Faith schools breaking the admissions rules to give advantage to middle class parents

[harpsichordcarrier]

heremakes me proud to be an atheist

"As many as 2,000 faith and foundation schools are guilty of "widespread violations" of the Government's new admissions rules, which ban them from interviewing parents and charging for places.

Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary, said that some schools had asked for hundreds of pounds each term from parents desperate to get their children into the best schools.

Others had interviewed children and asked about their parents' marital status and occupations."

This wasn't just about faith schools, My son goes to a foundation school and it has nothing to do with religion!
Not sure why you are so proud to be an atheist, sounds pretty hypocrytical to me.

why would it be hypocritical?
yes, foundation schools are also implicated.
faith schools often justify their existence by claiming they have some sort of moral authority.
to have moral authority, one must behave morally. imo.

There's another, bigger thread on faith schools tonight, some comment on this story there.

Christy, what on earth is hypocritical about being an atheist?

And as it happens the reports I saw said wrong-doing was most acute in faith schools, although foundation schools and academies were also involved. Looks like the only decent schools are what our government so kindly called 'bog-standard comps'.

there are far far fewer foundation schools and academies than faith schools

very self-serving, harpsi, it was not only faith schools that were implicated in the abuse of the admission criteria

I am glad to see you are all engaging with the real issue here
yes, GM schools have also been breaching the rules to discriminate against children from poorer backgrounds.
not sure what your point is, tbh

Yes I saw this. I was really, really astonished by the thing about asking for money. How the hell has any school been getting away with that? (Apart from private schools, obv. )

We have big problem in Northampton with this. The main problem seems to be that the faith schools and academies wre until recently just schools that served a particular area, now with their new status children seem to be finding it harder to get into schools in their locality.

Northampton was one of the areas studied for this research, Quad, along with four others. But the researchers say there's no reason to believe those four areas are not representative.

that really doesn't suprise me at all Edam. There have always been problems with two schools in the area, the single sex schools, they have fantastic exam results and have been in trouble before over their selection methods. It seems like the net has widened though, more schools want this exclusivity and for some it seems a way of trying to drag themselves back up after poor ofsted reports, by becoming faith schools they can have their very own selction/admission criteria. It really is a shambles, many unhappy parents and a greater divide between achieveing and non achieving schools.

it is no secret that this makes me angry.
that faith schools take the credit for their good results by claiming it is due to their unique ethos.

Do you actually know how many foundation schools and faith schools there are. You seem to make a lot of sweeping statements without the facts to back them up.
We have far more foundation secondary schools in our area than faith schools.

yes I do, about 7000 schools are faith schools, which accounts for about one third of all state schools.
I don't have exact numbers for foundation schools but as they have only been in existence for a short time I would guess that there are around 750-800, certainly fewer than 1000.
many of them are ex GM schools, and there were around 1000 of those. some ex GM schools became community schools, so not all became foundation schools.
so I do have the facts to back up my opnions, thanks for asking
now, maybe you could comment on why you think I am a hypocrite, or alternatively apologise.
It would be too much to hope you might comment on the actual content of the story rather than resorting to personal insults and defensiveness....

You have used a story to back your antireligious school stance which is clearly has nothing to do with the schools being religious because foundation schools are not.

AS I said in our area the majority of schools are foundation none of them fully selective. I suspect there are far more foundation schools than you realise.

no, Christywhisty, there really aren't. I would say there are around 10 times more faith schools than foundation schools. this is based on my knowledge of the education system.
I am not antireligiious, and it is extraordinariy bigotted of you to say so,
I really don't like religious discrimination and segregation and I don't like tax payer's money being spent on perpetuating discrimination and social divides.
I am sorry you feel the need to be so defensive and aggressive about it.
I personally think it is disgraceful that a school supposedly based on religious grounds would behave in such an immoral fashion.
I really fail to see why this makes me a hypocrite.

As of a year ago, there were about 750 foundation schools, and a further 37 schools had applications for foundation status pending (I got this info from Hansard). So harpsichordcarrier's figures are bang on.