Schools turning away atheists?!

[meandollie]

Oh my god! Just been having a look at possible primary schools for my son to go to - are there any primary schools that you don't have to be a church goer to get into?!

Just crazy imo. Why does my child's quality of education depend on whether or not he's religious? These kids are 3-11 for god's sake, why can't they be educated to a level that they can make the decision for themselves when they're old enough?

So now my son is going to have to go to a school of poorer quality because I've chosen to let him make his own decisions of whether to beleive in God or not. Does anyone else find this really upsetting?

Aren't C of E schools simply still such because they were linked to the church a couple of hundred years ago and so still are today? Do they still build new schools which are CofE? My point is that I reckon (imo) that many are simply linked as they always have been.
In our town, the school is actually more into forcing their relious views than the church! The young and cool vicar is all for encouraging people to go to church, even if they are non-believers; just to be a part of the communtiy and as it's such a lovely building etc. That to me, is fab.
I went to the school as a child and loved visiting the church and was brought up believing all they taught us about the bible. I chose to send the kids there as it's a 5 min walk from the house and it means I don't have to use the car unnecesarily to drive 5 miles to another village. It's not normally oversubscribed as they have a double year intake for every year and so for us, it was purely a case of location. With hindsight, I really wish I'd got them into a village school!

You had me worried at the prospect of creationism actually being given any curriculum time! Much less being considered as a viable alternative to evolution, with teaching being required to be 'impartial'.

The link I posted unequivocally states that 'Creationism and intelligent design... do not form part of the science National Curriculum programmes of study.'

Not sure how you see it as being incorrect to say that evolution isn't proven. The nature of science is that things don't get to be 'proven' - just regarded as having 'substantial amount of supporting evidence, underpinned by principles and explanations accepted by the international scientific community. However, it also signals that all scientific knowledge is considered to be provisional as it can be overturned by new evidence if this is validated and accepted by the scientific community.'

It's certainly confusing - ds gets dinosaurs one minute & Noah the next.

I am always surprised by the claims that faith schools are selecting by class and affluence. It may be true of some faith schools in some areas but it certainly isn't the case across the board.

Our local C of E primary school reserves a third of its places for the community and in practice offers close to half its places to children not connected with any church. And it has a far less middle class intake than the community schools nearby.

There are a fair few C of E schools which contain 100% muslim pupils. They just happen to be in 'poorer' areas of our towns and cities so are not being fought over for the places.

As the Established Church the C of E is available to everyone who lives in the parish, regardless of belief and their schools have an important place in the history of education in this country. They were set up to serve the local community but it's not unreasonable to give some preference to families who show an active involvement in the church if the school is over subscribed. Other denominations and religions don't have this historical perspective and can be much more exclusive.

It's not unreasonable to ask why the other schools in the area are ( apparently) less popular.

I think people are all wrong in blaming the schools themselves.

The real problem here is:

1. The introduction of league tables, which means parents tend to judge schools on exam results rather than overall rounded education

1. The large proportion of parents who lie/feign religion to get their kids into the schools.

I reckon overall proportion in most faith schools would be about 10% genuinely practicing the religion and about 80% faking it by attending church for a year or two before children need to start school and about 10% lucky enough to get in on catchment.

Church schools were created for good reasons; to educate the poor whose parents couldn't afford education. So, they are an important part of our education history. (There were probably less alturisic and patronising victorian ideas as well - e.g. to keep the poor off the streets!).

However, I don't think that they have a place now. (And I am a practising Christian). I don't think that Jesus would approve of the way they are used by middle class parents to cut themselves off from lower income families.

And, as I've posted before, they often make children travel further to school.

Hear, hear, Builde.

Asmallbunch, afraid decent research shows it's a general rule that church schools do practice discrimination by class - although there are exceptions, of course, it's not universal.

