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?

ONLY in the big cities is what leosdad says an issue

for most of us, only a couple of schools are within any sort of commute
catholic : two primaries in the whole city and one girls and one boys secondary
nearest Jewish school is 20 miles away
do not know of any officially sikh, hindu or muslim
and as all the village primaries are CofE but the secondaries non denominational ....

I'm not buying the no EAL kids in Catholic schools. In this town a large % of the children in the two Catholic schools are from Eastern European families. Many of these children don't speak a work of English when they start reception, but by Y4 you would have no idea English wasn't their first language.
Still great SATs results, though.

IME, Catholic schools are not stricter, and they are not exam factories, but they do teach and practice forgiveness more than other schools.

leosdad, You are so right. We are not poor, but we are seriously concerned about how we will pay for school transport when DC 2 & 3 go to high school. But we will somehow find the money to send them to a good Catholic school, rather than the local school because I think it's worth it. Maybe parents who didn't value education as much wouldn't make the same decision.
My children aren't any more able than other people children, but I will damn well make sure they get the best GCSE results they are capable of. I'm just confirming what others have suggested.

We are lucky living in a London Borough so bus fares are free with the zip card but some of the children live a little further out and their journeys will be quite expensive, these are children who have siblings at the school and many parents wish for all their children to go to the same school.

And I don't think people who actually have children at school with EAL children see it as a disadvantage.

It's not a disadvantage at all. The EAL issue was raised by someone upthread claiming that catholic schools had no EAL pupils. I think it's completely irrelevant to anything really but if we must count, then let's be accurate about it.

Hi, I work for the British Humanist Association and we actively campaign against faith schools (for reasons of segregation, indoctrination, and curriculum (i.e. "some" schools teach creationism and do not believe in evolution)).

Anyway, with regards to some of the above comments. Yes some state schools kind of are secular, not by law... but they (thankfully) do not follow the law that every day must contain a session collective worship. Technically though, none are secular.

As for the league tables, there are a number of reasons. Mainly, as mentioned by some of you already, the schools are selective and not representative of the over-all population. There ARE less children from poor & disadvantaged families/backgrounds in faith schools (which is a disgrace in our opinion) as they don't make it through "selection".

Also, it does come down to the parents a lot in a self perpetuating, self fulfilling prophecy. Rather than attempt to explain it myself I shall take a quote from our site:

"Why does it happen? ? Explaining how religious selection leads to socio-economic selection

It is simplest to explain this by using an example. Let?s say there are two schools in a town ? one an inclusive community school, and one a religiously selective ?faith? school. Let?s say, for whatever reason, the ?faith? school performs slightly better (as one would expect it to some of the time).

It then follows that for many parents, it becomes more desirable to get their children into the ?faith? school. And more ambitious parents, typically from wealthier backgrounds, are likely to work harder to manipulate the system ? for example, by attending church when they otherwise wouldn?t ? to get their children into the stronger school. In other words, the selection process itself cuts out the pupils from the poorest backgrounds; and so the school ends up with more parents who will push their children to perform better; and so the school performs even stronger than its neighbours; and so the cycle perpetuates."

The whole article is at: www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/994

Finally, there is the issue that faith schools aren't playing fair in terms of competition. Again rather than explain myself, here is a link: www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/1029

I hope that helps.

FYI there is an interesting documentary of the subject here: www.channel4.com/programmes/faith-school-menace/episode-guide/series-1/episode-1

Plus there are a few other such documentaries out there if you're interested.

I suppose it depends on the faith, but within many faiths there is a culture of valuing education, which therefore means that the kids who go to faith schools benefit from the shared emphasis on the importance of education from both their religious families and religious school. For example, for many religions, detailed reading of a religious book,often in the original, fairly hard, language, is required - this ensures that from a young age the children learn this language to an advanced level and also learn to debate and discuss a complex, adult-level text in great detail, improving their comprehension skills. This is not an accidental advantage of religious schools, like the suggestion made above that because parents have to try a bit harder to get their kids in,the kids from less-motivated backgrounds are left out - this is intrinsic to the way the school works.

