catholic families who have chosen to not send their children to a catholic school

[twinsetandpearls]

DD is currently at a catholic primary which apart from class sizes we are generally happy with and I feel our family gets a lot from being part of a catholic community.

We are about to move as we want to take dd out of this town and we are in the process of enrolling dd at St Mary's Hall Stonhyhurst. The results for a selective school are not amazing but I passionatly wanted to keep dd in a catholic school.

But this would mean a 45 minute commute for me every day and a smallish commute for dp. The fees are huge as she progressed but family have offered us help so we are not too worried about that. I am not happy in my present teaching post and have been looking for jobs near Hurst Green so that I would not have the commute and could be closer for dd school activities. The jobs are just not there, especially at a comparable salary to what I am on now.

I have seen however a job at a grammar school in the North which if I got it would offer me comparable pay with less responsibility meaning more time for dd and dp which is a huge issue ATM. Dd however clearly could not go to STonyhurst and it would make sense to send her to the girls equivalent of the school I would like to work for. But it is not a catholic school and that for me is a huge emotional and spiritual sacrifice. But the grammar school is a better school.

I suppose the question is If your faith is important to you what should guide your choice of school faith or academic results.

Message withdrawn

Your dd can get faith and religious teaching at home and in your community from family and friends. I'd go with academic results every time, but not being religious that's an easy choice for me to make.

I vote better school.

I agree with doodledoo. If your dd belongs to a family where faith is important, that is as big an influence in many ways as the ethos in the school.
Easy for me to talk though as we are C of E, and part of the Established Church etc etc. As it happens the dcs are at a small independent school with a strong but inclusive Christian tradition.
Will you hate me if I say wherever you go you are probably going to find somewhere with better results than Stonyhurst? Our local Catholic comp, for example. Wonderful school.

BibiJesus can I just say I am LOLing here at your excellent Christmas name and your statement that you are not religious

School with good results.

Church on Sundays. Three times if need be.

I would like my dd to be in a catholic
school but our current parish has no school,
and the nearest one, to which dd would have to take the taxi, a 45 minute journey each way from the age of 4 upwards, is not special. Very few of the catholic families in our parish send their children their. We are very much part of the local catholic community. Dd is an altar server and has many
friends from church who attend other village school but who she went to children's liturgy with, did her first communion with etc.

Also she is at a good local school with friends in our local community.

It's not ideal. Ideal would be a good catholic school locally ... you do have
to work a bit harder at maintaining good links with the catholic community but it is possible.

I know looking at it rationally you are right, but dd will do well academically wherever she goes as she is a bright little button with a supportive family. I do know that she gets so much from going to a faith school and being part of that faith community and I wonder how our lives would change if we were no longer part of that.

I think it is an emotional issue that is hard to put into words, of how we feel about educating our daughter in a faith school. I feel like I am rambling now. Perhaps it is sending her to a school that reinforces the exact values we have at home.

Perhaps though are faith has become a tad lazy and having to seek out a church and work harder at being part of a faith community would be good for us.

lol at going to church 3 times if need be!

I like your xmas name as well, I need to get myself one.

That is what we want coffeepot. My faith informs all of my decisions and even at a young age dd seems proud of her catholic roots and heritage. She is at the moment very proud that she will be going to St Marys Hall and SH, she loves the chapels!

It is little things like the thought of my dd making her first holy communion, or any similar mile stone with children she does not know and feeling an outsider, perhaps the say as well would loose significance if it did not happen within her school commuity. Whereas if she went to the catholic school it would be such a huge part of her life and with people she knows.

am waiting for Xenia to come and give me a good talking to

My mother educated us most of the time at non Catholic private schools and thought you could get a better education there. Most Catholic schools don't get good academic results whether state or private compared to the best private schools so why take the risk? Children learn their faith at home anyway.

In most areas you have working class catholic schools with poor academic standards and private schools which are usually more likely to be C of E with excellent results so it's no contest really. Yours is reversed - posh Catholic school not brilliant exam results compared to better performing but probably more working class grammar school.

