Church schools - how can they get away with it?

[CountessDracula]

Am I right in thinking that they are state funded?

How come they can pick and choose when others can't? Isn't it essentially exclusion on the basis of religion, isn't that BAD in the current climate?

well that's all well and good, saying well white working class parents should get involved, but that doesn't really help does it? I don't really care about the parents. I care about the children and saying to them, well your parents should get involved - that's a morally bankrupt argument.
they can't, or they won't.
so the children of religious parents benefit twice over from having parental involvement and access to faith schools.
and the rest are (in some cases, in facat in the most needy cases) doubly disadvantaged.
not ethical, imho. or indeed sensible for the future of the country.

Their outcomes are marginally better than non religious schools.
But look at how they achieve that...
Although the BBC and other media pander to their PR puff, religious schools take 1/10th the number of special needs kids as ordinary schools.
They select by interview, location of parents home, and in some cases after "donations" by parents, ie rich ones.
You'd expect much better outcomes from a school that had a more middle class input, and being able to "accidentally£ not pick any kids who need any extra help.

Moslem schools are not inherently worse than CoE.
Indeed unlike Christians, Islam has always been very clear that plebs were supposed to try and understand their deluded and obsolete nonsense.
Also the evidence so far is that moslems don't "forget" to allow in all kids, and of course there are rather fewer sex scandals. Thus Moslem schools will probably do less damage than Christian ones.

But the "logic" of the whole sitation is flawed.
Chrisitans, Jews and Hindu adults believe such utter rubbish that it's pretty much impossible to discuss it without offending them, but it's their choice.
But why is it seen as "fair" ot inflict these handicaps on kids ?

Completely mis-understood the muslim children in Tower Hamlets thing.
In a way though that is a non-argument as it means that the poor kids with no parental interest & no access to the "good - very probably faith schools" are doubly disadvantaged. Surely the simplest solution is to have good schools for everyone. Or else the Government of the day should come clean & say that the education system is biased & unfair & it has no intention of changing it?

" The muslim children I referred to don't go to a faith school actually. Its the ethos of the parents and their input that makes those particular schools good."

But doesn't that imply that they don't actually need a faith school that keeps the non-religious children out, then?

Any school that segregated openly on, say, parental education level could probably get much better results that way, but it wouldn't be an acceptable argument for that segregation. We'd never say look, the schools that are only for children of parents with degrees do really well, so that makes it OK to use state funding to run schools that keep the children of parents without degrees out.

Whether schools are 'good' or not is irrelevant (and I'm not convinced that religious schools always are, well from my point of view in one important respect they're positively dangerous!), anyway - the point for me is that state funding is being used to run institutions that discriminate and segregate on the grounds of parental religion. I just don't believe that anyone has a 'right' to use public money to keep their child's education atheist-free, or agnostic-free, or other-faith-free (or free of whatever else might dilute the individual religious ethos of that school). Especially not when as a side-effect of that, those non-religious children may have to go a lot further to school, not to mention live in a local community where people of different religions or degree of religiousness are stopped from mixing with each other from a young age.

are you saying then as a churchgoer/parent with a big envolvment in the school despite working and running a household singlehanded, that i and my community should be blamed for the success of our school?
i may be wrong here but here goes
there is no extra state funding for a faith school, (i looked!)be it ANY faith,but there is extra state funding for the low acheiving schools?

why would there be extra funding for a faith school? what justification would there be for that?
parental involvement is a marvellous thing. are you saying you wouldn't be involved if your child's school wasn't a faith school?

No cowmad, I don't believe anyone is blaming you. We are trying to work out a way that all children could have equal access to the best education possible.
Congrats on being a "churchgoer/parent with a big envolvment in the school despite working and running a household singlehanded" - that makes two of us!

Well...yes. Low achieving schools do tend to need more funding. It's a bit like ill people needing more medicine.

Maybe it would be clearer if I expressed that the other way round: IMO, state-funded schools should not discriminate or segregate on the grounds of parental religion, any more than they should deliberately segregate children on the grounds of race or anything else like that.

It's nothing to do with them having extra state money or not - it's what the basic funding is being used for that I personally disagree with.

Even if it was shown that collecting together children from non-religious families, say, in matching 'faithless schools' meant those children got fantastically good results, I'd personally still think that was just as wrong, because of the divisive effect on society compared to all children just going to their local school, and mixing with their real local community (not just a religious subset of it).

funding of church school doesn't bother me, segregation does though.

Nobody has said anything here that convinces me that we need church schools. Lots of people have very clearly defended why they want them, and have demonstrated ways in which church schools are very nice for them, but that's not the same thing.

All the good elements cited as being provided by faith schools - strong moral values, teaching respect and making kids intellectually and culturally rounded - could just as easily be provided by any decent school in a secular context. You shouldn't think you need the context of faith to produce a rounded and well-behaved and well-educated pupil. If you do, then you are, by implication, saying that you can't possess all of these admrable qualities as an atheist. And surely you can.

And I bet they don't have beer in heaven.

(
dontcha just loove this about mumsnet havin a adult conversation without slanging!and dosnt it make u think there shud be more women in parliament!!sorry bit of a hijack!!)
olivia35 maybe they dont need more... just the right medcine,but that would depend on the patient!
harpisordcarrier,i know its contentious,but i chose to exersise my right to send my children to a school that lets me be involved in my childs faith....

unquietdad,i need a faith school,my children need to practise their faith...whoever is standing next to them..and in MY heaven they would have pinot-grigio!!!(oohh an george clooney....hesss mineee!!)

I'd quite like a state funded atheist school which teaches that 'All religion is very very silly, but we have to humour these people & their imaginary friends, because some of them are perfectly nice & otherwise quite bright. So here's what some of them believe'.

Actually, I wouldn't: that'd be just as inappropriate IMO as faith-based education. If it's a publically funded school it should be without religious bias & open to local children regardless of what they, or more accurately their parents, believe.

we don't need them. please! there is enough time in the day for children to learn about faith not in school though.

"are you saying then as a churchgoer/parent with a big envolvment in the school despite working and running a household singlehanded, that i and my community should be blamed for the success of our school?"

Just wondering whether you're defining your 'community' based on your religion there? (Not sure if you are but it sounds a bit that way.) Also just wondering - if I moved next door to you (as someone who isn't religious), would you consider me part of your local community, or not? And how might your view change if you didn't have the option of sending your child to a school that kept my children out, so instead we were involved as parents with the same school rather than different ones?

olivia35
yes, unquietdad the implication that only faith schools can provide a moral framework is a little galling.
but as an atheist I choose to turn the other cheek.

But isn't it enough to practise their faith at home? Why would you be worried about them going to an antirely secular school? Teach them your religion at home and let school get on with the wider process of education.

Why should one need a faith school any more than one needs, say, a faith supermarket or a faith football-club or a faith pub?

Oh Yawn...................................

Is this still going on ???

Happens every year, about this time.

Send your child to a FAITH School, if you want to.

Don't if you don't want to.

but Lord God, stop moaning about it.

Please

Pretty Please

With Jam on it.............

sorry, that last was mainly for cowmad.

celia2 thats sooo untrue... donations???your way off mark,,,the school, if you read it, has to provide to the parents at the year end,and there is a meeting if you enquire.... a copy of their budget for the year, an i av never come across "donations from parents,pre admission,which is where it would av to be put!!!

where i live the community is already segregated, and yes there are faith supermarkets

oliia35, i like that idea! Let's have one for believers in the Great Green Arkleseizure as well. And Flat Earthers. And people who believe there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.