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?

celia2, noone is denying you the right to a faith education. but why should the state fund it? there is not a scrap of justification for it as far as I can see.

faith supermarkets was prob a bad example. I thought it as soon as I typed it...

celia2 sorry mis -read have read again an now i understand your thread apologies

Ceilia2

The state should not fund religious education.

One of your arguments is that faith schools are better because they teach certain values and also have a strong sense of community. That may be true, but the community they have is a church/religious community. Not a community in the wider sense of the word ie: all inclusive, all the people in the local area.

Many of the children who go to my local CofE school ( one minute away) are not part of my local community. They are part of an artificial community created by church membership.

Division on any ground is divisive - you can't understand/ learn to mix with people of all colours/creeds/beliefs/social backgrounds unless you actually meet them/ go to the same schools etc...

It is fundamentally bad for society to promote division. This is one of the situations where the greater good is much more important than the individuals right. These are words you don't often hear these days, we are all so concerned about our little patch.

I don't understand what the arguments are about. The state funds all sorts of stuff.
I think instead of arguing about church schools you should ask is it right for the state to fund drug addicts and alcoholics for example.
Why should I pay my taxes so that some waster can carry on slowly killing themselves , dirtying up local parks and play areas and frightening kids. One of many examples. It's of no benefit to me. However, church schools do generally teach a sense of social responsibilty and community. It is irrelevant whether the community is 'fabricated'. Community is community. I would much rather pay taxes towards something thatwas doing an overall service to society than to the very many other things thatare simply a complete waste of money and only of spurious benefit to those they immediately serve.
Sorry if repeating what has already been said, only had a chance to skim through some posts.

I would genuinely like to understand what these values are that can't be found in a secular school and can't be taught in Sunday School/at home. [really want to know, honestly a bit confused emoticon]. As far as I can see there are bits of religion that are specific (doctrinal?) e.g. the recent debate/agreement between Catholics and C of E about assumption of Mary, which I would have thought would be taught by the church/as part of a confirmation class, and the bits about love thy neighbour which as far as I understand are generally shared by everybody whether they have a religion or not.

Anyway, I think this is a huge argument for faith schools/religion in schools: Perhaps this is what you get if you completely secularise education - patrick henry all of a sudden a few harvest festivals don't seem too bad.

MadameP:"I would genuinely like to understand what these values are that can't be found in a secular school and can't be taught in Sunday School/at home."

I would too. If the values are a moral compass, general respect for others, intellectual curiosity, well-roundedness, etc, then they can surely be taught equally well in a totally secular context. Apart from intellectual curiosity, which - I'm with Dawkins on this one - is probably going to be MORE developed when you free yourself from religious doctrine. (But I know a lot of people won't agree.)

There is still often this underlying (sometimes unspoken) idea that the faith school makes the child a "better person", which I think is nonsense.

I have a question. Do church aided schools get as many funds per child as state schools which have no religeous affiliation? Isn't the church putting up at least as many funds as it required to prove the religeous aspects (i.e. the vicar). I mean CoE schools don't just learn about the CoE religeion. I thought that any state funding went towards teaching the national curriculum (i.e. teachers' salaries, books, computers, etc.).

Does this help, uwila?

From Hansard, June 2003

Mr. Wray: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many religious schools there are; what Government funding is provided to these schools; what proposals he has to create state-funded religious schools; and what assessment he has made on the effects of religious segregation in state education. [115127]

Mr. Miliband: There are 6,938 state funded schools with a religious character in England.

Schools with a religious character, often called faith schools or religious schools, are funded by local education authorities for their recurrent costs on the same basis as other maintained schools of the same type, ie primary or secondary. Government grants, for example, Standards Fund grant, are also payable on the same basis as for other maintained schools of the same type.

Voluntary Aided (VA) schools, irrespective of whether or not they are faith schools, are eligible for capital funding by grant from my Department. VA schools are paid on a similar basis to other categories of schools, but the governing body must usually pay at least 10 per cent. of the costs of capital work.

Capital funding for schools not in the voluntary aided sector, irrespective of whether or not they are faith schools, is provided on the same basis for all categories of the same type of maintained schools, including the allocation of direct capital funding on the basis of a national formula, and access to local education authority formulaic funding in line with the priorities of the local asset management plan.

scummymummy - Iirc, even the 10% VA is being phased out?

Could well be, harps. That was a google cut and paste so may well not be up to date.

I'm entertained by the ontion that children have "faiths". This implies that they have thought about the matter, or perhaps even are in some communion with god or some other imaginary friend.

I don't see how you can make it consistent with the fact that nearlu all children follow the same flavour of superstition as their parents. It's really quite rare for a kid of (say) Moslem parents to adopt Christianity at an early age or vice versa.

