my son is being punished for our religious stance

[LiloLils]

...this is a bold statement but its how I feel.

There isn't any point to my post but the subject is keeping me awake so thought it might help to write it down on a public forum and see if I'm not the only one who is saddened by this.

Basically my DH and I are non religious. I was brought up catholic and he was brought up church of England but somewhere along the line we both lost our faith and sided with reason. Myself particularly...I have a bit of a problem with organised religion. there are personal reasons for this.

Long story short. If we stick to our guns and don't get our boy christened into either Catholicism or church of England, he is going to have to attend the worst school in the borough.

It just really angers me. Why in this day and age do we have to jump through hoops, lie about our beliefs, and subject our children to learning fairy tales as fact, in order to get them into a "good" school?

I have never been so torn about a decision in my life. I'm being pressured by family and friends to get him christened just to get him into a good school. They make me feel guilty by saying things like "do it for your child. I'd do anything for my child...wouldn't you?" It just feels all wrong.

Of course 3 is fine. As far as I understand it means 'satisfactory'. Obviously it should be aiming to be 'good' but ops school has been assessed and told what it needs to do. It will be regularly monitored and reviewed.

Really don't get this hysteria over ratings. Go to the school and see for yourself. I know plenty of people who am have taken children out of 'good' schools because their children were unhappy.

Sorry but your child is SIX MONTHS old the world isn't going to stand still for the next four years and no school will be allowed to "fail" for that long!

Of course 3 is "requires improvement" not satisfactory.

I don't know anyone who gets hysterical over ratings. Ofsted isn't the be all and end all of assessing whether a school is right for your child. However, it is a factor.

The government does not need to buy up any church schools, they just need to pass a law that prevents discrimination.

Just like in ever other area of life.

Another law allowing compulsary purchase for any church school that has issue with this. ( nominal amount) If they can steal peoples pensions and change terms and conditions at the drop of a hat, then this law would be easily voted in.

It's only suddenly 'requires improvement' because Gove is a massive arse and doesn't seem to understand it is impossible for every school to be 'better than average'.

I have been on the governors training - all this level 2 a b c nonsense, smoke and mirrors.

Is your child happy at school? Learning to read and write? Making friends?
At primary level I cannot understand angsting about much else.

Well the op broke out in a 'cold sweat' about a 3 rating. Seems a wee bit of an over reaction. Maybe 'hysteria' is too OTT but there seems far too much worry generally about Ofsted ratings.

As someone originally from abroad, I am gobsmacked that there are Faith schools which are funded by the state! I find the whole process of 'proving' your child deserves a place in one because you happen to attend church for a bit distasteful.
Any families of true faith will be teaching their children these principles and hopefully living them out day by day, regardless of what school they attend.
However, it is a system which is not going to go away as it is part of many years of an education system in this country.
It is astonishing that there are many on here complaining that they have to 'put up' with attending a faith school and others complaining that they are too hard to get in to!

We are a Christian family but my children do not attend their nearest C of E school because it was massively oversubscribed and could not offer them one. It offers 50% 'faith' places and 50% based on other criteria. We live too far away and don't have sibling preference. I could complain that there are children attending whose families are 'non faith' and therefore their child cost us a place but I don't need my children to attend that school to learn their faith, they do that already at home and through our church. I wish all children had the opportunity to learn about all faiths impartially and then really be 'free' to decide what or what they don't believe without any coercion one way or the other (never going to happen...school is obviously not the only place you get your information from)
There are such a high proportion of faith schools with better academic outcomes than community schools...for what reasons, who knows. The fact remains that we all want our children to attend a school which will be best for them academically... In an ideal world there would be no faith schools at all so then the focus could go on what the issues are really all about...some schools are more desirable than others because of their results/outstanding OfSted reports etc...etc... Perhaps it would even be more positive for faith institutions because the negativity surrounding faith schools alone sadly equates to negativity about faith as a whole.

In response to OP...you are clearly uncomfortable with being a hypocrite and using church attendance to give your child a perceived educational advantage. However, why not do as another poster suggested and at least go to a church to find out whether you would genuinely be interested in continuing to attend, or at least talk to the vicar about what a christening would involve. If you are not ready to make promises of the sort you would need to, you would not have to go through with any ceremony. But the church might surprise you and who knows how you will feel about it in a few months/years time unless you give it a try. There is nothing hypocritical about that.

