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.

fsmail: if only all priests (and governors) were as enlightened as this one.

A small sample is not conclusive evidence, but I thought I'd look at primary schools in our (reasonably affluent) town out of interest - latest stats I could find were 2006, but I don't think they will have changed that much.

community schools 4.5, 5.8, 17.3 (guess which one is in the middle of the council estate, yes no3)

VC CofE 6.0 (same admissions criteria as community schools)

VA CofE 6.3, 8.5

VA RC 3.2

The second VA CofE school has some of the council estate in it's parish (admission criteria are SN, siblings, worshipper within parish, live within parish, worshipper outside parish, live outside parish)

So in my local example; with the exception of the RC school; which school children end up at is largely driven by where they live, ie how wealthy their parents are, rather than attendance at church.

(The first community school, which has the lowest FMS % after the RC school is in the middle of the relatively new and expensive "exclusive 5+ bedrooms executive houses" housing estate.)

fsmail - both your priest and your local schools seem to be much more liberal than the ones around me: school places are offered strictly on attendance at a particular church (ie. if you want to go to St X school, you must attend St X church and get a letter from the priest there); attending another church or none at all means that you would be very unlikely to get in.

I too went to Catholic school but a couple of decades ago and they are certainly not now the melting pot of nationalities that I remember (I didn't know a single person with two English parents). Apart from Poles, there are very few Catholic - and even fewer Anglican - immigrants (I think about 1% of Indians are Christians, by the way, so they wouldn't account for huge numbers in any Catholic school). I take my hat off to the schools in your area that welcome traveller children - the idea that they would even be allowed through the gate to inquire at the places near me would be astonishing.

From my observations locally (not data, I know), m/c parents will go to very great lengths to get their children into particular faith schools - and are made to go to very great lengths. I don't like this because I think it is wrong to exclude the vast majority of children who don't share these beliefs (or whose parents won't pretend to), because I don't like the power it gives priests over local families who are forced to attend mass and, more often than not, become "involved" with the church in order to further their children's education, and because it leads to very m/c and monocultural enclaves in areas that are much, much more mixed.

Betsyboop, yes of course the affluence of the area will affect the intake of the schools in that area. Hence your area having very much lower eligibility for free school meals than mine. But VA faith schools add a further level of inequality, even within communities that are otherwise well mixed.

What is happening in densely populated areas with high levels of social deprivation is that the problems associated with that social deprivation become highly concentrated within those schools which are not able to operate their own selection criteria. This creates not only the obvious problems for these schools but a very divided community overall.

Of the schools I mentioned, the RC school with 3.5% free school meals eligibility is 0.2 miles away from the community school with 34.4%, and the RC school with 10.1% is 0.3 miles away from the community school with 50.1%. These are children living practically next door to each other.

Anyway, you are right that a small sample does not equate to evidence, but there is plenty of evidence on this.

In very white areas like mine sometimes the Catholic school is the only school that is not 100% white. Our school has about 20 non white children out of just under 200 so whilst its hardly a cultural melting pot compared to a city school, it is compared to other local schools. We have had travellers but haven't atm. There are 11 Polish dcs in my dds class out of a total of 24 dcs. There are also several other European nationalities.

As an undersubscribed school, church attendence, baptism or even actual faith usually aren't an issue for getting a place. Probably a bigger barrier is the belief that an outstanding Catholic school will only have places for mc dcs and even if 'poor' dcs did get a place they would be overcharged for the jumper (which is £7, available at uniform sale for 50p and is not compulsary), hence people don't apply. There is an outstanding non faith primary very nearby so there isn't a scramble to convert.

I don't see the problem tbh. It's free to go to church, anyone can play the system if they want to.

Maybe some people would prefer their children to go to a school where a higher percentage of children have FSM, rather than a faith one.

You don't see the problem with schools discriminating against children on the basis of religion? Really?

Why not, catholics were banned from universities for years until the early 20th Century and cannot become King or Queen. Discrimination on the basis of religion takes place all over. Without the Church's influence many of the poor would not have received an education at all until more recently than you think.

If the Church is helping with funding the school they should have some say, although I would rather see a percentage basis reflecting the faiths in the community with a higher percentage for the sponsoring religion.

In London there is a problem but in other areas, such as mine faith schools are only chosen by those of that faith because the normal community schools are better so in these areas the normal state schools are probably glad of the faith schools.

Anyway, you are right that a small sample does not equate to evidence, but there is plenty of evidence on this.

It is difficult to judge the veracity of that study as they have only published what is effectively a press release (can't even really call it an abstract...). However the London Diocesan Board of Edu­cation (CofE) have disputed the findings as far as their schools go.
"In the London diocese there are 149 schools, where 11,399 pupils (23 per cent) receive free school meals, and for 15,878 pupils (37.5 per cent), English is an additional language.

The vast majority of our schools, particularly our primary schools, serve their local areas, and thus represent the social backgrounds in which they are set.
The intake of Anglican compre­hen­sives is more diverse, because they may be the only church second­ary in a larger area. For example, at St Marylebone C of E School for girls, one of the most sought-after in the country, in an exclusive area of Lon­don, 56 per cent of pupils have a home language other than English, and 44 per cent receive free school meals. "

They had also look in depth at Camden in response to claims by Frank Dobson about faith schools in his constituency:-

"There are 13 Church of England primary schools in Camden, but no Church of England secondaries (and no C of E secondary for the nine C of E primary schools in Islington or the five C of E primaries in Brent).

The average percentage of pupils in the Camden C of E primary schools from ethnic-minority backgrounds is 53 per cent. (The average for all Camden primary schools is 39 per cent.)