It's much the same as choice of sportting team.

Are we to give special funding for Arsenal fans ?

AAAHHHH!!faith schools dont get any extra money!!!the only difference i can see in schools is down to
1)teachers
2)govenors
3)parents
teachers dont get extra money for whichever school they decide to teach at
govenors do it for free
parents can involve themselves in the school life attend funding meetings,become a govenor,help in the classroom..or not..
as an earlier posting said
do send your children to faith schools if you agree with the ethos
or dont send them to that school if you dont...
thank goodness we still live in a society that allows us the choice

That's not true.
Faith schools, or to be more precise Christian schools arrangfe it so that they have more middle class kids, and make damned sure they have very few special needs.

"Choice" is a subjective word here. DS1's last school had a couple of troublemakers, can I "choose" to have them rejected ?
Also, my own relgious beliefs are not supported by any state funded school.
In this country, people who've worked out that religion is a cross between wishful thinking and sloppy thinking outnumber Moslems, Jews, Sikhs and Hindus put together.
Yet we have no schools.
We have to deal with "relgious education" where our kids are taught a soft focus version of religion where all the millions of people they've all murdered, the way Moslems treat women, the Vatican's help for Nazism, etc is simply ignored.

Instead kids are told about all the good things of these delusional frameworks. They don't get told of the virtue of simply not caring what others believe.

I thoght the Church gaveadditional funds to ther school?

dominiconnor
u say christian schools arrange it so they have middleclass kids..?
are u prepared to share the information that u seemingly have to back that statement up?
and yes you can ask to have troublemakers removed from your school,but like my last observation,you will have to back that request up with some hard fact as to why the school should exclude that child(how liberal of you)
and if there is no school that can provide an education tailored to "your" religeous believefs,
why not home educate and claim for funding thru your local lea?
of course you will have to back that statement up also...cos its not allways about what you want(it would possibly help you case if you do not generalise catholics as nazi sympathisers and muslims as women oppresors cos as we all know there are none of those in any other,including your,religeon.
your last comment is somewhat at odds with your point tho..
"they dont get told of the virtue of simply not caring what others belive?"
eeer that would be my right to belive and choose a faith school then!!!
as said before... send to a faith school if u like...or dont if you dont like!!
drosphilla
no the church do not give additional funds to the school,but they might provide the land that the school is built on,they might not,but they will take an avid interest in that school
but i think i can safely add here and facts and stats will back me up,
that interst is not to a schools detriment

am sure DC would be hard pressed to get such statistical information however i doubt not that it is utterly true!

i mean lets cut the shit here. all the heathens want to get into our schools ( no matter how they are funded) becuase they produce good results - well we can't actually do that if we have a great number of poor children or kids with special needs.

there are christian school in poor areas but they dont have the legue table results so dont figure in this argument becuase you dont get the heathen libral pinko middle classes clambering for places making propert pprices go up etc etc.

DC that point re christian schools making sure they only have middle class kids and few special needs is a bit of a generalisation. I was a social outcast in my school as I was from a single parent family from the wrong side of town and my little brother was totally let down my his school who point blankly refused to acknowledge his dyslexia as it would have required them to move funding over from something else to give him the support he needed. Neither of these schools were christian but standard state funded primaries.

Well like it or not, both of the main political parties support faith schools and will continue to do so, the reason being because generally they are better performing schools in all areas (deprived/affluent or not).

Other schools can learn a lot from them about why they succeed in a general atmosphere of dumming down of education. The problem is, some of you people are so jealous and resentful, you don't want to find out, you'd rather peddle bigoted anti-christian views, which just display how little you know about faith schools. Some of the views expressed on this thread about christians are so bigoted that if they were expressed about any other religion, they'd probably be called incitement to religious hatred.

Why don't you remove the word Christian when slagging of faith schools and replace it with Jewish, or Muslim and see how your remarks look then?

Thank you Custy - as usual you have hit the nail on the head.

I agree about the malign influence of relgion in political parties. But given that religious schools avoid special needs kids, they're not "performing" better, they are "outputting" better. Not the same thing at all.
If you "lose" the bottom 10%, you not only move the average up, they also don't consume the greater % of teaching time etc that they require.
That of course also applies to private schools, relgious or not.

CountTo10 is right about me generalising. I'm talking about the harm relgious schools do to society, not personal experiences. My own Catholic junior school took some really scary kids (like me).
But on average christian schools are known to find ways to reject special needs kids.

ah, church schools, 424 posts, I see the debate rages on...
tigermoth walks off to enjoy the sunshine, swearing not to get drawn in.

This topic seems to have generated much interest! Mumsnetters might be interested to read this which explains the different types of CofE schools and gives some links to further info.