How are faith schools funded?

[Rosebud05]

Does anyone know? Is it all through the church/synagogue/mosque etc or some through central government funding? Or a mixture of both?

Am I right in thinking that the teachers in faith schools don't have to hold the faith of the school?

I'm not asking you to beat yourself up about anything, alemci.

As you say, churches did play a part in education; given that there is now state provision, it's difficult to see how necessary their on-going role is.

No, faith schools do not have to take in children not of that faith. Their admission criteria discriminates against people of other faiths and atheists - atheists in particular are the bottom of the pile.

Most people who 'are not happy dividing people on faith lines' are completely comfortable with dividing them on income lines. Funny that. All the routes for working class kids in bad areas to go to decent schools and mix with people from outside their immediate locality are being closed down. Convenient for people who live in leafy posh areas. I agree that it is wrong that faith schools should be the only socially diverse schools in the UK. But the solution to that is to make other schools socially diverse too (ie abandon catchment areas) rather than to remove the last schools where how much you earn and what sort of house you can afford are the determinants for what school your child can go to.

Sorry - NOT the determinants.

thetasigmamum, I assume you include me in 'most people' as you're quoting from my above post.

I'm not at all comfortable with dividing people along income lines - I deplore the class division in the UK education system (which will become more marked as the benefit changes take effect).

Btw, many other posters have made the point that the faith schools in their areas are very much not socially diverse.

To anyone who is interested - I wholeheartedly support this campaign!

www.humanism.org.uk/campaigns/religion-and-schools/faith-schools

Why would anyone want to send their dc to a 'faith' school if they are ATHIESTS?

I send my children to a faith school and we're atheists, because we live in a village and there are no community (ie non faith) schools in the village. The faith school is our closest/only school. It's ridiculous and the amount of religion rammed down their throats is pretty distasteful, but we have what we have.

But like what Hilary - do you know how it compares to a non-faith school? And if it is the only school in your area, what religion are the other dcs?

It's rural so it's pretty white. Most of the children are either children of Anglicans or the non-religious like us. The religious ones come from a larger area as they can be admitted as the children of churchgoers. The non religious ones tend to be the children 'of the parish'. (It's a VA C of E school.)

I talk to friends whose children are at non-faith schools and my children are getting significantly more god than any of them - weekly visit to church, lots of what I'd call 'Sunday School' stuff. I was quite upset the first year when my five year old came back with a picture he'd drawn of the crucifixion including crown of thorns. Posted it on FB and my non-faith school parent friends were pretty horrified.

But as I said, I'm prepared to put up with it because it means my children are at a local school, with children in the village.

Angel - I live in the most oversubscribed borough in the country for school places. When I apply for ds this winter, I know that he will get a place at whichever one of the local schools is forced to have an extra class that year. One of the two is a VA CofE primary. If that's where he is assigned, I will be most relieved that he will have a good school under 300 metres away - though probably keep him on the list for the non-religious school for a while, but being nearly 500 metres away he's unlikely to get in.

FWIW the CofE school allocates half its places like all the community schools, and up to half are reserved for 'qualifying Christians', but given the area only half those places are applied for, so the remainder are community too.

Am I right in thinking that the teachers in faith schools don't have to hold the faith of the school?

Just to get back to this - VA schools can discriminate against a proportion of their teaching staff on religious grounds. We know someone who qualified as a primary teacher and then - in our area which has huge numbers of faith schools (rural, most village schools seem to be CofE, a few RC) he had considerable difficulty getting a job because they all wanted a reference from his vicar or priest.

This issue was debated in the Lords quite recently - AFAIK the situation didn't change, hope I'm wrong but doubt it.

Views on whether or not faith schools should be able to take religion into account when recruiting or promoting teachers will, of course, vary. A Moslem governor of a Moslem school may be very unhappy if the law forced the school to take on non-Moslem teachers. However, an atheist teacher applying to that school may be very unhappy to find that their lack of faith means they can't get the job even if they are the best qualified candidate.

By the way, this debate tends to be conducted on the basis that all faith schools are Christian. It is true that the vast majority (98%) are CofE or RC, but there are also Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim schools (apologies for mis-spelling Muslim in my last post).

