Cant get DC into a faith school

[angelfireabbey]

I know this is possibly the wrong place because it seems the whole of MN is atheist or totally secular. However, there is a lot of discussion by MNers here about getting intofaith schools ( often without any faith because they are good schools).

I am a little bit fed up with it. I take my faith seriously. I take my DC to church and we believe. I wanted my DC to have a faith education. There are only two faith schools where I live. They are oversubscribed by parents who seem to have suddenly aquired a need to attend church to get a vicars signiture.

I had my pastors signiture but we didnt get a place. So instead my DC is stuck in a state school where the teachers and other children laugh and say that they have " imaginary friends" ( or simply they are nutters!) and that they believe in fairly stories etc. Sound familiar MN parents? ( I bet you wouldnt say it if someone were of say Jewish or Muslim faith though would you?). It is offensive you know.

They have an atheist teacher who clearly knows next to nothing about Christianity.

I would settle for any faith school although there are no others ( of any faith ) within 40 miles of us.

So how do I get into one? I have asked my church community. I know they are doing their best and we are praying hard but I am sure some savvy non religious types must know more here. So I am asking.
I see thread on thread where parents are scamming the system.So how does a genuine person get in?

Thanks.

You cited that story as an example of a teacher behaving badly. You completely omitted that her response was as a direct result of being violently assaulted in class by a pupil

Basically, you related half a story to try to make a point

There is no missing of any point. The fact is we do not know exactly what the OP's teacher did say but no end of posters are willing to take a guess. Nothing can ever be in full context here. I never found out what caused the pupil to throw a chair at the teacher in my instance above. There may well have been something beforehand. In fact I am aware there was an exchange prior to the chair throwing.

I think we need to stop trying to apportion blame and score points here. It goes nowhere. The OP met with an unfortunate incident with her DD. I am sure we would all defend our DC in similar situations. I am sure also we may well seek a change of school if we felt it was so bad. To debate the incident and to complain about not being given context or shout conspiracy because we do not have all the information is unreasonable.

I think its always best to deal with what you have in front of you without looking for some kind of consistency or trying to pick things to pieces. None of us are that consistent any way and we often expect consistency in others even though we are aware there is none in our own behaviour.

Missed the point again, wuzzup
Lets not be coy. What you really mean is I failed to agree with the way you see things.

No, you told half the story.

Perhaps if you hadn't revealed the reason why the teacher used bad language in a later post you could have got away with it.

No-one is trying to "pick things to pieces", wuzzup.

Oh hang on ...

Lets just take the first paragraph to pieces shall we asn see what the OP said?

But wazzup is this not addressed by the parable of not picking the mote out of someone else's eye whilst ignoring the beam in your own? OP made a statement in a public place that manifested attitudes that showed little respect for other groups in general on the grounds of their beliefs , whilst complaining in an ambiguous and inconsistent way that left her complaints open to question, that others had disrespected her DD because of her beliefs.

Had she posted that her DD had not got into the faith school of her choice, and asked advice, which she got in any case, then this would have been a short and helpful thread, instead the OP showed an astounding arrogance of the offence she was causing and so we are on Page 11........

SuberbanRhonda, other posters here ( Talkinpeace for example) have been equalyy economic with the truth (her story about the faith peopleon the plane she was on). But you didnt say anything to her.

As for picking things to pieces. I did that by way of example. But picking things to score points is not my style.

Poisonwoodlife- why do I need to follow the parable? I have never said I was a Christian. Its not in my ethical code.

Haven't read all of thread - wow, 11 pages! But happy to share my experiences on this ....

We all engage with the world around us including with it's various faith traditions and school admissions systems as we see best.

So, you'd be right if you surmised from that statement that we did attend our local CofE church for several years throughout the DC's primary school years partly with the hope that they'd get a place at our excellent faith secondary (a Cathedral school)

They both got in (ds may have got in through a musical or sibling place if he hadn't been offered a church place as higher priority IYSWIM)

Anyway they both like their school and are doing well there, and I'm very glad they got in.

We have also always attended our local Quaker meeting and have what you might call very liberal Christian views with a sprinkling of Buddhist and Green thinking too. We got other things out of being part of our local church community - such as a good grounding in the Christian tradition of this country, and hopefully contributed something whilst we were there too.

If you don't agree with the system fair enough but you can't entirely blame the individuals who are just trying to make the best of things for their DC.

We all make choices that seem the best for us and ours all the time.

Oh, you did it by way of example?

An example of what, exactly?

wazzup I wasn't commenting on your postings but on OPs who as a Christian should be seeking to behave according to Jesus's teachings surely? As I say had OP done so she would have received a lot more respect in return.

However I know that most people, regardless of having faith or no faith, who think about following a code of morals and ethics that respects others would find merit in the ideas the parable seeks to convey.

wazzup
Lots of religious people get all superior because they think they are better mannered and have a higher moral code than us non believers.

In general I find religious people perfectly amenable if a little smug
which is why I was so utterly shocked by the appalling manners of the people on the plane.
They dislike people being rude about them but saw fit to demean everybody else on board, in particular the female cabin crew.

I am not naming the group - although they were utterly and exactly identifiable - because I suspect that they do not have a monopoly on bad behaviour.

They were however very bad ambassadors for their faith and all faiths.

titchy Sun 26-Oct-14 21:21:44: "The church also owns the land such schools stand on, so even if as a country we wanted to get rid of faith schools, the government would have to pay very large sums of money to the church to buy the land back."

But who gave the land to the church in the first place? As it is the established church, surely CofE land is in some sense owned by the people of this country?

