Religious schools discriminating against atheists

[MNersanonymous]

Dh and I are just having a discussion about this. The best state schools in our area are all religious and we, as atheists, feel discriminated against.

Could we take action against our local council under the religious discrimination legislation?!

Just curious really.

edam: our local primary has that rule:

• 1st priority: in catchment, has sibling at school
• 2nd priority: in catchment, no sibling
• 3rd priority: out of catchment, has sibling
• 4th priority: out of catchment on a closest distance to school basis.

One bat, she doesn't need it. She WANTS IT, becasue they are the best.
She wants the BEST for her child. But how can sending your child to a school, where they hold alien beliefs and will" indoctrinate" your child, be for the BEST?

Often these schools are very good, the best, becasue they are generally quite strict, teach of treating eachother nicely. And no nosence tolertated. They are the best, becasue they have very good exam results.

By the way ds's nursery, which is non religious has the most beautiful " Golden rules" about treating eachother nicely etc. So I like all those ideals.

I rarely hear of RC schools being crap, to be honest.

The best state schools in our area are all religious and we, as atheists, feel discriminated against.

This makes no sense. The reason it is a good school, is it is BECAUSE it is a faith school. This means that the parents subscribe to the christian standards of kindness, charity, forgiveness etc, and encourage children to do the same. So there is less bullying, children are kinder, therefore standards of education are better as less disruption/poor behaviour.

This doesnt mean that if you are an athiest you dont. However, the local comprehensive doesnt do so well because SOME who are not christian do not hold the values of being kind, charitable, forgiving. This in turn causes some children to be disruptive bullies. Which is basically the difference between a "good" school and "bad". It is not the exam results, but the type of children. The exam results are a product of having "good" children.

The sibling issue intrigues me. If one year most of the places are taken by siblings, that means that in a few years, there will be almost no siblings, as there will be no first or second borns higher up the school. Unless parents go on to have more and more children simply for the joy of getting them into the same school.

But then comes a year that doesn't have many older siblings already at the school.. so the only people applying will be first-borns, because seconds and thirds of the right age will have an older sibling elsewhere (in their less preferred school, but hey it turned out not too bad, and it's just too complicated to have two kids at different schools if you can avoid it)

So, does this mean in oversubscribed schools, classes will go in phases of two years of first-borns and onlies, followed by about three years of siblings?
Then back to a load of first-borns again?

Just musing to lighten the tone a bit.

have to go:
I am assuming that, if she had the choice, OP would rather send her child to the local, good, state school, which doesn't exist. It's not that she wants to send her child to a religious school, simply that if she wants her child to have access to the best education (funded by her, and us) she has no choice.

pooodle, that is absolute nonsense. There are several reasons that SOME church schools perform better than state ones (though not in our area) and one of the most obvious is that they draw their pupils from a group of people who are very unlikely to have deep-seated social problems or suffer from underclass levels of poverty.

As far as Christian values (like exclusion?) go, that too is utter bilge. Our local c of e is notorious for dealing badly with (very real) instances of bullying, because the sum total of their bullying policy boiled down to saying 'would jesus do that?' to the bully.

Our local state school has a very strongly developed sense of fairness, kindness to others, particularly those less able or strong than you, etc etc. Most importantly, it fosters tolerance and a sense of equality. Important virtues, I think you'll agree.

LOL at "would Jesus do that"
Somehow I don't think he went around calling people poo-poo heads.
Though IIRC there was an occasion when he tipped over a load of tables, so I don't think I'd hold him up as a model of behaviour for 5 year olds.

lol choccy - and water-walking is v dangerous.

I haven't time to engage in this debate, much as I would like to.

But feel I must just quickly post and run.

The idea that faith schools are better because their intake is more 'Christian' and therefore fundamentally kinder and more thoughful is preposterous.

Recently there was a report which highlighted that faith schools have a tendancy to bias towards the middle classes, a bias for the rich.