Seems daft to me, if you are a Christian surely you want to reach out to the children of heathens in the hope of bringing them to God? Certainly going to a CofE middle school in the days when you just went to your local school gave me much more of an understanding of and interest in Christianity. I am a member of the CofE (although a bit wibbly) which I wouldn't have been otherwise (despite being Christened).

..... afraid decent research shows it's a general rule that church schools do practice discrimination by class - although there are exceptions, of course, it's not universal.

That was my point, really. Although there may be a general trend (and I've seen the reports too) it isn't universal. It's when people on MN allege that all C of E schools are stuffed to the gunwales with middle class kids anxious to get away from the riff-raff that I look at the C of E school where I'm a governor - scarcely a middle class child in the school - and wonder where these middle class havens are. Not our school, certainly.

imgonnaliveforever - maybe that's a reasonable argument for having 'non-practising' children in church schools.

The christian ethos may be of more benefit to them than to children from genuinely church-going families.They shouldn't be exclusively for the pious.

I don't suppose Jesus would approve of a great many things, Builde, but I wouldn't have thought that the proportion of middle class children in church schools would exercise him unduly.

The education advisers in our diocese are very clear in saying that C of E schools provide Christian education for children, not education for Christian children.

My sons go to a CofE primary. We are atheists. We live in a village with one primary school, all the surrounding village schools are also CofE.

There wasn't a problem with our lack of faith when applying, as village schools here allocate places on a catchment basis.

It's secondary where the problems start here - as someone else said the "local" faith schools have children bussed in from miles away, the church attendance locally has a peculiar bulge at about year 5 as everybody starts pretending to be religious.

In Mass on Sunday I sat between two families: one AFrican, one Chinese. They didn't look that wealthy. They send their children to the RC school.

I was obviously hallucinating. Because MN keeps telling me that they were really white and wealthy.

I have the same hallucination, abr1de!

abride - I think RC schools are a bit different, tbh. They have always been exclusively for RCs. CofE a. has more schools and b. is the state religion - your Anglican parish priest has a duty to serve you if you ask, whether you are Quaker, Sikh, Muslim or Zoroastrian. Or even an Atheist!

(As the descendant of Catholics ? my father is still bitter about his Catholic upbringing ? ds would be going to a Catholic school Over My Dead Body anyway.

RC schools have always taken non-RC pupils. They did in the seventies, if there were spaces, and they still do now. Our local RC school apparently takes Baptists and Muslims.

I do know a local(ish) C of E school which is almost exclusively Muslim.

I as a Christian parent have also not sent my children to the local C of E secondary, as does everyone from their C of E primary, because the secondary is awful.

amicissima, if there were no faith schools the state would have to make provision, albeit not always on the same site. I think I've already said that in my borough 4 out of the 5 secondary schools are Catholic. Clearly, if the Catholic church wasn't providing those schools, someone else would be.

I don't object to faith groups having their own schools to send their children to. I'm not antagonistic to faith schools per se. I do, though, object to an education system where faith schools, in many areas, dominate local provision, allowing them to be socially selective (I'm not saying they all are, but in some areas they definitely are) and to effectively disenfranchise my child. And no-one can convince me it is fair that I pay taxes to support that system, but have fewer choices and options within it. Nor can they convince me that it is a good thing - for our whole community - that David Cameron's child gets chauffered in from miles away to the high-achieving state faith school in my street, when nobody I know who actually lives in our street has managed to get their child in there.

I object to paying for a schooling system which discriminates against my child on the basis of my religion or lack of. IMO state schools should not be allowed to prioritise applicants on the basis of religion. Faith schools that wish to discriminate on the basis of religion, should be completely self funding.

It annoys me that so called Christians claim to be in great need of religious CofE schooling at a high achieving church school but some how manage to lower their Christian needs when faced with a poorly performing church school...funny how then can just about manage to cope with a non faith high performing school.

This issue is all about gaining max choice for your child to attend a good school, it has little to do with any sort of faith but those who are in a position to claim a faith place have a greater chance of gaining a good school as the have a greater choice.