Well, if you're not happy with the local options, you have 4 years to do something about it, many people don't have a choice.
You can move, or pay, but if he's 6mo already, you'll struggle to get him a place in a fee-paying school in central London.

Schools are not paid for from council tax btw, whomever said that upthread. The government give funding for schools, via LAs for maintained schools, directly if they're academies.

One reason faith schools have better results is they have more middle class pushy parents. You just have to look here on MN. I also know a few parents who never go to church or are atheists and are baptising their children. One collegue even joked the catholic priest showed them a video (along with a few other parents who are asking for baptism) that it is a sin to lie about baptism. Another has to move her waterbabies from Sunday mornings so she could start going to church. Maybe I'm judegey, but what real Christian would pick a waterbabies class on Sunday mornings?

it is what it is - and that is utter shit.

I'd get my child christened and keep my options open

5 years is a long time for life circumstances to change.

then if you don't use it - you don't, but its not going to 'make' him Catholic unless you indoctrinate follow it through

I really wouldn't rely on the OFSTED too much. In particular, the bits you quoted:

"are slow to provide pupils with tasks that stretch them" and "take too long to notice when pupils need tasks to be developed"
Please understand that the OFSTED inspectors will probably have spent around 20 minutes in each teacher's classroom during their visit. It is simply misleading to make sweeping statements like this and it drives me mad when I see it in reports.

"not enough opportunities for them to write well in different subjects"
How do the inspectors know? They may have done 'book trawls'. Did they also look at assessment folders? At work that pupils had taken home to show mum and dad and then promptly lost? Maybe there weren't long writing sections of the lessons the inspectors saw, but that is probably because no-one wants to be the teacher who gets their class sat writing while the inspectors are there; they all want to be doing whizzy show offy things.

" the majority of pupils are from a number of different ethnic minorities and the proportion of pupils learning English as an additional language is high"
You live in London. Is this really a surprise or a problem?

If these areas worry you then I suggest you contact the head (not now, you'll seem mad, but in a few years time - I mean this kindly) and ask for a tour. Ask if you can spend a day in school if you want to. Ask if you can look through books. But please, please, don't rely on OFSTED reports.

As for the Christening. If you wanted to 'cover all bases', you could get DC christened quietly without any big parties or celebrations. DH and I actually got christened last year. It was just him, me, the vicar and a random member of the congregation as a witness. It took about five minutes. It was important to us as we've recently converted, but we didn't feel the need to make a big song and dance about it.

We haven't yet had DS christened. Like you, we didn't want to make that decision for him. However, if it makes you feel any better, our vicar suggests that the christening is a kind of 'welcome' into Christianity, not a 'commitment'. The commitment comes with the confirmation, when a person is old enough to decide for themselves. That made us feel better so we're planning to get DS christened later this year.

Op I feel your pain. Mine situation is a bit the same and a bit different. I am half-practicing Catholic due to my personal bumpy relationship with God. I baptized my DS when he was 1.5 years out of the custom in my family. As our local best primary was Catholic, I took a chance and committed myself into regular churchgoing for 6 months, even though I didn?t believe we will get in in that school due to the distance. Surprise surprise, DS got in, although I am not convinced it is the best school for him. Most of DS class will go up to catholic secondary schools, and that is where our problem starts. We can either stay where we are, commit to a weekly church going on every Sunday and try to convince catholic schools of our reasons for late baptism, or apply for our mixed-review local secondaries, or move. I don?t know what we are going to do. This weekly church going starts to wear on me and doesn?t help me my faith either? if anything it makes me sick of the fakeness in the church, parents, priest etc. But ? if I would be 100% certain that DS would get in the good catholic school, I would continue praying. Now I am more tempted to drop the whole fake churchgoing thing, only go when I feel like going and move to an area of good secular school.

My advice to you is to baptize your child in a quiet 5 min ceremony and keep your options open. If you don?t and if you cannot move, you may strongly regret it later and you cannot reverse the past.

I agree that this is a completely ridiculous and unacceptable situation parents are put in.

