Faith Schools `favour middle class over poor`

[idlingabout]

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/01/faith-schools-admissions-unfair
This is the headline in to-days Guardian paper (but online headline is slightly different). I was just surprised that this was deemed news as this is patently obvious in my area.Of the 2-3 children from dds primary who get into the high performing CoE secondary each year every single one of them has been from a solidly middle class family. Free school meal % in the faith school is 2%; in our catchment school and most in the area it is over 6%.
Aplogies if I don`t come back to respond for a while as I will be out.

I'm not surprised by this. My own former grammar school was profiled in a documentary several years ago and it was clear that the 'faith' requirement was actually their way of winkling out the riff-raff and slow learners.

link

Hope that works.
'said some faith schools were unconsciously skewing their intakes towards the rich.'

Am I alone in suspecting that some of them entirely conciously skew intake towards nice middle class families?

Thanks for putting in the link Grimma - I had obviously tried and failed - sorry all and I am now going out but look forward to reading the debate. Agree with you all so far.

I don't get the link. Our faith school is dependant on church attendance. If you fill in the forms truthfully and meet the requirements you get in. How would they know your 'class' anyway? Where you live is no indication and I don't know of any forms that ask for your income/educational background/social aspirations...

The faith school I went to was very definitely socially mixed.

The claim seems to be that some Faith Schools give extra points to children whose parents volunteer at the Church. Allegedly less well off parents don't have time to volunteer suffer.

The Guardian also makes a further claim, that I hadn't read elsewhere, that Eastern European countries baptise children later and so get less points again.

Well the CE secondary in our area has the following criteria;

1 SENs
2 Siblings
3 A certain number of children from the immediate area, regardless of religion
4 Children with full quota of church attendance points (literally attendance, no rules on baptism, volunteering etc), using distance from school

Which wouldn't seem to favour 'middle class' children, and it is a very mixed school - described as "The majority of students are White British; a larger proportion than average are from mixed race and minority ethnic families. The percentage of students entitled to free school meals is well below average though the socio-economic background of students is varied and a significant minority come from disadvantaged backgrounds. "

The CE primary my kids are at has no church requirement in its admissions, it is purely done on distance, after SENs and siblings.

Our faith school doesn't conform to the Guardian's findings. Although not exactly the same it has a similar list of admissions criteria to LilyBolero's school non of which relates to class/finance/ or any voluntary work done within the church!

Glad to hear it! The report only said that some schools may be skewing intake by awarding points based on activities other than just church attendance.

No kidding. And in other news, bear shits in wood.

of course faith schools admissions policies put wealthier people a an advantage.

see here 'The research confirms the belief that churchgoing is associated with those of higher social
grade.'

I suspect that middle class parents are more likely to attend church/mass regularly and be prepared to even if they have no religious beliefs so I'm sure that skews intake. C of E and Catholic schools also discriminate against immigrants who tend to be among the poorest families as few share those religious denominations. Those who do, often attend churches that cater to their mother tongue rather than the churches attached to primary schools which are often part of the stipulation of entry. (Our local RC primary doesn't publish free school meals but it is overwhelmingly white in a mixed London borough and I would be surprised, really surprised, if it was as high as 5%; the nearest non-faith primary has about 35% free school meals ).

The Tearfund research doesn't really prove/disprove anything in terms of how school applications may be affected though.

Yes it shows a higher proportion of ABs (whether working or retired) go to church regularly, but it doesn't extrapolate that by age group, so you can't tell the likelihood of the same applying to parent-of-school-child age groups.

The survey also shows that the greatest proportion of those who go to church regularly are 55+, and I don't think there will be too many parents in that age group applying for school places, certainly not at primary entry anyway!

Certainly all the children from DC's prep school who applied to our local faith school miraculously got a place.

Whereas not one child from the poor primary where I volunteer got in.

Funny that.

