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?

And imagine if you happen to live next to my Arthur Ransome school (moto: "better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown") and you want to read the Daily Mail and you don't like veg - then where would you be?

Exexpat

I am well aware of the limiations! We have our own dilemma deal with, but my actual point was It seems ridiculous though some people leave it until literally a couple of months before they need to apply.

I dont think its fair that we have to cross our fingers that our dds get into one of the top secondaries in a few years because we dont have the half million plus needed to live in catchment.

I could moan about it or start to plan proactively NOW. My children, my responsibilty. I hate all this pass the buck nonsense.

You'd move, merrymouse - just as you would if you were a member of my painting your knees blue school and the school next door painted their knees pink.

Re Sunday school -yes,that is an option. But it is a slightly second-best one - it is less an immersion in a way of thinking than school.

What on earth does that mean "better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown" ?

Exexpat - you said that:

"People don't always have a choice about where they move to - local authority or housing association tenants, people with work related housing, people struggling to find somewhere they can afford to live within commuting distance of work or near family support etc etc.

I think in practice very few people would actually be willing or able to up sticks and move house purely because of schools (mainly well-off middle-class families). Any admissions system that works in a way to force people to do that, just because they do not subscribe to a particular faith, is indefensible. "

My answer to that:

People of faith have no greater choice about where they live - these restrictions apply just as much to them. But they have to like it or lump it if their nearest faith school is 2 hours away. No reason why atheists should get special treatment here.

I did up and move sticks for precisely this reason - because my faith mattered to me. If your atheism matters to you, then do the same, and if it doesn't then stop making such a fuss.

I don't think the admidssions system as it stands is perfect, but nor is it "indefensible". Surely you must realise that the only practicable way to ensure that everyone gets a school that matches their faith is to ghettoise people ie force everyone of particular faiths to live in the same areas and attend the same schools, which is surely not socially desirable.

The only other method to ensure that YOUR child gets the education you want - because let's face it,this is about your child and your wants, and you have no interest in any children whose interests or wants or beliefs are different to yours - they are just "wrong" and you are "right" and they ought to want what you want! - is to dictate that ALL children must attend the kind of schools that you would like your child to attend.

Can you not see that this is maybe a tad dictatorial?

Sofia - read the Arthur Ransome books and all will become clear!

Actually I did move, but not for that reason. (better sailing where we live now...). However in the borough I grew up in and the neighbouring borough where my children were born 50% of primary schools were faith schools. Where I live now all primaries are faith schools (although as there is nowhere else to go they can't really select). The situation described by exexpat was very common.

And I think you are missing the point that to go to a local school in the situation described by exexpat, what you really need to do is go to church( whether you are atheist, Jewish, Muslim or other )

Sofia - or attend the exclusive Arthur Ransome school!

(in the opening of Swallows and Amazons the mother telegrams the father to ask if he agrees the children can sail alone to an island and live there for a while. His reply is 'Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown')

merrymouse I'd much rather mine went to your school - I reckon we'd meet the criteria, plus the allotment is inherited from my Dad, so that must be extra points?

Until that's built though, I'll carry on trundling to church every week so that we can have a choice about where to send DCs at secondary. Seeker's right, any school which parents have to plan for over 2 years in advance (church attendance record) AND be up and not too hungover every Sunday morning for all that time is going to exclude children of chaotic families or most people who work on a Saturday evening / shifts etc. The three adults (Grandparent lives with us) in our house take it in turns to take the children every week. I don't think we could have achieved it in a family with one adult.

Well, then everyone is equally disadvataged - they all have to go to church. But athesits are not specially disadvantaged.

Statistically, atheists are much less likely to be disadvantaged as there are far more schools that suit them.

I'm sure there are areas where all the schools are faith schools - just as there are areas where the only faith school is the wrong faith for your child, if you have a faith. Or there are no faith schools.

That's why parents who care about such things should check this out before they move - rather than moaning afterwards.

around here they are seen as a cheaper alternative to private schools even when the local ce primary went on special measures

That's @ merrymouse.

By the way, I'm married to someone of no faith - who wanted his children to attend faith schools! So don't assume all non-believers necessarily want what you want, Exexpat!

Or we could all go to school together and leave our religions at the door, while being supportive and interested in other's beliefs.

(note: I know enough about history to suspect that the inability of mainstream schools to do this that has led to the establishment of many catholic and Jewish schools)

But community schools accept anyoe, regardless of belief, and are open to those of faith, while many faith schools have no places for atheists. So the balance of discrimination is not really comparable.

^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.^

I am not interested in campaigning against faith schools. I accept it as a fact of history that the schools exist and that the faiths set up these schools when the state was rather tardy about doing so. I only mentioned Catholic schools because they were mentioned in the OP and there has been quite a bit of controversy in the press about a couple of schools. There are CofE and at least one secular school, that also practice selection-by-the-back-door. What does annoy me is when these schools then appear in lists of top-performing comprehensives, with the implication that other schools could and should be doing as well, when it is the intake rather more than the school that makes them top-performing, as is plain to see from the info in the 2011 league tables.

exexpat - in that specific situation,yes, the Catholic child has greater choice BUT only if the parents view a non-denominational school as a valid choice, which they may not, if getting their child a Catholic education is genuinely important to them. In that situation, the Catholic child who lives too far away from the Catholic school and the atheist child too far from the non-denominationalschool are equally disadvantaged.

