Ending Educational Hypocrisy on Mumsnet

[zanzibarmum]

Do you think we might end educational hypocrisy on these threads by having to declare what type of school our DC go to - you know the sort of thing the mumsnetter who wants to abolish faith schools on the grounds of fairness while sending own DC to private schools or the mum whose children are in high-performing postcode protected state schools and wanting to abolish GS.

Or is the apparent inherent hypocrisy ('do as I say not as I do') so favoured by politicians and some MNs part of the fun.

pugs, I don't know anyone who thinks that one size does fits all. A good comprehensive system should be able to meet the needs of each and every student. Your idea about specialist schools is a very odd one because as has been pointed out to you there would have to be 100s of schools dealing with 100s of specialisms (sport, languages, arts, technology, science ..) that were all equally accessible to each student. Even then not every child has just one 'specialty' and it's also really important that children develop the subjects and learning styles that don't suit them as well as the ones that do because life and work demands that we be adaptable, that we meet challenges and that we have a range of skills and understanding.

Actually, as other posters have said, to allow for specialisms in the way of a wider range of subjects but also a wider range of teaching expertise, learning support, facilities etc you need to have large schools which are able to tailor teaching and learning for each child.

I now teach post-16 but my college is an amazingly successful example of a 'comprehensive' institutition that meets the incredibly diverse needs and specialisms of its 2000+ students because it is able to offer such a range. We deal with Oxbridge entrants (who have specialist tuition) and students who struggle with basic skills like organisation (they are offered 1:1 mentors) and everything in between. I don't know how many subjects we offer but its huge and there are scores of extra activities too. While we are not a school all of our students have come from schools where their diverse needs and specialisms have by and large been met. Certainly enough to continue with education post16. So I'm not having it said that comprehensive or even state education is the failure that some of you are suggesting even though I do have certain problems with it like the fact that it isn't comprhensive enough.

five candles - how can you with a straight face disparage what you call the 'choice' agenda while exercising the ultimate choice yourself by going private. I do finf this position inconsistent at best and hypocritical at best.

How can you say schools of a religious character should take local children (most do of course) yet say private schools should not take local children; - private schools' receive an implicit (teacher training, tax relief etc.

Your post-16 colleage though sounds good and no doubt your DC will be going there in due course, even if the nearest community school does provide you with the right choice that you so dismiss. The personal is political.

five candles - how can you with a straight face disparage what you call the 'choice' agenda while exercising the ultimate choice yourself by going private. I do find this position inconsistent at best and hypocritical at worst.

How can you say schools of a religious character should take local children (most do of course) yet say private schools should not take local children; - private schools' receive an implicit (teacher training, tax relief etc.

Your view of faith schools is not consistent with the facts - my former city centre catholic school is largely (then and now) populated by the dC of immigrants. Where exactly do you live

Your post-16 colleage though sounds good and no doubt your DC will be going there in due course, even if the nearest community school does provide you with the right choice that you so dismiss. The personal is political.

I can't really repeat myself anymore or express myself any more simply zanzi.

If there were no faith schools and my kids were therefore not excluded from their local schools which are highly segregated by faith and ethnicity then my kids would go to a state schools. My kid do not have a religion therefore they cannot go to their local schools therefore they go to a private school.

And I disagree that most faith schools take kids from the local area. If you'll read the article that I linked to earlier and the stats on free school meals you'll see that is simply not the case. But even if my kids could get into the local faith schools I do not want them to go to a faith school when I am an atheist.

Imagine if hospitals discriminated in this way i.e only accepting patients who had certain faiths and then taking a quota of patients who did not have this faith but then preaching to them once in hospital.

I don't live in Bradford but this may give you some sense of one reason why I am so against faith schools and why they are particularly divisive in my area www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/faith-schools-scrutinised-after-bradford-riots-677909.htm l

Call it hypocrisy if it makes you feel better but I say again that sending my children to a private school is the only way that I can get my kids into a school which is ethnically and religiously mixed.

fivecandles, I live near enough to Bolton and Bradford to be appalled by your links.

A couple of months ago we visited the aquarium in Bolton museum. There was some nice artwork from two primary schools. One was CofE. The other was 'community'. The names were without exception ethnically divided. It can't be good for society.

sending my children to a private school is the only way that I can get my kids into a school which is ethnically and religiously mixed.

same here.

