Is a school a "Place of Worship"? (Admissions related question)

[chuffinmuffins]

A nearby CofE secondary has admissions criteria that prioritises families where the parent or child attends "church/place of worship at least monthly and has done for a period of 12 months". A minister's signature is needed to verify that.

A friend is interested in applying for her child. The parents don't attend church regularly, but the child does go to a CofE primary school, which has daily worship (although of course that's compulsory in all schools). The school also has a close relationship with a neighbouring church. The vicar leads school assembly at least once per week, and the children go to the church for special occasions such as start/end term services, harvest festivals etc, so the children know him well.

My question is - does the school fulfill the definition of a "place of worship"? My friend is planning to ask the vicar for his signature, so ultimately it is his decision. It would seem reasonable to me, to expect him to agree to sign it, but I'm curious as to what others think.

Also, if this school does count as a "place of worship" then surely all other schools that follow the rules count as places of worship too?

why should they discourage that by getting themselves a reputation for not signing?

Because they have signed up to admission criteria designed to give priority to those who attend church regularly. It is not a beauty contest where the vicar can pick and choose which families to support. It must, by law, be objective and implemented fairly. Signing the form for a family that clearly do not meet the admission criteria is not in any way fair. The vicar could get the school into trouble. At a minimum the school could find itself with much larger classes than they expected as parents win appeals due to this behaviour from the vicar.

If vicars want to stop being gatekeepers they must get CofE schools to stop prioritising on faith grounds. They cannot have it both ways.

Prh47bridge, the primary, and its vicar, are in a neighbouring LA, and different diocese, to the secondary, so the vicar has no control over the secondary's policy. Perhaps he would prefer the secondary to have open admissions too, and this is his way of expressing that. I've heard a lot of CE vicars are fed up with the system, but admissions policies are controlled by school governing bodies.

As a matter of interest, is there any caveat in the criteria for disability? It would clearly be wrong for a child to be prevented from qualifying if, for instance, he only has one parent who is physically unable to accompany him to church regularly.

Nothing like that in relation to the parent Icimoi.

I don't suppose many 10 year olds go to church on their own, so when they say "or the child" they must be assuming they're taken there by a non-parental guardian, such as a grandparent or, in this case, the primary school.

I remember reading another mumsnet thread where someone said they'd paid a childminder to take their child to church, and couldn't understand why other parents who didn't want to go to church themselves didn't just do the same!

"This kind of behaviour by a faith school is a gift to those who oppose such schools being able to prioritise admissions on faith grounds."

Yep. It is.

To end this, the Accord Coalition is a good place to start.

BloodyFriendshipGroups, my friend would agree with you, because if it wasn't for faith-based admissions she'd be able to get DC into a decent local secondary instead. (Long story, but the LA is a bit of a theocracy fan of RC faith schools).

Don't pass this on to her if she is still stressed but it's so absurd it's actually quite funny.....

When rules are morally bankrupt, people will find ways rounds them ,vicars included.

Tiggy, there's no reason why the school can't just have a distance based policy if they want to serve local children. They have chosen not to.

If they had a list of feeder schools it would exclude the many churchgoing families who go to community schools.

The policy for this school isn't much different to many others as far as I can see. They're all dependent on a vicar's judgement.

You mean the vicars honesty!

I've heard a lot of CE vicars are fed up with the system, but admissions policies are controlled by school governing bodies

Governing bodies are expected to follow the policies laid down by the church. Whilst the CofE increasingly encourages schools to allocate a proportion of places on non-faith grounds they still want to give priority to faith applicants. Whether vicars like it or not they must follow the policies laid down by the church.

If the vicar wants to stop CofE schools from giving priority on faith grounds he should lobby the relevant decision makers within the church. But as long as the system is in place vicars must follow it. Lying on admission forms is not the way to go about it.

This is absolutely not a liberal policy. This is a "help people if I like them" or possibly a "help people if they make enough fuss" policy which is unfair and wrong.

They're all dependent on a vicar's judgement

Most CofE churches where people are likely to want their children to attend a faith school keep a register of who has attended Sunday worship each week. That allows them to sign the forms correctly. Any admission criteria that are dependent on a vicar's judgement are illegal.

Honesty too Titchy, but judgement is a big factor. Who's to say whether 9 services a year for 7 years is less worthy of a secondary school place than 12 services for one year?

Well the admissions criteria of the school are.

Most CofE churches where people are likely to want their children to attend a faith school keep a register of who has attended Sunday worship each week

Most don't, because that could be almost any church in the country. Some do, if they're attached to schools and get so many parents they can't keep track. And I bet even where they do the vicars don't always check them, and they certainly don't provide that evidence to the school. It's all done on an honesty system. The registers are just there as a back-coverer.

And, as I said before, children taken to church by their primary aren't given an opportunity to sign a register. That's significant because many secondaries take the child's church attendance into account, rather than the parent's.

And, if governing bodies followed advice from their diocese on admissions policies, all the schools in the Docese of London would have open admissions by now. But they don't.

That's shocking.

So the vicar lied basically.

What tiggytape said. I've never heard of any priest or vicar deviating from the established criteria like this, tbh; letting some chancer skip ahead on the basis of some cock and bull story, all in the name of being refreshingly liberal.

In my experience the parents whose child don't get a place at an oversubscribed faith school are hyper aware of who fulfils the criteria and who doesn't - the vicar would find his liberalness exploding in his face very very quickly.

And, if governing bodies followed advice from their diocese on admissions policies, all the schools in the Docese of London would have open admissions by now

I cannot find any guidance from LDBS to this effect. If it does exist any school that does not comply is open to having its admission criteria challenged via the Schools Adjudicator.

It's all done on an honesty system

It isn't. As Tiggytape says, appeals have been won where no register was kept as it means the church (and hence the school) cannot show the admission criteria have been followed correctly. But even if it was an honesty system that does not justify a vicar being downright dishonest as has happened here based on the information you have given.

The vicar has colluded with the parents in submitting a false application. It is therefore also possible the child in this case could lose any place offered at this school even after they have started. If the school cares about enforcing its admission policies they may well choose to do this if the fraud comes to light.

"most churches now have a sign in sheet each week so can easily prove how many times a family attend and thus if they meet the published criteria."

Do they? I have never been to any church that does that. Maybe it is because we don't have any church schools in the area so there is no need to check up on people.

Prh47bridge, the Fair Admissions Campaign website says they were told by the LDBS that "Our policy is to encourage our Church of England Schools to have half open places and half foundation places. For the new schools we are promoting we are going for all open places". It would certainly open the floodgates if appeals could be lodged along the lines you suggest, because many of their schools are much more exclusive than that and show no signs of evolving their policies.

Appeals have certainly been won where parents could prove the register wasn't being consulted carefully or kept carefully

I think if that was widely known then a lot more appeals would be lodged. Schools can receive forms from many different churches, especially when people have recently moved into the area (very common in London). Some of the churches may even be abroad. There's no way they can be sure all of those priests have operated a register. What if it's the first time they've ever been asked for a signature? Is a child to be excluded because they've recently moved from an area that doesn't have such a crazy system?