I suspect that this reflects the fact that a) schools in high demand are in middle class areas and b) middle class parents and have more resources, time and knowledge of how to work the faith school entrance system better.

No great surprise.

dd is at cofE school and im defintley not middle class
.Mind I did have a fight to get her in
as were not a religious family mind dont think a lot are and yes the scohol here is mostly middle class .

We got a place in the end as only school and I offered to measure the distance myself knowing that 99% of the dc are from outside of the village

Im very much the slummy mummy amnogst the yummy mummys

Is this not more to do with the middle classes being more likely to regularly attend church, have their children baptised etc. I don't think it unreasonable that a faith school would want to give priorty to children of that particular faith.

Ime it is not more uncommon for working class families to be religious iyswim. But it is considerably less common for working class families to suddenly become religious a year or two before school applications are due in.

Faith schools set their own criteria, so can't see how you can generalise.

The Guardian hates faith schools and will use a minority appearing dodgy to damn them all on a regular basis.

At our school it's church attendance only (no baptism, sibling rules, or curious catchment areas). They ask how often do parents/kids attend and for how many years?

There's no need for a sibling rule, because if you are a Christian/church attender, you presumably will still be going to church

Ours is over-subscribed, tending towards middle-class. The cars on parents' eve are nothing special (including mine!).

It doesn't make a huge amount of difference whether the criteria include baptism or just regular church attendance: these schools will still be excluding the vast majority of the most socially deprived and chaotic families in the community, as they are very unlikely to be in church every week signing the register.

No need to generalise - just look at the stats on free school meals etc.

The Guardian hates faith schools and will use a minority appearing dodgy to damn them all on a regular basis.

agreed - it's very lazy journalism.

Funny how they also always forget to mention that 50% of CofE schools are voluntary controlled - ie use exactly the same criteria as community schools for admission, along the lines of SN, siblings, distance etc.

The most socially deprived and chaotic families in the community usually can't afford to buy/rent an expensive house next to the outstanding community school in the yummy mummy district either, so the outstanding community school is actually blatently selecting based on parental wealth, funny how that doesn't get reported endlessly in the same way.

Interestingly the parish priest in our area believes that actually the children who come from families that do not get the points should be offered a place as religion is already in the families that meet the points. He also said that a single mother with a few kids would have problems getting involved due to time commitments. He said the points system is particularly bad in London and many priests and vicars are feeling under pressure to sign documents to say that people go to church when it really reveals nothing. It is a very difficult one because a lot of the Governors are keen on this system. Near us points systems are not in place and therefore it does not matter whether you only go to Church at Christmas or for weddings and the more pious families are not happy about this. Near us the non-faith schools are more middle-class as the faith schools cover a much wider area and have an intake from mixed backgrounds.

By the way the point on immigrants is not necessarily correct as the schools near us do have a policy on spreading the faith mix with moslem children being admitted before CofE due to the racial mix in the area so it is more in favour of immigrants. Also alot of polish people and many indian families are catholic. Plus my DCs school is the school in the area that accepts all traveller kids if only for 2 days because many travellers are of Irish background and hence predominantly catholic. Historically the catholic schools were wholly immigrant-driven with Irish, Italians, Polish and Spanish families. Very few of the kids I grew up with at a catholic school had English parents. This is probably less true of CandE schools but would also apply to Moslem and some Jewish schools.

Quite obviously those faith schools that operate with the same admission policies as community schools, or which give priority to children of other or no faith are not the ones under discussion, and their policies do not make those of the schools which actively discriminate by faith any less unfair or divisive.

Here are the figures on free school meals eligibility for the six primary schools nearest to me. It's a fairly typical mixed London suburb:

4 Community schools: 50.1%, 34.4%, 23.8%, 24.5%

2 Voluntary Aided RC schools: 10.1% and 3.5%

I'm sure that they didn't frame their admissions policies in order to deliberately exclude the poorest in the community, but that has certainly been the effect.