Thus even though many faith schools devote far less time to secular subjects, the kids actually perform far better than average in those secular subjects - because the kind of training given in religious education is an excellent training for the mind as a whole - contrary to those who imagine it is all about limiting children's mindset and not teaching things eg evolution. Thus at age 10, I was reading biblical commentaries written in a mixture of medieval French and Aramaic (no, I'm not making this up) - clearly well above what an average English child in a non-faith school was or is expected to do. AFAIK, kids at my old state faith primary still do this - and also score 100% across the board at KS2 SATS (despite secular subjects being a relatively low priority there).

It's silly to debate why faith schools get better results and ignore the fact that the curriculum there is different and that the historical values which have enabled the faiths to survive over hundreds or thousands of years often include valuing education far more highly than contemporary British secular society.

These values also impact on behaviour - a culture of respect in the more traditional faith schools means that on the whole (I'm sure there are exceptions), teachers in faith schools probably have to waste less time on disruption in lessons. It's much easier to ensure discipline across the board if you can be sure that everyone at the school has the same moral framework (or literally sings from the same hymn sheet!) - lack of moral relativism within the school community saves a lot of time and hassle.

I would imagine this applies to schools of most of the major faiths.

Hi breadandbutterfly,

I'm afraid much of that is factually incorrect. Especially: "Thus even though many faith schools devote far less time to secular subjects, the kids actually perform far better than average in those secular subjects"

breadandbutterfly
sorry but you are WRONG about the curriculum in faith schools.
As an atheist ex governor of a faith school the ONLY difference is that the faith schools tent to pick up more parents who can be bothered to not settle for their catchment school

remember that it is ONLY in central London that faith schools are full of churchgoers

round here there are half and half CofE and other schools and the church going proportion at the church schools is around 10% - the vicar was a governor too he and I checked the figures as part of the Diocesan inspection.

@Iamsteve Not much non-theism on view when I was at Cambridge. All the non theists I know (and I know many) are rather less academically successful than most of the theists I know.

@talkin it is NOT only in London that faith schools are full of churchgoers. There are several areas in the country where there are significantly fewer catholic school places than practising catholic children. Those schools that do exist are, not surprisingly, both full and sought after (although they are not always top performing. some of them are, some of them aren't, as you would expect).

breadandbutterfly, I don't disagree with you.

However, if you had a humanist school that had an entrance criteria that only included (for instance) people who were prepared to buy and read the Guardian every Saturday and spend Sundays at the local allotment and ensure that all children read the complete works of Arthur Ransome, you would equally exclude people living chaotic lives in extreme poverty and include children whose parents have a predisposition to value education. Given that the greatest indicators of educational success are income and parental support, you would have to be a substandard school not to get better results.

(I completely acknowledge the many positive things that religions do to provide community and charitable work that people are inspired to do as a result of following a religion, by the way, even though going to church isn't my thing).

metabilis
catholic schools area TINY minority of faith schools
the vast, vast majority are CofE Controlled

and in Southampton, the catholic schools have a significant intake of sikhs and muslims - because they offer single sex education

(waves at IamSteve) I'm a BHA member!
And I would also point out that league tables are not everything when it comes to choosing a school: you might get your kid into one that has a high rate of exam passes but also masses of subtle bullying and a record=breaking rate of eating disorders and self-harm among the DC.
I sent my DS to the big non-faith primary which scores only average on Ofsted because it's actually the best school in the borough - it's just the scores get pulled down by the rapid turnover of kids who start with little or no English. The point is, every child who attends the school leaves having made a lot of progress, and the whole ethos of the place is lovely.

@Talkin Catholic schools are the ones I know about. I don't talk about stuff when I don't know what I'm talking about. Something others should consider, maybe? I suppose you do realise that Southampton isn't the only place in England? (I don't know about catholic schools in Scotland, intuition tells me there probably are sufficient and it's a different ballgame there anyway, many catholic parents might sensibly want to send their kids to mixed schools in some parts of scotland)

Right. So in a nutshell its the parents who self select. Not the school.

@schoolworries Pretty much. And there is no financial, class, or nationality barrier to self selecting.

I'm not wrong TalkinPeace re the curriculum - I went to a faith primary and I can assure you that we spent only 50% of our day (which was longer than average, but not by that much!) on secular education.

The secular curriculum was not at all different - we were taught all the usual subjects BUT we also studied religious subjects for 50% of the time - which clearly is different. Not much medieval french and Aramaic on the secular curriculum for 10 year olds in the UK, that I'm aware of.

