Have church schools ever been challenged on grounds of discrimination by ethnicity?

[BranchingOut]

I was wondering if any person or organisation has ever challenged an individual church school or the overall existence of church schools on the grounds of discrimination by ethnicity?

Taking a quick look at the church of england diversity figures, these two paragraphs jump out:

This survey reveals the vitality of a younger profile that people from minority
ethnic backgrounds bring to local church congregations. It confirms the similar
finding in the 2005 clergy audit. In particular, among younger adult congregation members under 35 years of age, the ethnic minority proportion matches the proportion in the whole population, around 15%.

1.2.4 The largest proportion of minority ethnic Anglicans (two-thirds) are clustered in the main three dioceses around the London conurbation and, consequently, bring a younger profile to the churches in the London area. Over the whole country, urban Church of England parishes recorded an average of 9% minority ethnic Anglicans in their core adult congregations while suburban and rural parishes recorded 4% and 3.6% respectively.

www.churchofengland.org/media/1032500/celebratingdiversitygsmisc938.pdf

So, the population attending church in the Church of England would seem to be broadly white. While we all know that church schools are obliged to admit children of any faith, this is often so far down the admissions criteria that it is almost wholly ineffective. Are church schools effectively discriminating on the basis of ethnicity because the black and minority ethnic pupils are much less likely to attend a relevant church?

If church schools make up a significant proportion of the country's school places, which are currently under huge pressure in many parts of the country, then surely this is an issue? It would seem to hugely limit school choice for many sections of the population. In an oversubscribed area, someone who is a white CofE churchgoer can choose either a community or a church school (two school choices), whereas someone who is Hindu only has the community school (one school) to choose from. Setting religion aside, there may be many reasons why that church school might the best school for that Hindu pupil - SEN provision, grounds, location, curriculum, parental preference - yet they are very unlikely to get in. Why is faith seen as the overwhelming factor?

This is a question I am interested in, rather than trying to persuade anyone to any particular point of view. Does anyone have any insight?

Primary school with 30 intake.

2/3 did not attend the church in question.
More than half are siblings.

Was that a typical year?
So how is that excluding non-church goers?

Apologies to OP if the thread has shifted from ethnic to faith discrimination.

Yes that is a typical year.

It's excluding non church goers by only having 4 places out of 30 available each year to people living in the school catchment but who don't attend church. The siblings rule only benefits you if you have already got your first child into school, and to get a first child in to that school, you would have to be a church attender (or be one of the lucky 4 who get in on distance criteria each year).

Thus the only places available to people of other faiths (or no faith), are 4 places per year, in a very narrow catchment area.

If you are going to choose an example which does not have community places, then of course you can portray it like that.

But if perhaps you chose this example, you would see that that the only churchy input is in using parish boundaries to delineate the catchments; there is no worship requirement for residents, and non-residents on the parish roll have to meet the distance from school gates criteria so by definition would come lower down.

The aggregated figures do not show that CofE schools are less ethnically diverse than other schools. So whilst there may be individual schools with atypical profiles, these exist also in community schools.

Thirdhill, here's another two off the top of my head:
St michaels highgate
St johns highbury vale
Both of which have a tiny percentage of fsm kids relative to it's postcode.

Its postcode, damn iPad and its incorrect apostrophe use...

If you are going to choose an example which does not have community places, then of course you can portray it like that.

This type of C of E school is the only model of church school in my area, I wasn't aware there existed any other type!

Does anyone have an idea of the breakdown of church schools with admissions policies of the ring-fenced and the non ring-fenced type?

The problem with looking at national figures, is that they are of no use to you if you live in an area where one of the schools you would like to attend has an admissions policy like the one described by neeps and tatties.

neeps' example shows that 20 or 2/3 are not church places. On what basis does s/he extrapolate that only 4 of 30 are not church places just because there are 16 siblings? What evidence is there that the sibling places are church places?

Ring fencing is useful for large secondary schools where entry is more competitive because of academic results. Primary schools are much smaller and academic differences between children are not as stark in the earlier years.