The better private non Catholic schools often have good Catholic things in them. My daughter went to mass at the Chapel at Habs for example on Holy Days. The twins made their first communion with a group of Catholics at the Oratory - the ones who went to private schools which aren't Catholic, and don't think it was the any the worse for making it with those children rather than at school.

In your case I would stick to Stonyhurst.

right on cue and with a very surprising answer

not sure if it will make a differnce but I am comparing Manchster High School for girls ( of which iirc you are a fan) and Stonyhurst.

i dont know how relevent this is but i went to catholic schools and tbh the only difference at my secondary school to the state schools was prayers at assembly and the option of going to mass at lunchtime.oh,and the lack of sex education,but i dont think that was very forthcoming in any schools back then.

out of curiosity why Manchester High School over and above Withington Girls' School . Actually do you know there is a rather nice catholic private school to the South of Manchester, St. Bedes?

Many Catholic state schools don't really have a huge Catholic ethos - they're just like most rough comprehensives. Stonyhurst is completely different. In a sense if you want that kind of Catholicism you have to pay for it.

Anyway many children even of teachers cannot pass the exam for the school their mother teaches at so going there isn't an option. So you might be leaving a certainty of a good school for a result which leaves the child at the worst local sink school.

yes have looked at St Bede's.

Yes Xenia is right if I was comparing a normal catholic comp with Manchester high school there is no comparison. However at Stonyhurst they are not simply payint lip service to the Catholic faith, the Jesuit model means that faith intructs all - and that is why I wanted dd to go there.

But our family life would be much easier with the manchester option.

On a minus though I like the fact that Stonyhurst is Co ed, although I know there is a lot of evidence to say that girls thrive in al all female classroom.

There is also that certainty with Stonyhurst as well, she has been offered that place and will stay there forever well intil 18.

If dd gets into the prep of manchester girls school does she keep that place all the way through or would she need to sit a further entrance exam?

St Bede's just left me a little cold, don;t know why. Perhaps it just can't compete wit SH on the awe and wonder factor.

I didn't send my dc's to local catholic primary and I am still very sorry I didn't. I think during the primary years if you have a local school attached to your parish it gives such a great sense of belonging to be part of this. I work hard to encouage the development of their faith at home and attend mass but I know we would have gained so much more by being involved at the school. It may be different at secondary age but during these formative years the parish school connection is invaluable. If you have already passed this primary stage you may already have a good base to sustain you at a non faith secondary.

I have chosen to send my ds to my local village school rather than the catholic school in the nearest town. I anticipate that if we are still living here when he is 11, he will attend our catchment secondary, and not a catholic school.

For me, I suppose it is the distance, and the fact that we live in a community as well as worship in (a different) one.

And our village school isn't at all bad

we are still at the primary stage.

We have sent DD to a private Protestant school. On the whole I'm pretty comfortable with it all, although as her First communion approaches I feel sad she won't be sharing the experience with her close friends IYSWIM. Yes, she has friends in the parish but it's the not the same as her friendships with class mates.

I think I probably make more effort with Church than i would if she were in a RC school.

My daughter is Catholic and has attended the CofE village primary with her protestant brother.

We're trying to work out whether when she's 11 she'll go to the excellent ind. girls CofE school or good-but-not-quite-excellent girls ind. RC school.

I think you do get something at good independent catholic schools: a prayerfulness, a sense that there's more to life than the purely materialistic, an emphasis on your inner being. I want that for her because I think it's such a good counter to the ugliness of certain elements of modern life.

On the other hand, the bus routes for the excellent non-RC ind. school work so much better with my son's and as I work, journey times are a major consideration. And my daughter is bright and needs to be stretched.

It's so hard. At the moment I'm toying with sending her to the RC school for a few years to immerse her in Catholicism and then switching her over, but I fear this isn't ideal because of the disruption to friendships and course work, etc.