But if a Catholic school is so important, it doesn't really explain why parents reject their local Catholic school (and several more in between) to go to the most desirable Catholic school. I do generally wonder if the parents who choose those schools really do put Catholic schools for all their choices.

On, your further point, while a Catholic school might be nice to have, nobody will be rejected from a non-denominational school for being a Catholic - it doesn't work the other way round.

"Butif you move next door to a Catholic school and you're not a Catholic, it should hardly come as a great surprise to you if the school fails to be suitable."

OTOH, you might feel entitled to be upset if you are a Catholic but have simply not managed to jump through sufficient hoops to get your child a place.

And imagine if you happen to live next to my Arthur Ransome school (moto: "better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown") and you want to read the Daily Mail and you don't like veg - then where would you be?
Could you perhaps buy the Guardian anyway, keep the receipts but not read it. Same with veg? I like the sound of this school - have you thought of starting a free school?

People of faith have no greater choice about where they live - these restrictions apply just as much to them. But they have to like it or lump it if their nearest faith school is 2 hours away. No reason why atheists should get special treatment here.

That is hardly comparable. The people of faith have the choice to make sacrifices if they want the faith school. I think what others are complaining about is that they have to travel because, even if they are willing to go to the faith school, the faith school will reject them. I also think it is less of a problem than you are making out. We have no faith secondaries in my LEA and none within any travelling distance and none of my religious friends have ever bemoaned their absence.

Breadandbutterfly - what I find unfair (as illustrated in the example I gave above) is that people with a faith have equal rights to community schools, and the added option of getting priority for a faith school if there is one in their area, but people without a faith have no corresponding priority for places at a community school, but can end up getting landed with a church school against their wishes.

This may not happen much at secondary level, as there are not as many faith-based secondary schools, but it certainly happens a lot at primary level. In some areas, more than half of primary schools are church-linked.

Eg, where I live now, I am almost exactly half-way between a Catholic primary and a community primary - both oversubscribed. If I were Catholic my children would definitely get a place at the Catholic primary, as the catchment area is wider for practising Catholics. And in my current house, I would almost certainly get a place at the community school.

However - if I had unwittingly bought a house a couple of streets further towards the Catholic school I would, if I had a reception aged child this year, probably be in one of the admissions black holes where I am too far from any of the nearest community (or voluntary-controlled CofE) schools to get a place, but would not be entitled to a place at my closest school (the Catholic one) because of my lack of religion. I would then be thrown into the situation of being given a place at an undesirable school miles away on the other side of the city, if I got any place at all (in recent years some families in my city have ended up with no school place at all).

It is not always possible to plan these things by buying/renting a house in the right place, even if your personal circumstances allow you a choice, because the effective catchment areas of schools expand and contract depending on the number of children of a certain age in any given year. A few years ago the catchment area for most of my local schools would have been over 1km; now it is often less than 300m.

And fwiw, atheists actually have no options at all for non-religious schools - all schools in the UK are meant to be religious to some degree (daily acts of worship of a broadly Christian nature etc etc). And as breadandbutterfly pointed out, people of minority religions also have no option of a state school which promotes their own beliefs.

I really don't see why religion has to be part of the state school system at all - much fairer if all state schools were non-religious and suitable for everyone, with families taking care of indoctrination in their own religious faith at home or at their place of worship, or paying for a private religious school (as happens in other countries, like the US and France).

breadandbutter, the problem is not really the attending of the church/synagogue, the problem is in the pretending that I am of faith. I have been going to synagogue for the last few years with my dd because having me be part of her community is important to her, but no one at her synagogue is under any misbelief that I believe in God or am a practicing Jew (it does help that I picked the local GLBT synagogue for her to attend). In contrast, it was my understanding that the expectation was (in England 7 years ago when I was looking at schools) (and maybe still is) that you must be "faithful" and a recommendation/certificate from your place of worship stating that was essential to getting into the more subscribed (ie better) schools. I was repeatedly advised by all the parents around me to lie and pretend that I was religious like they were doing so that I could get my child into a good school. So maybe I was living in a den of liars and the families around me were not representative of the majority of English parents, but from the threads I frequently see on Mumsnet....I suspect this is not the case. It irks me that there is a system that relies on falsehoods to get your child educated and that system is funded by my (atheist) tax dollars.

and I'm still confused....what is a duffer?

sofia - its the holidays - sit and read Swallows and Amazons : then all will become clear

Sofia, for C of E schools they can't look into your soul. As long as you turn up every week and sign the attendance register or whatever other hoop is required then they have to tick the box marked "Religion", even if you are the head of the Church of Satan in your spare time and you wear a Tshirt saying "ask me about goat sacrifices!" to church.

On a different note a "duffer" is someone who is a bit rubbish. The father is hilariously joking that if his children die in their adventure then it will be for the best because it is evidence that they are so incompetent that they are better off dead.