My question was about ring-fenced secondary admissions, because I wasn't aware that primary admissions were such a storm of an issue. I now find myself responding about an area in which I had little interest even when mine were that age. We just looked at those within buggy pushing distance and applied to one we liked the people in, without even checking other parents' inside leg measurements let alone FSM, SEN etc vitals.

If it's such a big issue at 4, these parents can expect to have a even "better" time of it at 11, 16 and 18. You will find siblings taking up a similar proportion of places at non church secondary schools, leaving a distance limit of 0.1 mile for some bands. With no church criterion to moan about either. Over subscribed is over subscribed. Sometimes we just can't get what we want. Even when weknow it's "absolutely the right school" for ours.

So OP, it may be useful to separate primary from secondary. I suspect that ring fencing only applies to secondary where scale and academic level become more acute.

neeps' example shows that 20 or 2/3 are not church places. On what basis does s/he extrapolate that only 4 of 30 are not church places just because there are 16 siblings? What evidence is there that the sibling places are church places?

I agree the sibling places might not be 'current' churchgoers, but they must have fallen into either the 10 out of 30 churchgoing category (or the 4 out of 30 distance category) at the time of that their first child started school (cause with a first child it's impossible to fall into the 16 out of 30 sibling category!). So only 4 out of the 30 places, give or take, would be allocated to someone with no church connection.

Think there are only about 5 of the 120 or so C of E schools in our county who use their own admissions criteria incl religious affiliation. ALL the others use LA criteria, eg siblings, distance. Makes me cross that the national media imply all church schools expect church attendance/christening or lying re both. Not true across the whole country.

thirdhill- I can only conclude you were lucky that the schools 'within buggy pushing distance' did not discriminate against you on the grounds of church attendance. My DS will not get into the only school within buggy pushing distance (the 'village' school 0.5 miles away) as we do not attend church. He also won't get into the school in our adjacent village (1.8 miles away) as it is oversubscribed and we are out of catchment. I predict he will be allocated the school 3.2 miles and two villages away.

neeps that's because there are lots of schools within buggy pushing distance where I live, though if I had chosen to live in an idyllic village, I may expect to travel a few miles to a school. Or move within 0.1 miles of it, instead of expecting it to change for me.

Over subscribed schools often tinker with admissions criteria, so if you're saying your stats are all but identical over time, your problem looks to be with the temporary church goers and mobile families, not with the school.

Maybe I don't have as much a sense of entitlement if something is denied me, or maybe my standards are lower? Forgive me for not being interested enough to work out which it is.

In my Catholic school we have Hindus, sikhs, sri lankan christians, pakistani christians, black portugeuse, black africans, polish, white portugeuse
So in our school ethnicity isn`t a problem and over 25% of our children are EAL.

OK - trying to get myself well out of my London admissions mindset - I decided to tap the term 'St Mary's' into Google in order to find a random church school, anywhere. It took me to a St Mary's primary school in Gloucestershire:

www.stmarysyate.co.uk - which turns out to be voluntary aided.

Admissions in order of:

Firstly ?children in public care (as defined by section 22 of the 1989 children Act).
Secondly to children whose families regularly worship as part of a Christian church. (Applications must be supported by a letter of confirma-tion from the Minister of attendance over the last two years and sent directly to the school).
Christian church means:
The Church of England or other Anglican Church, or
A Christian church which is in membership of Churches Together in England (or its partner bodies in Scotland, Wales & Ireland), or
Church or a congregation, which can provide evidence of the Evangelical Alliance.
In the event of a tie break priority will be given to children falling into criteria three and then criteria four as described below.
Thirdly to children who already have a sibling on roll in the school at the time when the child is admitted.
Children are siblings if they are half or full brother/sister;
They are adoptive brother/sister;
They are children of the same household.
In the event of a tie break places will be allocated as outlined in criteria four.
Fourthly to other children who live in the ecumenical Parish of Yate, beginning with those who live closest to the school. Distances from home to the nearest school gate are measured using the South Gloucestershire Council Routes to school Gazetteer dated 1 September 2012. Remaining places may be given to children who live outside of the Parish of Yate, if their parents wish them to receive education at a church school beginning with those who live closest to the school.

