Faith Primary - is there any point appealing?

[happyheathen]

Our first choice and closest school is a voluntary aided C of E primary.
Its abridged criteria are as follows:

1. Children attending church 1 and living in parishes A B and C or their siblings.
2. Children attending churches 2 or 3 and living in parishes A B and C or their siblings.
3. Siblings.
4. Children living in parish A
5. Others

Church attendance is defined as at least twice a month for at least a year prior to application.

My child falls with category 4 and has failed to gain a place. Although we attend Church A we only attend the family service once a month and did not lie. In other years children in category 4 have got in. We are top of category 4, in fact we are so close to the school I think if it had been done on catchment we would certainly be in the top 5 of places.

My issues with what has happened are as follows:

1. I KNOW other people have lied about their church attendance. I know of at least one case where someone was told to cast their mind back and see if they could "remember" some dates prior to the start date that they put on the application form as it didn't meet the qualifying period and so submitted a letter after the application date to that effect. This was the vicar's idea.

1. It was strongly suggested at church services that parents of pre-school children in the congregation might like to complete a direct debit form. We refused on principle. I would like the LEA to look at how many of those people who got a church reference also did the Direct Debit - I bet it's all of them. Even more interesting would be how many churchgoers who failed to get a vicar's reference (like us) had not completed one.

1. Oversubscription this year was mainly caused by a high number of siblings. However, many of these siblings no longer live within parishes A B or C or even the wider area. It is not fair that people can move away from the area and still be considered above those living next door to the school. I do not think that it is unreasonable to say that if you move house and are no longer in the area (I cannot say catchment because this concept doesn't seem to exist for this school) you should either move schools or take the risk that later children may not get in.

1. All I want to be able to do is walk my children to school.

Environmentally it is insane to prevent people walking to their local schools and forcing them to drive to other schools as we will be forced to do. Parking at the faith school is already a huge issue. It is gridlock outside our house and I have had to ask people to move off my drive a number of times. The school I will be driving to is the catchment school for the vast majority of those people parking outside my house.

But I know faith schools are a law unto themselves so is there any point in appealing - the criteria suck but they will say they can set what they like and they have abided by them.

Is this a lost cause ?

If a family is disciplined and motivated enough to get itself to church every sunday , then they are probably disciplined and motivated enough to ensure their children get to school on time , teach them write from wrong and how to behave.I think tghis is what makes church schools successful , not the social class of parents.

but it is all very against the Christian message as preached in the Bible isn't it.

Does that not bother the Church? Has it so little self-respect? Does it not care that the average parent on the street loses respect for it because it presides over such hypocrisy?

Or does it just care about maintaining its nice building - oh and the pretty pipe organ?

Thanks for all the comments. It actually has made a difference to me to know that most people are sympathetic.
I think we may appeal even if we don't get anywhere just to make a point to the diocese and the LEA but as various posters have pointed out, I don't think it has enhanced my opinion of the true ethos of the school and has made me question whether I really want to send my children there anyway.

I don't care what any of those supporting faith selection say, I think the criteria at our local school are wrong. Another example I could cite is that of my neighbour who is a very devout and committed Christian (and not just since she had children !) but she is a baptist/methodist (not sure which) and so she ranks after all of us in category 5 despite having a reference from her vicar !!!

Ours is a peculiar situation too in that although the faith school does perform slightly better on SATs etc we are in a very affluent pocket of the SE and in actual fact ALL of our local schools are good. I know that we are very lucky to be able to say that. Personally, I couldn't care less about the difference of an SAT score of 297 versus 288 or whatever it is, if the non-faith school was the one next to my house I would have applied to it as my first choice.
I have personal reasons for not wanting to drive and the school I have been allocated is a 35-40 minute walk away (I have a toddler in a buggy too) so I could now be spending up to 2.5 hours on the school run even though there is a school within a 3 minute walk. . Slightly ironic given that the sermon at every family service I have ever been to is about the environment and our responsibility to God's planet.

Katiestar - what a load of rubbish!
I can assure you, being so desperate to say that their children go to "village X" (more affluent postcode) C of E School even though they live in "village Y" and there is an almost equivalently good "village Y" school next door to them does not make them "disciplined and motivated" in my book, I'd say it all came down to good old middle class snobbery.

Obviously anyone who doesn't get up for church every Sunday is part of the feckless underclass that values ASBOs more than an education

Porpoise - do you think I should complain to the governors or to the diocese?
Apparently the school appeals are handled by the diocese so I have asked the diocese lady to send me the paperwork re an appeal submission and I will see what it entails.

In my experience the grounds for appeal have to be based on the school not applying their own admissions criteria correctly and fairly. As you know some parents have lied about their church attendance it would seem to me that you do have grounds to appeal.
I do know families who successfully appealed in the faith school system

Sorry, happyheathen, only just checked back on this thread.

I would say report this to both the governors and the diocese.

If this school is anything like ours, the governing body will have an admissions committee, whose job it is to list the applicants for places in rank order according to the admissions criteria. And it's then this list that's send on to the LEA for them to use when offering out the places.

If any of the criteria are church attendance, then the admissions committee is RELYING on the vicar's reference to enable it to rank applicants. If the vicar's reference is not reliable, then it follows that the ranking list could be wrong and, therefore, that places are being offered to the wrong children first.

By the way, when we last reviewed our admissions criteria, we were told that the diocese (and by implication all C of E dioceses) were insisting that vicar's references should contain nothing more than information relating to the admissions criteria.

In other words, if the criteria were attendance at church at least twice a month for at least a year prior to application, then that is all that could be recorded. So, if Mrs X had attended that often but never given a penny to the church, her child would still meet the criteria. And if Mrs Y had not attended that often but had donated £6 million to the steeple-rebuilding fund, Mrs Y's child still wouldn't get in.

Looking at your school criteria, you have no right to appeal based on your church attendance, by your own admission. But you could argue that your child would have been higher up the ranking list (because there would have been fewer children meeting the criteria 1, 2 and 3 ahead of you) if the vicar's records of church attendance had been more accurate.

You'd have to provide evidence that his records weren't accurate, though...

happyheathen - you have missed the gist of my point.
Somebody said faith schools tended to be better than average because they were populated by middle class kids.I was making the point that if you have a school,any school you have to jump through hoops to get into then that it will rule out a lot of the parents who couldn't care less about how their children are brought up or educated.You are therefore much likely to have better behaved motivated kids with involved parents

I seem to have hit a raw nerve.I can't understand why if you were desperate to get your DC into this school ,you didn't increase your attendance to qualify for the next catagory up?

Happyheathen - you are clearly not happy and it seems you are not a heathen. I have to say your 4 points are not very strong in any appeal

1. You know that people lied... difficult to prove.

1. Church asked for direct debit - church is not the admission's authority. Did you get a reference?

1. Oversubscription because of siblings. How do you know. IME this one always pops up as an explanation - and is often wrong. People do move house but if they are outside the catchment area merely have a sibling in the school won't meet the criteria.

1. Environment. Irrelevant - though I think your trendy vicar might say you will get your reward in heaven.