The average percentage of pupils in those schools from British Asian and predominantly Muslim backgrounds is 20 per cent; in three schools the proportions are above 40 per cent. (The average for all Camden primary schools is 17 per cent.)

The average percentage of pupils with English as an additional language is 48 per cent. (The average for all Camden primary schools is 48 per cent.)

The average percentage of pupils with Special Education Needs is 32 per cent. (The average percentage for all Camden primary schools is 26 per cent.) "

From this & stuff I've looked at before I suspect that RC schools are typically more of an issue than CofE schools.

Although I'm sure someone will find an example of one that does, CofE schools typically only ask about parental worship attendance, not baptism before x months old (or baptism at all in fact), not what voluntary roles you do in church, etc - this type of "points" system is a lot more common in popular RC schools.

You really think that because a Catholic can't marry into the Royal family and that because a century ago (I have a feeling it was actually long before the 1900s that these laws were reformed),Catholics were denied a university education, then it is alright to discriminate against children to this day? I am genuinely appalled - what a fine Christian sentiment you bring to this debate.

If you read my point further than the first line, pointing out that descrimination exits Lalalonglegs rather than advocating it, you will see that I make no discriminatory points and in fact was advocating wider faith groups within schools that exists currently.

No you don't, you use past discrimination as a justification for current discrimination.

I take your point that past discrimination does not come into this argument. However, I still believe that until the UK becomes a fully secular state as in France, faith schools will still be an allowable part of education.

I started the post as because where I live, the middle classes have definitely colonised the nearest towns only faith secondary school and as I saiid earlier , its free school meals % is about a third of any other school. Friends have justified getting religion to get into the school on the basis that it is the only co-ed school in that town but I strongly suspect that if the results in the girls school continue to improve that they would all clamour to go there instead. The real problem is that the schools outside the town in the more rural areas are losing their higher achieving pupils to the faith school. We have chosen the girls school in the town over a very local school because of the pupil mix (or lack of it) that we have seen going there from the primary - and we are feeling guilty enough about that but at least we have not been hypocritical church goers. Those who dont see a problem with discrimination on faith grounds should bear in mind that as the state pays 90% of the cost of running the school then surely 90% of the admissions should be on the same basis as other state schools.

Very true in our area as well.

Interestingly the C of E school in my town is the one shcool you would NOT send your kids..... it ends up as the dumping ground for parents not getting their first choice.

It's always going to lead to discrimination while faith schools exist.

I would give them the opportunity to become a fully state run school or to find their own funding.

Some may say "but we can't afford to replace the schools ourselves" but we wouldn't have to. They have no use for a school that doesn't get them tax payer's money and their teachers need a job just like anyone else. They'd scream a bit then give in.

In that case, I would like to see all single sex schools, becoming co-ed because of sexual discrimination and grammar schools being banned, because in our area only mc kids get in to these with tuition or private school preps.

Can't see the govenment shelling out for all that land tbh, esp in London etc where the sites are prime redevelopment land. They would probably turn into cheap private schools like Catholic schools in USA leaving hundereds of children needing a new state school in already oversubscribed areas.

Actually I'd have no problem with all being co-ed. Why is everyone always so keen to split people into categories. "We'll have the boys there, the girls there, the black people down the back there and the catholics along there"

All the schools should be equally good and equally funded, you should go to the nearest one and the only qualification should be being human.

To help make them equally good I'd rotate teachers/Heads etc (say every 3-5 years) within their local area.

bobblemeat, the government don't have to. What can the church do with the school if they don't give in and let it be state run? they'd still have to pay to maintain an empty building and either pay their teachers or sack them all. Under my plan there'd be no private schools so they couldn't become that.

They could close the schools and sell the land for millions like they have done with independent Catholic schools. They could sell to the state and the schools could become state run, they could sell to developers and the school would be replaced with housing or industrial units or retail or someone could open a 'free school' or someone could open an Catholic or Muslim or Jewish or Secular independent school. Why on earth would they "give in" and hand over valuable assets to the govenment for nothing? If I owned acres and acres of land I wouldn't be handing it over to the govenment for free. Some orders have sold off Independent schools that they own to channel the money into education projects in Africa. It would be difficult to justify giving millions to the UK govenment that could be used in development projects abroad.

They don't actually have to hand them over. Just run them according to the laws and morals of this country. We require that of every other business. Even ones that don't have access to the young or vulnerable.

And last I heard you needed planning permission to change the use of land. That would be up to us yes? :) Also they wouldn't want to put all their own teachers out of work would they.

We did call one religion's bluff over the adoption agency thing. They said if their adoption agencies couldn't be used to spread homophobia then they would close them and we'd have to provide our own facilities.

How is that going? Last I heard they were made 'independent' and now follow British morals and laws.

BetsyBoop, I haven't checked but I am fairly certain that those figures quoted by the C of E in response to the LSE study will include C of E VC schools. This is somewhat disingenuous to say the least given that the subject under discussion is the effect of faith schools' admission policies, and VC schools don't control their own admissions.

My nieces and nephew went to well known west london RC "comprehensives" and the hoops they and their parents had to jump over in the name of proving their religiousity (is that a real word?) were such that it took the form of a long and organised military campaign with the children getting extra credit for serving on the altar, playing for the parish football team etc and the parents having to serve on various committees and turn up to all parish events. This was so they could get the necessary reference from the parish priest. He made it VERY clear that mere attendance at church was not enough.

Those of his parishioners working double shifts and struggling to survive, many of them immigrants, just cannot compete. As a result both schools have GCSE results which far outshine any true comprehensive and a socialmakeup that in no way reflects the diverse RC community in London.

The day the youngest got in was the last time my BIL and SIL attended church.