Few of us have direct experience of anything other than CofE or RC, so that's inevitable, even though the OP specifically mentioned other religions. I don't see what difference it makes to the principles being debated though. Discrimination against children and staff by a Muslim school exactly as bad as by a CofE school. There are no other state-funded institutions which are allowed to hire and fire on the basis of someones religious beliefs; even religious charities apparently have tighter rules for when they can appoint on a religious basis than applies to schools.

There is perhaps a slight difference with CofE as it is still anachronistically the 'state religion' and as such has a clearer duty to provide for all children living in the state than the others (and indeed the VC CofEs do)

I don't think it should make a difference to the principles but I have come across people who think again when they realise that there are other faith schools. I have also come across people who want to stop CofE and RC schools from doing certain things but think it is ok for schools of minority faiths to continue doing those things.

The rules on religious charities are that they must show that what they are doing is "a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim". Whilst some campaigners argue that this is tighter than the rules applying to schools, I have serious doubts as to whether it would be any different in practise.

CofE VA schools are mostly state funded but the diocese pays for capital expenditure and the school has to fundraise to match any big fabric spends

the diocese pays for capital expenditure and the school has to fundraise to match any big fabric spends

The diocese doesn't 'pay for capital expenditure' - it has to contribute 10%. (it was originally 50%, reduced to 75% in 1959, then later further reduced)

Schools having to fundraise is hardly unique to faith schools and they don't expect to be allowed to discriminate because they do so.

So -how are faith schools funded?

The question was answered hazelnut2 - 7 years ago! The answer is still the same - I.e. the same as other state schools apart from a small proportion of capital funding.

To be fiar, tichy, having read through this zombie thread, I don't think the question was answered succintly, and to a large extend I don't think it was answered at all.
Firstly, it appears from the thread that some faith schools are funded differently than others. It appears that at least some church schools are funded partially (10%?) from the church.
From the Jewish schools I am familar with, the point was made that there is a "voluntary contribution" that funds the Jewish curriculum - so that the buildings and secular subjects are funded by the State, and the jewish subjects are funded out of the voluntary contribution. But a question that was asked repeatedly, and not, as far as I could see, answered, was what happens if parents can't afford to pay,. The simple answer is that they don't pay, and they cannot be discriminated against in terms of admissions or any other way. The schools do, in practice, have a reasonable idea as to who really can't pay, and who is merely claiming they can't afford to pay, and they do try to use whatever pressure they can, often social, to heavy those that they believe are freeloading. If you go on fancy holidays, or drive a fancy car, or own a fancy home (or even middle class versions of these), you will get a huge amount of social pressure if you claim that you are not able to pay the voluntary contributions. But some parents clearly don't care, they jet off on overseas holidays and they don't pay, and one of the jobs of the governors is to try and work out who it is reasonable to put pressure on, and who it isn't. On the other hand, the state faith school my daughter attended in Years 5 & 6 had unquestionably quite a sizeable group in her year that just couldn't pay. A group sizeable enough that they went to the head teacher and asked that the residential trip in Year 5 not happen, because they couldn't fund it as well as the Year 6 trip, and they didn't want their kids to miss out, so please would it not happen (and it didn't, and neither did the water research trip, day trip). And then when it came to the Year 6 trip, that nearly didn't happen, because there were enough parents who went to the head teacher and said they couldn't fund it as to jeopardize the numbers on the trip, until some of the other parents put their hands in their pockets and funded not only their own kid but the amounts that were missing so everybody could go.
So the short answer to the "what if parents can't afford to pay" is that the school either solicits charity from the wider community, or charity from the parents in the class/school, or makes the voluntary contribution for those who can pay large enough to cover those who can't. At least in the schools I am familiar with.

And while in church schools it may be capital funding, in Jewish schools, it is the funding for the religious element that the state does not pay for. In some schools, the Jewish element coudl easily be 40% of total teaching (meaning very long days), so it can be very significant, especially as the teacher who can teach maths & English & science cannot usually teach the religious curiculum, and vice versa.

The third post by admission answered the question fully!