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?

Oh, metabilis, would agree that the number of brilliant minds I know from faith backgrounds is certainly out of proportion to the overall numbers in the population.

breadandbutterfly
Surely that statement is MASSIVELY biased by your social circle.

All of the PHd's and professors and business people and property millionaires that I know are atheists or deeply agnostic - because that is the nature of my social circle

TalkinPeace2 - yes and no - whilst obviously my personal social circle is limited, as is yours, I have noted this in a number of social situations where it is very apparent; I am also aware of statistics re educational achievement for various faith groups that does back me up.

Should add, I was referring to people I know of as well as know personally, so my knowledge is somewhat broader than my own personal social circle.

statistics re educational achievement for various faith groups that does back me up

LINK PLEASE

bearing in mind that only a small proportion of the UK population is active in any faith at all
rather than just ticking the CofE box in the census

I am a devout atheist. My dc's were born in England. When they started approaching school age, I realized that as an atheist, I did not have the same choices for schooling my children that religious people did. And in fact had no good public/state choices at all (unless I chose to pretend that I was religious when I wasn't). So I brought my two highly gifted children back to the USA where all public education is secular. Ironically, I am now about to send my dd to a private Jewish day school, because she found God in a family full of atheists and she can get a better education there than in the public schools and the private jewish school does not expect me to pretend to be religious in order to accept that my child is.

I think that the religious schools often are better because, as someone else said the parents self select and care about education. You don't have to be bright to do well in school (although it certainly makes it easier), but you do have to be dedicated and hard working and it's much easier for a child to be that if they have parents who are supporting them.

Breadandbutterfly

That is exactly what I am arguing - these children have a high chance of doing well where ever they go to school. If you have a whole school of these children the school will perform well.

However, when you compare non selective religious schools (e.g because they aren't over subscribed) they don't perform better than non religious state schools with a similar intake. The religious schools that top the tables are highly selective and are generally oversubscribed because parents are fleeing neighbouring 'sink schools' . (Disclaimer: this statement is based on 40 years of living in SW London and really concerns C of E schools, and is not based on scientific analysis. I don't think you can exclude C of E schools from the argument though as most faith schools in the UK are C of E.)

Nobody has really explained why initially faith schools started excelling though.

@merrymouse Of course I know that most church schools are CofE schools. The only reasons I have consistently talked only about catholic schools are firstly, the OP was actually about catholic schools rather than general faith schools, secondly I only know about catholic schools, and thirdly, some of the people who 'campaign against faith schools' are actually in reality only campaigning against catholic schools and really, it's catholics they are campaigning against not the schools. :(

In my local authority here plenty of faith schools are in the 'below national average' line, and plenty of community schools are above. The schools with the top 'value added' score are slightly more community school biased.

Over-subscribed faith schools which require two years of regular church / mass attendance by definition do not admit the children of those least able to suport their children's education - the itinerant, those who are barely home from a night out on a Sunday moring never mind up and dressed and in church.

Average stats do not automatically correlate to the best education for the individual child.

metabilis
Boy oh boy do you have a chip on your shoulder if you think that those of us campaigning against state funded faith schools give a shit what you do on a Sunday.
We just do not want to subsidise you.

Have already stated that I exclude C of E from my comments - as it is far too easy for people to call themselves C of E when really they mean 'nothing in particular, never thought about it'.

I'll post a link when Steve posts his. Deal. Or you're welcome to find links to disprove mine.

My first (lazy) attempt shows this from 2001:

www.communities.gov.uk/documents/corporate/pdf/143816.pdf - P36 - but as it fails to separate Catholics from C of E it is not terribly helpful. Also, as most Muslims on that list had probably only been in the country a short time and hence not educated here, their educational level is not really comparable.

But you are not subsidising me, I am subsidising you. :)

breadandbutterfly
Sorry, you made an assertion that believers are more successful. Prove it or retract it.
metabilis
non comprende?

Re the overall debate, these stats from 2009 are useful:

docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:HhioyS3xL2MJ:www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN04405.pdf+educational+levels+faith+groups+uk&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESh7e7lz9gcZle1c1RTE3a3O3PgjsY532ofnPMYTW_3EcAULIQjG_bDFEzmsqVZBlmrvPxqNvrjcXmRH3OkV84sVyiuQhMWJbM5iYj6GGO9Q7_IFGuF6mmMhPCYrhtOW2W-k9ESg&sig=AHIEtbRXakcKh1akNTNXLDcEg8mQqSiC-A

"Around one-third of maintained primary and secondary schools in England are faith
schools and just under one-quarter of pupils attend such schools.

Overall faith schools perform better in headline GCSE results, but they have a lower
proportion of pupils who are eligible for free school meals and lower rates of Special
Educational Needs

More advanced analysis of pupil progress to GCSE show that on average pupils at
faith school progress slightly faster than similar pupils at non-faith schools.

Results at Jewish secondary schools are better than those at any other type of faith
school and consistently well above average even when pupil background and prior
attainment are taken into account

Specific research into the performance of faith schools has found that pupils at
Church of England schools progress very slightly faster than non-faith schools in the
first years of secondary school. Progress at Roman Catholic Schools was found to be
very slightly slower than at non-faith schools at this stage and very slightly faster in
the remaining secondary school years. Again performance at Jewish schools was
found to be significantly better than at any other type of faith or non-faith school."

TalkinPeace - you also made an assertion that I have proved wrong but I have not noticed you retracting it.

Feel free to prove me wrong. :)

Indeed but my kids went to a CofE primary and it was no thanks to the god botherer teachers that they did well.

The Humanist campaign is all about money then. Ahh, a bit of transparency finally.

Should add that it is very hard to quantify "brilliant minds" hence why I have been giving you evidence about educational achievement, which is easier to come by. This does show that the standards at faith schools are higher, as per the OP - and contrary to IAMSteve's erroneous claim.

TalkinPeace - I probably agree with you that C of E schooling adds liitle, esp if what you say is true and only 10% of pupils there are actually religious.

That does not negate my point about Catholic/Jewish/Sikh/Moslem etc schools.

What is your knowledge (if any) of these type of schools? Your inbuilt dislike of religion should not blind you to the merits of either faith or faith schools from an educational perspective.

BUT
if, as it is round here, the vast bulk of kids at CofE schools are NOT church goers, just the children of motivated parents, the whole deck of cards collapses.

THE GREATEST indicator of a child 's achievement is the level of maternal qualifications - and that stands worldwide, not just in the UK.
Motivated mums create brighter children.
Whatever type of school they send them to.

State funded Faith schools are a discriminatory anachronism.
Catholic schools pay a fair few of my home expenses but it does not make them any less divisive.

there are SO FEW minority faith state funded schools as to make their statistics less than a standard deviation - ie meaningless

TalkinPeace - how do you 'subsidise' what Metabilis does on a Sunday??

I do not.
I subsidise her children getting an education centred around their belief system - which is NOT an option available to all.
If she wants her kids to have a religious education, fine - pay for it - but not with my taxes

Catholic schools are not divisive, most of them were built using money (and often labour) raised or provided by parishioners with no public contribution whatsoever, and the church in England and Wales provides a 10% contribution in addition to free use of the land and buildings they own even though not all catholics have access to catholic schools (like myself) and we all pay our taxes anyway - so the state takes our taxes, but charges our church a premium for the privilege of being allowed to use land and buildings paid for by us (well, by our parents and grandparents and other people with no children at all or children already grown) to educate our children which we should actually be getting for free anyway as tax payers.