"Even when they are situated in deprived inner-city areas, religious schools have fewer poor children than local authority secondary schools."

There are many reasons that faith schools do tend to do well in exams. The assertion that it is because people who follow a religion have superior morals is frankly offensive and illogical.

Further fwiw, SOME Christians are not kind and charitable either.

Agree Slur with all of that

sorry, hijack over..

Eh? Oh that thread. Oh dear, yes those things are all true onebat - I think I was having a thick day... hang on a minute...

Simply in response to very high MN traffic on that particular subject at that particular time Iorek. Could just as easily been smacking or erm.. church schools.

One bat said :
"I am assuming that, if she had the choice, OP would rather send her child to the local, good, state school, which doesn't exist."

So the real OP should have been :
I want my local non religious school to be as good as the religious one.
Why isn't it.
She wants her local school to be better. So what does she do ?
Move ? Campaign for it to get better?
If you compare what you have to something better, what does that actually achieve ? Apart from making you resentful ?
What do people normally do when their local school is poor - I am seriously asking becasue I haven't read the threads becasue I have never found myself in this situtaion.

I agree with Slur too
what an outrageous and preposterous suggestion. yes, all children of Christian parents are good, kind and forgiving and will not bully other children
all children of parents who are not Christians will not of course teach their children to be kind and charitable. and their children will not be good and kind and forgiving.
organised religion is well known for preaching and practising tolerance and inclusivity.

Oblomov - we campaign to make good education available to all.
when one third of state schools are faith schools, and practising discrimination (legally and illegally, asking for sums of money etc - see yesterday's news) then the system is skewed.

I hesitate to use this analogy bcs I don't wish to be accused of pandering to vile racism, but were the schools in question Muslim, I suspect many pro-faith-schoolers might see things differently.

I know that this will kick off argy-bargy about the established church being CofE, but my bottom line is that both exclusively Muslim and exclusively Crhistian schools are unjust and discriminatory, for the reasons given very eloquently by others.

What would worry me (though I think we should be OK due to where we live) would be if the only local school was run by crap peddlers who would force my son to sing songs in praise of their imaginary friends. I am opposed to faith schools not only because they are discriminatory and divisive, but because their science teaching may well be suspect and their sex education policies horrifically harmful. Let alone indoctrinating the kids with the same old idiotic bullshit about invisible all-powerful beings who are so wise and wonderful that their fragile egos need to be constantly petted or they'll get in a strop and cause an earthquake or something.

I mean, really how can anyone sane believe this crap?

Why do you think the religiuos schools ogten do better harpsi?
I find this v interesting
Sur talks a lot of sense, I don't think it is necessariliy christian parents teaching christian values and our my local RC school has some but certainlny not maj. mc parents-mostly locals in quite a deprived area I suppose you would call it- yet it is very succesful

disclaimer: "I suspect many pro-faith-schoolers might see things differently." is NOT intended to imply latent racism in Christians! Was rather intended to show that, when one isn't of a particular religion, but pays for that religion's schools, it is rather galling.

Hello madamez.

I think that it might be wise to limit the terms of the debate to the justice or otherwise of state-funded but discriminatory faith-based education.

Rather than sanity. Mihgt look a bit name-cally.

look at all my lovely typos!! I can spell, you know, just crap typist

I think that although sometimes poor, MrsR, churchgoers demographically tend not to be of the very poorest.

They tend not to have suffered generations of grinding poverty, which can result in a mistrust of most authority, including schools, and a general loss of faith in the power of education to improve one's lot. As well, of course, as the huge practical difficulties in simply surviving at subsistence level, which sucks energy which might otherwise be directed at supporting the education of one's child.

(This is not, of course, always the case)

There is also something to be said for the fact that they are allied to a group of people (their church) whom they can call upon in times of difficulty, I think. Certainly our local church is focussed on filling the gaps in welfare provision.