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.

And is what that child "deserves" to be determined by their parents or some external body deciding they can't access a mainstream school?

I thought the whole point of schooling someone in England, for some families, was English immersion?

Their parents deserve to have the choice to choose a school that supports their child in its cultural entirety. Just as a Catholic family deserves to be able to choose a school that supports their child in its cultural entirety.

School is about passing on human culture and drawing out talents.

I have no idea what you mean by "supporting them in their cultural entirety" but it sounds to me like you think that this means something other than respect for their cultural identity. Something more like surrounded by people who share the same cultural identity. And that cultural identity is some kind of delineated thing with sharp boundaries.

The boundaries don’t have to be very sharp, but if you want native speaker children to receive a bilingual education you need a critical mass of native speaker students in a class to ensure the class progresses.

This is starting to sound a bit ghetto-ish!

Just like, if you want a meaningful choir and an excellent musical education because you have musical talent, Cathedral schools are a good place to start.

I am not sure it's "just like" that at all, tbh.

There are two main choices in education:

• comprehensive secular state mixed education that gives the same menu to everyone within a geographic boundary (so selection on house price, which is a proxy for wealth). This inexorably leads over time to huge disparities in achievement between rich and poor, and dumbing down across the board

• lots of free choice, according to parental preference, cultural disparities and talent. The losers are those with no culture, no talent and who think school should bring up their DC

Bridge you really can't see that there's a difference between a criterion based on sibling links and one based on prioritising people of different faiths

Of course I can see a difference. But I can also see a difference between prioritising people and excluding people, which is the point I'm making.

Whereas a boys school excludes girls (i.e. no girl will ever be admitted regardless of the number of places available) and a girls school excluded boys, a state-funded faith school does not exclude non-faith applicants. It prioritises faith applicants in the same way that most schools prioritise siblings and people living close to the school.

RC schools and most (probably all but I haven't checked) schools of minor faiths prioritise for all places on faith grounds. Some of these schools always fill up with children of the faith so there are never any places for anyone else, so the effect is the same as excluding non-faith applicants. But, if a place is available, anyone who applies will be admitted regardless of faith.

CofE schools are more of a mixed bag. Some don't prioritise on faith grounds at all, some do, and some give faith priority for some places but also reserve places for non-faith applicants. So a high proportion of CofE schools admit non-faith applicants every year.

Talking about faith schools excluding non-faith applicants implies that there are no circumstances in which a non-faith applicant will be admitted. That simply isn't true.

Ok. I think it's a distinction without a difference, but I understand your point, thank you.

If parents want to teach their children religion as if it is fact, they can do it at home.