
And anyway, even if a church school has 90% non-believers attending, there is no reason for it to alter its ethos - who said there was?
State schools should reflect the makeup of the wider community because that is what funds them.

You can still go to church and send your children to sunday school or go private to a school which matches your needs if it means that much to you.
That's what people who want their children to learn latin every day or have ballet lessons have to do.
Taxpayer-funded schools should be open to all taxpayers.

Of course faith schools don't 'cream off the most privelidged', but, as explained in my post below, some of the admission criteria do have the effect (presumably not intentionally), of not being accessible to some of the most disadvantaged.

Bride1 - I just know a lot more about the things that faith schools get up to because I have swotted up on it.
As it happens, I don't really approve of grammar schools either. But I have not researched the rest, sorry.

But, don't get me wrong. I am not arguing for the abolition of faith schools, even though I can't see the point of combining religion and education. These schools are established and there is nothing to be gained in closing them down. I just want a fairer admissions procedure.

It is ridiculous that people have to walk past two or three local schools to take their children to another one, further away, because of this. I really do believe this fractures communities in much the same way that private schools do.

And yet the taxpayer is funding it.

No not really. I love the way you apparently have to be savvy and middle class. Duh, I thought you just had to be religious. Yes there are strict admission policies. And do you know what, I am pissed off that as a Catholic my whole life from a family of practising Catholics, I will now have to sign a fecking attendance book at Mass to prove it, just because people think that the world owes them anything they want. I wouldn't dream of fiddling the system to get dd into a Jewish or Muslim school yet my taxes go towards them as well. As you are obviously not Catholic you know nothing about wanting to raise your child in your religion. School is not just about exam results.

And now I am hiding this thread, because this topic and the me me me attitude of some people thoroughly piss me off.

If you thought you just had to be religious, then you would be wrong. There are plenty of people out there who mysteriously suddenly become religious for a few years to get their children into a school.
That is why you have to sign a book to prove your attendance.
My "attitude" is not the problem here, because I am not the one faking interest in a religion to get my child into school. And no-one should be having to do this.

"just because people think that the world owes them anything they want" And yet you appear to believe the world owes you funding for your ethos to be upheld, while withholding access to the school from children whose parents don't share your religion.

"As you are obviously not Catholic you know nothing about wanting to raise your child in your religion." By all means raise your child in your religion. Just don't ask other taxpayers to pay for schools from which their children are excluded.

You're not going to be able to untangle this faith school thing without seperating faith from schools entirely.

Or to put it another way. Every school's agenda should be the same. To teach the national curriculum (not just to pass the exams either) and prepare the kids for life.

If you have two or more kinds of school with different agendas then the whole admissions thing is unsolvable. You can fiddle with it all you like and pile on more rules, but it will never work out right.

It's not just because of religion. It wouldn't work out if you had large numbers of schools that aimed to prepare the kids to be beekeepers. You'd have to have special rules to make sure all the beekeeping parents could get their kids in the special school for it. Then parents would complain that they couldn't go to the closest school because it has been filled up with beekeepers.

It wouldn't make any difference if the funding for catholic schools was removed tomorrow. Catholics would simply fund-raise, gather together as a community, and pay for it out of church coffers.

Government won't ban the schools, if they coulda they woulda. But non-catholics aren't excluded, they are just lower down on the list and this is how come they can't be shut down.

So it comes back to the same thing. What are you lot gonna do to improve standards in your schools?

Why should every schools agenda be the same? Why should our children have to be taught about pre-marital sex, contraception and abortion when it's against our religion?

The school meals aren't the same. The muslim children don't have to eat pork, why do we have to have to listen about abortion.

Being taught about things which exist is against your religion?

Gosh. Why is you running schools then?

sigh, these threads always end in insult throwing.

Hmmm my children are at a faith school and whilst I think they've benefited in terms of small school, lovely location, nice caring ethos, good facilities, I do think most of the other parents are wankers and I cannot wait for them to get to grammar school.

It would work fine if all the catholics lived in one area and all the atheists in the other (hindu in another). I'd still disapprove, but it would 'work'. I'm pointing out that it a practical sense there is no way to make it work properly as it is.

But on whether it should work I have an opinion too.

What children are taught in state funded schools should be in keeping with our laws as chosen by our government which we elected.
We the people of the UK have decreed that abortion is acceptable (under certain circumstances) and that homosexuality is perfectly acceptable. If some want their own laws they should either find an uninhabited island or vote for MPs that will support their changes. but in the meantime they should not expect the government to support schools who teach that following UK law is wrong.

We can't change the government we are a minority group, there are 3 million of us and 65 million of you - how can we win?

I'm in a minority over lots of things too, but I get stuck following the majorities rules.

And remember we're not saying don't teach them religion. Just 'don't teach them religion' in school.

Insult throwing? Where?

nametaken, where are you getting your figures from? Last time I checked there weren't 68m people in this country.

And 'us' and 'them' is a bit of an odd attitude to take when you are debating on the internet - how on earth do you know what religion or lack of religion other posters have?

FWIW, I don't happen to have a Bible to hand, but I can't recall the Gospels saying much about pre-marital sex, contraception and abortion. Beyond Jesus telling 'let him who is without sin cast the first stone' against the woman taken in adultery. Odd that a religion that claims to follow his teachings is so hung up about all those things.