Ok let's leave it there. You have no community school within travelling distance so choose socially exclusive private schools while being opposed to the 'choice' agenda.

Thing is your proposal - abolish faith schools and then but only then private schools - is not practical politics. Neither Labour, the Tories, schools adjudicator believe there is a general problem with faith schools ( Balls recently said community schools could learn from them). In so far as there was an issue in bradford this seems to be more about 'white flight' something in an earlier post you seem to think acceptable if people had less choice in the state system.

So in short I find your position unclear, inconsistent and not practicable. But if you do have positive ideas to improve schools perhaps we should discuss on another thread.

I wouldn't abolish all faith or any private. But the faith schools should be in proportion to the number of real adherents to that faith with school age kids. The number that go to church before they have kids, and after said kids are safely admitted.

Where we are, at least, its simply disproportionate.

The numbers of private schools self-adjust according to the market.

Totally agree Grima.

For the office of national statistics (a bit out of date, but interesting):

'In January 2004 there were almost 7,000 state-maintained faith schools in England, making up 36 per cent of primary and 17 per cent of secondary schools. The overwhelming majority of these faith schools (99 per cent) were Christian. Christian schools had places for 1.7 million children and, in 2001, 5.1 million children aged 5 to 16 in England were described as Christian.

There were 371,000 school-aged (5 to 16 year old) Muslim children in England in 2001 and four Muslim state-maintained schools in 2004, catering for around 1,100 children. There were 64,000 school-aged Sikh children and two Sikh state-maintained schools, catering for around 600 children.

There were 33,000 Jewish school-aged children in England compared with 13,000 places in state-maintained Jewish schools.'

The 5.1 m children described as Christian would be from the 2001 census. However if you want to look at the numbers of practicing Christians the TearFund report is more enlightening, with only about 10% of adults attending a service every other week (only 5% go weekly).

So we have a situation where there are a disproportionate amount of schools for children from Christian families, tiny amounts for any other religion, and none for those of no religion (the majority).

Personally I think it would be better if no school was organised on religious lines, with religious instruction at Sunday school/catechism classes. Surely the instruction would be of a much higher/more tailored standard in any case.

There is a perfectly simple solution to faith schools, and that is that they open their doors to everyone, regardless of parental churchgoing. As zanzibarmum herself has pointed out, many faith schools do this already, so there is no reason why they can't all do it.

It just can't be a good idea to be dividing children by faith from an early age. Nor can it be a good system that forces parents to choose between their own beliefs and their child's education.

Although it is non-PC to ask I would like to know the ethnicity/religion of those saying they choose private to get the right mix. If the majority in the local state school matches your background I don't believe in a million years that you are choosing private for that reason.
My DC are educated privately, so I am not against the system, but I just don't believe that is the real reason behind the choice.

I do think that faith schools are the utmost in hypocrisy.

Now, if our nearest school were one, we would use it. Infact, our nearest comp. is catholic and I am seriously thinking of it as an option because it is so much nearer than the other comps.

However, in our town, some of the CofE schools are effectively selective because you have to have been to the associated church. People actually start going to that church to get a place.

This leaves people who are more local to the school to have to travel further afield for schooling.

I find it impossible to believe that Jesus would have only turned up at schools full of upper-middle class white children; he would have been seeking out the poor and immigrant communities at the Sure Start Centres.

However, being Britain, we're not good at getting rid of tradition so I think they are here to stay.

Quite so, builde

(although it's not the faith schools themselves, it's just the way that some of them pick their children that is the problem)

The funniest thing is when someone says that they've chosen a certain (almost selective) faith school for their children because they like the values of a church school.

I wonder whether they think that in all other schools there are no values; that it it just a free-for-all of satan worship.

As a practising Christian, I wanted my children to go to the nearest school, to meet all of humankind (not just the upper-middle classes) and to understand that there are disadvantaged children.

Plus, I like to walk to school; keeps me thin! (our nearest school is still a mile away)
And I like the idea that one day we might be able to get rid of the car. (When they are old enough not to grumble about walking a mile home in the cold)

LAzy: true,I didn't choose a private school because it has an ethnic mix, but that is an added bonus.

I chose it (at least in part) because the village school selects based on parents' church attendance. That counted us out but also counts out many ethnic/religious groups.

