Why do faith schools dominate the league tables?

[benetint]

I looked at the league tables for primary schools in my area (nottingham) and I was surprised to see the top few were not schools in affluent areas bur were all catholic schools. Many of them are actually in quite deprived areas. So what is it catholic schools are doing to get such excellent results? Is it that they can be more selective about who they take? Are they just exam factories? Ate they stricter with their kids? Or are they just better in general than secular states?

I don't think that the goverment is going to take much notice of less than 4000 signatures - in the whole country!

pianomama - I really stand for having a choice too. So if there are schools A, B, and C within a 2 mile radius of my home, I'd like to have a choice of which one my child attends. I'd like to be able to make my choices on the basis of things like reputation, location, friendship circles, school facilities, extracurricular activities.

NOT be discriminated against on the basis of religion, which makes a mockery of the concept of choice.

Faith schools remove choice, not the other way round.

Thanks for the link CecilyP, will have a look.

WavingLeaves - you do have a choice. You always have a choice.You just restrict yourself to 2 mile radius.This is not discrimination.

Long time ago I had 4 DC in 3 different schools while working full time and being the only driver in the family. I am not suggesting you doing the same, but it is just an example that the choice is there. You need to ake it yourself.

pianomama - I think it's important for ecological and community reasons that at least at primary level, children grow up not having to make ridiculous commutes. They will probably have to do enough of that when they are older.

There is enough of a density of primary schools in the UK - nobody should HAVE to travel miles to get a good education. It is very sad that some people have to because they are excluded from their local schools due to religious discrimination.

Yes, thats true. In reality though I doubt many people have to do long commutes because their local primary doesn't accept their DC on the basis of faith. The reality is probably that the local school close to their community is crap so they do long commute to avoid that.

Would it not be better to address that first rather then gear up against faith schools? The biggest problem in this country IMHO that there are a lot of really terrible schools and blaiming good schools , selective on whatever grounds won't help.

But pianomama - I do agree with you re the importance of the family. If faith is important for the family, then it can be promoted within the family. School is an inappropriate environment for worship, since even in a faith school, faith won't be a 'one size fits all' kind of learning experience.

Part of the 'good school' vs 'bad school' problem is selectivity though. If one local school is creaming off more middle class children through selection, then the other one will suffer, and the problem snowballs.

I dont really know as none of my DC been to a strictly Catholic school and as I said , the primary CofE was quite laid back about the whole thing.
But it the school's ethos is to be a faith school then there is nothing inappropriate about the worship. The just do exactly what it says on the tin.
You do not have to send your DC there.

Choice of school has always been a myth. What it should really say is 'choice of school if there is room'

I see that the government petition for abolishing faith schools has 108 signatures and closes tomorrow - another one that has little support!
(I was heartened that 'bring back grammar schools' has a mere 17 signatures and only 6 days to run)
MN always has strong opinions but they never seem to get beyond a moan.

B&B, yes that's a good thing... as 'you'd were.

Pianomama, just because Christianity hijacked moral behavior doesn't mean it gets to call basic decency 'Christian Morals'. I have similar morals to many Christians in that I don't treat people how I don't want to be treated, but they are not Christian morals. You've totally missed the point in what I was saying.

Being good has been around a lot longer than Christianity has. As I already explained, it's humanistic morals. Not that difficult to understand.

Exotic, that's not a sign of little support it's a sign of little promotion & little awareness of the petitions existence. There are other petitions for the same cause that have far more support.

Damn predictive text... ruined my response to B&B!

I think that if it as something that people were really bothered about there would be far greater support-I once signed one for something to do with car tax and it had hundreds and hundreds of thousands!
It would have to be an act of Parliament to change the law on collective worship so it would make sense to petition the government rather than waste energies elsewhere.

Exoticfruits, slightly off topic, but I really don't think the fact that an online petition for something doesn't have many signatures can really be seen as an indicator of anything - it all depends on who started it and how much publicity it has had. I'm on mailing lists for the National Secular Society etc, but had never heard of that particular petition.

Last time I looked at the No 10 petition website it was full of all sorts of weird stuff, and I don't think anyone pays any serious attention to it. I thought it was mainly used as a venting zone for people who had got fed up of writing to the papers in green ink and not being printed?

I certainly wouldn't expect adding my name to anything on there would ever achieve anything.

All I know is that if people are really bothered they spread the word-the only ones that I have signed are ones that people have emailed about and they have often ended up being mentioned in the newspaper-this doesn't happen unless lots of people are bothered about it. It makes sense to me that if you want the government to do something you ask them directly.
I generally give out the link to the secular society on here, but I doubt whether many join. I have given up on it.
I think that the problem is that there is a misunderstanding -I keep having to correct people-there are NO secular state schools in England.
I can only assume that people went to faith schools themselves and assumed that the rest of us didn't have assembly, prayers,hymns etc. There was, and is, very little difference. They are non denominational-they are not secular.

Having run petitions on things people care about a lot, I can tell you it's really not that easy. It would be difficult to understand I think unless you've done it... you'd be surprised about how hard it is to get publicity (especially in the mainstream media) and social shares out of small circles. Sometimes you get lucky when things go viral and pick up lots of momentum, but for the most part collecting signatures online is tougher then people think.

*than, not then

Meanwhile people moan on MN!

You could always run around dressed up like super heros and stuff up traffic in central Londond....:)

Wow I can't believe how much this has taken off. Thanks ever so much for your replies, they've been really thought provoking.

To throw a bit of a spanner on the works, the catholic school that has the best results local to us has a high proportion of pupils with eal and also free school meals!

They are better because they don't put up with any Sh*t

They are no different from any other school, they have to go through the same channels and in most places they have to take everyone in the catchment.