So there church attendance receives higher priority than having a sibling! .

I am glad that I started this thread,because I have learned that many church schools do have ring-fenced community places - which I suppose explains why fewer people are bothered about this aspect of the admissions system than I thought would be.

Yet I do still feel uncomfortable with church attendance being used as a priority to access something as fundamental as education: the church of england website facts and figures state that '1.7 million people take part in a Church of England service each month', yet our overall adult population is around 50m?

The reason why I framed my OP in terms of ethnicity, was because I was wondering if it would ever be possible to challenge faith schools under something like the equalities act, obviously assuming that it would be impossible to challenge them under discrimination on the basis of, er, faith.

I also think what makes a huge difference to your perspective is whether or not you live in an area of oversubscription for school places.

You can google and easily find more examples of 100% faith place schools. I could repeat what I did above, and link a VA school with catchment criteria. Individual examples aren't going to show the whole picture.

The wider picture (which can be found on the site OP linked) shows that CofE schools have normal ethnic profiles, and although some schools have lower than typical deprivation levels, the proportion of schools with over 33% on FSM is higher than the norm. So these admissions criteria are producing typical schools.

Whether there should be faith schools is a different question (and one on which there are many previous threads!). With no major political party supporting change (and eg Labour founding so many new ones, and coalition free schools making it easy for others so to do), and the sheer impossibility of making new cuts to buy out the land and property ownership of Churches and charities for the older ones; there really isn't any prospect of change.

Except from within the Churches themselves. CofE is making promising noises about this, but I've not heard anything from other denominations or religions.

OP seems to be gunning for CofE, perhaps they're a softer target than RC schools whose London congregations are mainly minority ethnic worshippers?However oversubscribed RC schools are the ones where the choice is between competiting RC track record and not simply whether you practise. i don't know of any CofE oversubscribed school in London that does not have pupils of other faiths, but quite a few RC ones who are 100% RC. tiggy's favourites are RC not CofE

I agree with Edith that unless you buy the capital the church invests in education, they should have considerable weight on the Governing Bodies.

If I wanted to rent something that someone owned, I'd work in partnership with them as far as possible, and if they're unable to rent me all their property, I'd look elsewhere. They own the property I want to use, I don't, and there are other ones I could rent. I am certainly not entitled to make them rent it to me at someone else's demise. Of course I could build my own, but hey, that costs more than I'm prepared to fork out and anyway the ones I build don't always turn out as well as theirs. Nowadays you can build your own free school without even owning the property. Even less reason to covet others'.

This thread has a hefty piece of the green-eyed monster about.

I think it's totally unfair to accuse this thread of being jealous - that's a pretty childish way to shut down an argument. I've said it before and I'll say it again - how would people of faith feel if there was an outstanding school with wonderful facilities in an area with a shortage of school places that was founded on the principles of atheism and gave priority to anybody who could prove their parents were atheist. If their parents, although atheists by belief, had been baptised by their parents they would be penalised under the admissions system. Church records would be checked for non-attendance. There would be, quite rightly, uproar. Or to use your parlance jealousy.

Polly - this is a discussion, not an argument.

As to atheist schools, I would say the same for anyone who had faith who failed to get in. If the atheist school admissions specified that they would repel anyone baptised, and that was legal, then that's their admissions policy. Simple. They run the school. It would seem you're attributing my views to being CofE, how presumptious of you.

My point relates to anyone with a sense of entitlement who is prepared to deprive someone else who has attained what they have not, and is happy to attack the rules they failed to satisfy. That is jealousy. Nothing to do with faith.

tiggy we too would have failed to get into fantastic local church schools. It is inconvenient but not sufficiently so to attempt to qualify. Starting a free school seems much easier than trying to buy church property or even wasting energy moaning about them.