If the proportion of the genuinely religious at C of E schools is that low then what I said in my post probably does not apply to them - but I'd guess it does at Catholic, Jewish, Sikh, Moslem etc schools ie ones which do not have the host country's faith and so where you are less likely to end up because you only nominally have the faith but happen to live near one. At my primary school, 100% of the children and parents were religious and as I've said,that impacted not only on the curriculum but on areas like discipline, which was exemplary.

I'd be very surprised if discipline at faith schools wasn't generally much superior - any work done on this, Iamsteve?

Not clear what you mean by your first point, Steve -
"I'm afraid much of that is factually incorrect. Especially: "Thus even though many faith schools devote far less time to secular subjects, the kids actually perform far better than average in those secular subjects"

Ooo Merrymouse I quite like the sound of this mythical school - can my kids go? (while obviously I am against any selection by Guardian-buying criteria).
You're absolutely right of course. One CofE school near to us has eight times less FSM than the area it sits in the middle of. Another has a higher level of FSM. The one that only has a tiny percentage of FSM is over-subscribed while the other is not. The former has no space therefore for anyone who does not meet the church-going criteria right near the top of admissions. Therefore it has no space for recent refugees, travellers or those from chaotic families since they will not have been to church for two years. It gets much better SATS than the other CofE school or my kids' school. It gets a lower value added.

So what is this humanist campaign possibly going to acheive?! Its hardly the schools fault which parents self select and which don't. What a truly campaign.

I suppose in the interest of fairness the humanist society will also be campaigning agaisnt the wealthy having the advantage of being able to afford to live on the best schools doorstep too?

@Bread I only know about catholic schools. The catholic primary I attended, in the 1970s, we possibly did spend a bit more time on religion than other schools did. Not much though, most of the time was definitely English, Maths, Music (loads of music, the school was known as the best primary for music in the borough), Topic (which was what we called everything else - one term it might be history, the next geog, the next science) and WAY too much PE.

The catholic primary my DCs attended/attend - it's national curriculum all the way, baby. Even first holy communion preparation has to be done outside lesson time. They sort of cheat by having hymn practice as part of their singing time (but to be fair, why not). And occasionally they have mass or a special liturgy (once or twice a term) but that happens in the official 'collective worship' time. The faith pervades the atmosphere of the school - but what they learn is all NC all the time.

The catholic secondary school I attended was one of the best in London in those days and still is today and apart from having to do RE O level (which my DD1 who is at a non church secondary school also has to do, well, 50% since it's the short course one) the education was no different in scope from any other school and there were a few nuns on the teaching staff.

merrymouse - but can you can not see that if you had a religion that demanded you "buy and read the Guardian every Saturday and spend Sundays at the local allotment and ensure that all children read the complete works of Arthur Ransome"

• then you would also ensure that all those children were brought up in homes where they and their parents were well-read and had wide vocabularies and were used to discussing complex matters. Plus had devloped enough self-discipline to folow these pursuits and ensure their kids did. So WHAEVER school these kids went to - which was my point - they would do better than average - because the religious practice was not incidental to their achievements but was intrinsic to it, fed it...

All religions which focus on practice rather than belief - maybe another good reason to exclude C of E from this discussion - will ensure the development of self-discipline - even if what the religion enforces is painting your left knee blue on Tuesdays and always blowing your nose twice. And this self-discipline and ability to defer rewards has long been shown to be crucial to academic success. Plus if you consider that most religions (certainly all the main minority ones in the UK) actually enforce far more intellectual pursuits, like learning things in Latin/Hebrew/Arabic and attempting to understand the Bible/Koran/etc, then surely you can see that will raise those kids intellectually above those who sing a few French nursery rhymes and read Enid Blyton (if they read anything at all).

@schoolworries what do they want to achieve? Groupthink. Will they campaign against the wealthy? Of course not so long as they think in an 'approved' way.

@bread although I got an A for my French O level, and speak French (well, Franglais) on a regular basis when whizzing round the continent for work, I would definitely say that my 'best bit' of french these days is the Hail Mary in french.

Metabilis - my education was 1970s too. But my dcs faith primary school now is broadly similar - it's less religious than mine, so the proportion is not 50% and they do not read documents in medieval French and Aramaic, sadly. But they do spend a generous proprtion of the school day on religious subjects and do learn a far harder language than French to a respectable level.

AFAIK, my old primary school still spends 50% of its day on faith education.