This thread has made me realise that it is all about choice. And a lot of posters here seem to take that choice for granted, as though it's something everyone has.

Well it isn't.

When my dd leaves junior school for her secondary, we probably won't get a choice as to which secondary she goes to. If we are still living here then she'll have to go to the local one which has an awful reputation.

We cannot afford to educate her privately. There is a grammar school which is 45mins away by bus. I know of one parent whose dd passed their exams but couldn't get sponsorship and so she lost her place because her parents couldn't afford the fees.

The only choice we'll get is if we move.

So please don't post as though everyone has this thing called a 'choice'. Having a choice is actually a very priviledged thing to have and it might make me feel a bit better about not having a choice, if those who did, didn't keep moaning about it all the time as if they're somehow hard done by! Come to where I live and I'll show you hard done by!

zanzi, are you being deliberately obtuse?

'You have no community school within travelling distance so choose socially exclusive private schools while being opposed to the 'choice' agenda.'

No, for the zillionth time not WHILE being opposed to the 'choice' agenda BECAUSE I am opposed to the 'choice agenda and more particularly because I am opposed to faith schools.What I want and expect for my kids (i.e. a non faith, non ethnically segregated educated) is no different from what I want for EVERY child but I cannot and an awful lot of people who live in urban deprived areas like I do cannot get it via state education.

This is not the same as saying I think you lot can make do with state education but I think I'll go private thanks and it's not the same as pretending a faith or sending my kids to a faith school when I don't have a faith all of which WOULD indeed be hypocritical positions.

'Thing is your proposal - abolish faith schools and then but only then private schools - is not practical politics.'

I did acknowledge this some time ago. Again, hence my decision.

'In so far as there was an issue in bradford this seems to be more about 'white flight' something in an earlier post you seem to think acceptable if people had less choice in the state system.'

I find the 'in so far as' extremely offensive. As I said I do not live and work in Bradford. I'd rather not say where I do live and work but the situation in Bradford is not isolated. Where I live it is exactly the same and has also led to riots etc. I listened to a programme the other day about Sheffield which says that the flight (mainly white middle-class) to the suburbs is so marked that there is an 18 year discrepancy in average life expectancy between those in the town and outside it.

'So in short I find your position unclear, inconsistent and not practicable.'

This is rubbish. I have been absolutely clear, black and white clear throughout.

My position is that I want my kids to go to a school which reflects the diversity of ethnicites and faiths in the area in which they live. There is no state school in my LEA which offers this. This is also what I personally would like for every child though I accept not every parent feels the same way. Where is the inconsistency here?

'But if you do have positive ideas to improve schools perhaps we should discuss on another thread.'

As a teacher and with a dp and parents who are teachers I have many. I have already suggested several here - ban league tables, ban faith schools, decrease class sizes, offer more parental support and early intervention, help with literacy, less summer holidays (will not be popular with other teachers), more use of ICT and mobile phones to promote home school contact. I could go on.

lazy, the school my kids attend has roughly 30% of students from ethnic minority backgrounds. This roughly reflects the area where they live. It riles me that my principles, honesty and understanding are being questioned. You may not agree with my p.o.v which is fine but it's beyond me why you would assume that what I'm saying is anything other than sincere.

zepherine, as an atheist, I wouldn't want my kids going to a faith school even if it were charitable enough to open its doors to us. For me that would be a hypocritical position. I also don't think it would be particularly fair on my kids or their teachers given that they would want to challenge a large amount of what they would have to spend their time learning or doing e.g. praying to a God they don't believe in.

I don't think that religion takes up a large amount of time at faith schools (having been to both C of E and Catholic schools myself). The curriculum is the same as any other schools - the religious stuff has no part in lessons for other subjects, and mainly affects assemblies etc. I am probably on the atheist side of agnostic myself and would have no problem at all with sending dd to a faith school.

Arguable, Zephirine. Some schools and even colleges expect children to go to Mass weekly & to church for relgious occasions and do compulsory RE to GCSE. But it's not just the time. It's the way the ideology pervades the school. For example, teachers are allowed to be explicity anti contraception, anti-abortion and antihomosexuality in a Catholic school. I acknowledge this is a personal matter but to me this is anathema. I feel it has no place in school and my kids and I would object to it. Kids are routinely expected to pray. My kids do not pray. They and I would consider this utterly hypocritical and wrong.