Attending Church, purely to get to a certain school

[sleepydad3000]

They're aren't many things I feel so strongly about, but this issue is one of them. I am currently looking at schools for my daughter. I am a non religious person and my partner is a none practising Catholic, doesn't go to church at all anymore.

I personally think it's wrong on a moral level to exploit a church for 6 months or however long, just to get your child to a certain school. It's almost like, "Oh hi, yes thankyou, I've got what I needed, you'll never see me again!"

2 schools near me are both decent, 1 outstanding and 1 good (Ofsted ratings) interestingly enough, the NON Catholic school has the higher mark as of 2017.... just saying. Both schools are great in my view, religion aside. But I'd feel awful and wrong and like I was cheating or manipulating the system, just to get my girl to a certain school, and then waving bye bye to the church after, as I know for a fact, my partner and I have no intention of going to church afterwards.

thinking I went to a private CofE school. I'm Catholic, and there were sizeable numbers of Hindu and Jewish girls and smaller numbers of Muslim and Catholic girls, and no doubt girls of other and no faith. I have absolutely no idea what their staffing criteria were.

You didn't get to be excluded from any religious stuff, presumably because your parents knew what they were paying for. So if we had to attend an interminably long service for whatever, everyone went (and if it was something that the Catholic church deemed a day of obligation, I got to go twice, once to a CofE service with school and then again to Mass in the evening with my mum. What joy.)

I actually ended up knowing quite a bit about Judaism in particular from the Jewish girls in my class.

Margo - can you not see that if you prevent one form of selection (“discrimination”) you generate another? That it is always a trade off?

I disagree that it's always a trade off. You address each form of discrimination as it arises.

And not by introducing another layer of discrimination. And especially not if that's on the basis of a protected characteristic. That just seems self evident to me.

How can you “disagree”, longestlurker?

No, I don't see that by removing religious discrimination you need necessarily put in another layer of discrimination. I don't see that at all.

We have 3 schools in our village - catholic (Outstanding), CofE (Good) and an academy (Requires Improvement). DH and I are not religious but I have no qualms about doing what is needed to get my child into one of the first two schools if the other doesn't improve by the time DD is in school and we don't choose the local independent either.

The Catholic school is extremely strict and you do have to be a practicing and present catholic of the linked church, which would mean myself being baptised, DH being converted (christened in a Methodist church) and being sponsored by 2 existing members of the church. We won't be doing it but I won't lie and say we haven't considered it.

How can I disagree? Because I don't accept the premise that you have a trade off between religious discrimination and another form of discrimination. I think you can put in place measures to reduce discrimination on various metrics, but you don't reduce then by introducing another layer of unjustifiable discrimination. That doesn't help equality, it hinders it.

School will always be unequal. The best educational route to equality is choice, not state secular comprehensive mixed sex geographically determined

Yes- excusing one sort of unacceptable discrimination by saying it’s not as bad as another sort of unacceptable discrimination is a ridiculous thing to do.
The Church could end this discrimination today if it wanted to. But it doesn’t want to.

Even if I accepted your statement, our whole argument has been about the fact that choice is unfairly denied to some.

School shouldn't be unequal, it should be an opportunity to equalise.

I'd rather campaign for equality and the removal of religious discrimination than do nothing and accept that discrimination is how it will always be. Thank goodness the suffragettes thought the same way.

School shouldn't be unequal, it should be an opportunity to equalize.

No, school is there to educate, respecting the very real differences between human beings, their origins and ambitions.

Oh FFS. Now you're sounding positively dangerous. I am out of here.

longestlurker - there have been many government led initiatives in England to increase school choice within the free-at-point-of-access sector.

“No, school is there to educate, respecting the very real differences between human beings, their origins and ambitions.”
This is exactly the problem. Too many people are happy with the idea of patrician/plebeian schools and support the systems that encourage this divide. (I was going to say posh/chav but decided a more classical reference would appeal)

I would suggest that everyone stop playing chess with this pigeon.

At the last mass that parents were invited to, it was noted that a sizable proportion didn't know what to do in the church.

This happens at the first Sunday mass the FHC children are involved in. The system for going up to receive communion falls apart surprisingly quickly once you get enough people who don’t know how it works in our church.

arf @ MadameJimJam whilst also hoping I'm not the pigeon!

Ha - you don't need to be an expert birdwatcher to identify it!

(and no, it's not Margo!)

I think the government needs to legislate that faith schools may not use religion, faith or church attendance as criteria for selection for a state funded school

If it did all Catholic schools would close. Some schools of minor faiths may also close. So a huge amount of money would be needed to open new schools to replace them. You appear to want to ignore the property rights of the RC church but the courts and the ECHR would not allow that.

The property rights of a cake shop owner do not allow them to discriminate in this way. Only a specific exemption in the Equalities Act allows faith schools to do so.

I think it's a bold assertion that the schools would close if not allowed to discriminate. If it's really true perhaps they are not such a benevolent force in our educational landscape as others have argued.

prh47bridge I have no desire to ignore anyone's property rights at all. The faith schools could continue as they are and remain fully funded by the tax payer. I am simply asking that government legislate so that the admissions process be prevented from religious discrimination against children. Absolutely nothing to do with property rights at all.

And a lot of CofE schools would have issues of usage of land bequeathed for purposes that might no longer meet the terms of their trust deeds.

No they wouldn't because the law can change that. That's the thing about laws.