The Church of England does not own the freehold of CofE schools
the land is owned by the Local Authorities

a very few VA schools may have land owned by the Diocese and a couple of Catholic schools do but the common or garden VC primaries all belong to the Council not the Church

But it tends to be VA schools that include worship as an admissions criteria, which is what the thread was about, not the VC schools where admissions are LEA determined.

Most VA schools belong to the LA as well.

You can easily check by doing a planning permission search on a school - as LAs do not have to grant themselves planning permission, but the church has to apply.

In my LEA, the church schools do own their freehold. The schools I attended as a child own their own freeholds. Newer church schools may not but ones that have been around for a while do.

Rabbit have you checked that or assumed it?

I googled before posting and found no evidence in the Church Commissioners listings of them owning the freehold of schools

I not read your post, but could you try a different community school. We are practicing christians and send our children to community schools. My children have never been bullied for their faith. They have grown up with children from a wide range of religious backgrounds. Meeting Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs has made for interesting conversations.

I find it hard to believe that there are no other community schools within 40 miles. Where does the OP live? It is wierd that posters on mumsnet are either surrounded by church schools or community schools for about 20 miles.

I know the Catholic schools I attended own their own freehold. I know the Catholic school my kids attended owns its own freehold and I know it did a land swap with the CofE diocese (one swap one sale actually). I do not know about the CofE schools in the lea which weren't involved in the transactions with the school my kids attended. I also know that for some faith schools their assets have been transferred into academy groupings. Something I find very worrying indeed. But nobody wants to hear opposition to that, sadly.

Really tired I too find it wierd, having grown up in a city, to be now living in a part of the country where there are large areas with no church schools. do all these areas span a 20 mile radius? I don't know. Some do. The radius for which there are no catholic schools is bigger. Of course, some of that includes the ocean. Where there are no schools at all.

Rabbit
But looking at the DFE guidance on capital works, the freeholds are owned by the individual trustees of the school
NOT the local diocese
its a red herring that the church would have to be paid loads if the schools lost faith criteria for entry

reallytired
round here there are a couple of catholic schools, a Jewish school about 30 miles away, catholic schools 20 miles in the other direction or up in the next county
apart from that all the schools are comps
even the VAs are not too fussy
because there is no selection and there is not the offensive shortage of places that Londoners face

Incidentally my Catholic kids are now all at secondary school, two of them at a non faith school one at a CofE and none of them have had any 'trouble' at all wrt their being catholics. It was something I was slightly...not concerned about, concerned is too strong a word. Maybe a little uneasy. But it's been absolutely 100% fine. Would I have liked to send them to a catholic school? Yes. But since there isn't one my hands were tied and as I said - it's absolutely fine. talkin is absolutely right to say that faith schools do not have a monopoly on either nice kids, well behaved kids or decent teachers. They can be found in abundance everywhere. And non faith schools do not have a monopoly on nasty or unkind kids or teachers - sadly they can crop up everywhere (usually in isolation or very small groups) too.

It is certainly not true that the church - any church - would have to be 'paid' if schools stopped using faith as a criteria for entry. Many church schools have done this voluntarily. Not most. But more than a few. If the schools were to stop being faith schools that would be a different matter potentially but that's a completely different issue. Being a faith school does not depend on entrance criteria. The RC dioceses certainly do own the freeholds of the land (well, before the transfers so many have seen into academy trusts anyway). The negotiations over land transfer that I know about were certainly done with the Anglican diocese. Not with the trustees (this was pre academy - in one case a very long time pre academy).

talkin- the 2013 DfE land transfer advice address directly the issue of school land held by a private landowner (which it states is most often diocesan land) and voluntary aided or older religious foundation schools which are described as being more likely to sit on private land where the foundation holding the land is most likely to be a diocese or religious order. One of the schools I went to as a child was 'owned' (the land anyway) by a religious order rather than the local diocese. The other was 50:50 between the order and the diocese. For reasons which I cannot fathom.

Catholic schools have always got away with doing their own thing

Interesting your point about your kids not being at a Catholic school but coping fine.
In a comp area like here it is just assumed that people have different faiths in their own homes so its not a point of discussion - probably makes it simpler for minorities.

The lads on the plane were so isolated from reality it was amazing - they did not make eye contact with other passengers.

It is about time that Government funding for schools that segregate strictly was stopped.
If people want strict faith in school, they should pay.

Actually, that's exactly what happened at my primary school - parishioners raised the money to buy the land and buildings (there was a core building which was purchased and most of the rest began as prefabs, gradually solid buildings were built, when I was there there were still a few prefabs) and the religious order put some in too (hence the split ownership I suppose). There was no catholic primary anywhere near, there were a hella lot of catholics on the council estate and others in the area too, so they built themselves a school. This was back in the 50s though (I wasn't born then but there was a whole exhibition 'how we built our school' in the school when I was there). But Catholic schools - state ones anyway - have never been about strict faith and nothing else. They've always been about education first, with RE tacked on. The key benefit back in the 50s other than in-school masses on HDOs was probably the avoidance of the then prevailing bigotry. That's not a thing these days, generally. And many catholic schools have multi faith populations (the distribution of the schools doesn't perfectly fit the demographics of the population) although some are oversubscribed by catholics. Personally I think plurality is good, it clearly works well in many parts of the country. But the most important thing is to have decent schools and strong communities. Faith communities are important, so are local communities. Both can have a positive impact on education.

Wazzup- am I reading this correctly?

I asked you for examples of similar cases to the OP- where a teacher, in the course of a lesson, told a child that she was a "nutcase" for being a Christian and encourqged classmates to laugh at her.

The example you came up with is of a teacher who called a student a very rude name while she was being physically attacked with and actually hit by a chair.

Have I got that right? If so, can you see that these are not in any way comparable?