I was brought up RC and, like you OP, I am an atheist by choice. I did not get my children baptised, I just couldn't bring myself to stand up in a church and lie through my teeth, I may not believe in god but that just seem so hypocritical and disrespectful. I was lucky my DC got into a good community primary.

But if I had known then what I know now about the secondary schools around here (also London) I would have done it. My DC had so little choice of Secondary because of my lack of religion, like you I dislike the labeling of children by their parent's faith.

So although it goes against all my principles I would advise you to do it! Play the game, jump through the hoops to give your DC the best educational choices you can. This is wrong but if you live in certain places, especially London, it seems to be what you have to do.

tiggy You're right about the increased pressure on places, especially in densely populated areas and of course every thing is complicated by the fact that community schools generally set admissions with a distance criteria whereas faith schools can select on holiness. So you have to be able to afford to live near a community school but can be miles away form a faith school.

Whistleaappytune- you were suggesting the Op, who has stated she was non religious folly your example. Which seems pretty hypocritical, whichever side you look at it from!.

My dc all went to the nearest school we could get a place.
Some were good, some were bad. 2 were religious and whilst i don't mind the religious aspect we don't attend church.

If you go for a place at a church school you can't complain you don't like religion ffs. Just because you and a trillion others want the best school for your dc you can't expect them to change their ethos.
I know more non religious than i do religious, they send their dc to the community school, it may not be as good, but they don't want a church school.

What is the worst that can happen if you Christen your child?

You may Christen him and never set foot in a Church again. Will this have harmed him in any way?

You can still raise him open minded, tolerant and quizzical.

You either force religion on him, or you force lack of. One is as bad as the other, in my view. Or you can chose to raise your child with an open mind.

Our sons have a Catholic baptism, they go to Catholic school (a lovely school with a good ethos), and we go to Church. They are still encouraged to respect other views, opinions and faiths, and to think for themselves and make up their own minds. We explain what we believe, what other people believe, and that some think these beliefs are just fairy tales along with the tooth fairy and santa claus.

In our little cul de sac sort of street we have an agnostic family, a Muslim family, a Jewish family, families who dont care, and I dont know what faiths and flavours the rest are. My sons best friends are both Muslim.

Going to a Catholic school has not harmed them. The only comment I have had was from the Jewish mum stating the obvious "Oh, I cant send my dd there".

Seeker, read my post. I did not suggest she "follow my example". I am a Christian and attend church regularly. My daughter does not attend a church school. I fail to see the hypocrisy.

I suggested that many CofE churches (my vicar is on record about this) clearly state that they judge attendance at church, rather than judging someone's faith or lack of it. The OP is an atheist but is also struggling to figure out schooling. She says she's never so torn about a decision and is keen to do right by her child without abandoning her atheist principles.

I am not suggesting she "fake" something. I would never suggest that. I suggested that if she was torn, she might consider attending church. She won't be x-rayed to see what she really believes.

And thank you Tiggy.

It makes me so angry that parents have to chose between hypocrisy and their children's educational choices.

Some Catholic schools give top priority to children baptised before the age of 6 months, even if they are looked after.

Lilo You have my every sympathy. Where we live the Council have just given the best possible site for a school to the Catholic Church to set up a primary and secondary in spite of the fact that our primaries are bursting at the seams and a huge increase in pupil numbers will start to come through to Year 7 in 2014. It was set up as a VA school precisely so it could be exclusively Catholic in spite of the fact that Gove's Free School policy supposedly limits new schools to 50% faith selection. When the decision was challenged in judicial review the D of E decided it didn't mean that after all and that they always meant there to be a way to establish exclusive faith schools!

Around here many parents become hypocrits to get into faith schools, and as tiggytape highlights the result is quasi private schools where a local Catholic Primary has the lowest % Free School meals in the country at 1% and the neighbouring community primary has 10%. I don't blame the parents at all, it is the system that is at fault.

You could try some active campaigning www.richmondinclusiveschools.org.uk/

"I am not suggesting she "fake" something. I would never suggest that. I suggested that if she was torn, she might consider attending church. She won't be x-rayed to see what she really believes. "

Obviously some new definition of "fake" that I haven't come across before,