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.

Of course one could question how the churches, especially the CofE, got their valuable assets in the first place. AFAIK it began with essentially mandatory taxation of the populace.

I don't think vast property empires was what Jesus ever had in mind. Good thing he's not around to see what's done in his name, really.

If all faith schools closed then all the children attending them would need to be educated so the exact number of teachers would be needed somewhere. Its ludicrous to suggest that all teachers in faith schools are going to be unemployed and unemployable. Its a non arguement.

As for planning permission, it is granted on occasion believe it or not, a school near me is now a housing estate and change of use wouldn't necessairly apply if the land was still used as a school, but a free school or an independent school instead of a faith school. It wouldn't benefit the local children who don't get a place in a faith school to then not get a place at the replacement school.

I don't know what you mean by "Just run them according to the laws and morals of this country". They follow the national curriculum, they contribute over and above in terms of man hours and money, they don't go around poking poor people in the eye with sharp sticks, some (but by no means all) have ludicrous systems in place as a slection criteria but all oversubscribed schools have to apply their selection criteria and being able to afford an expensive house isn't a very moral method either. Faith schools aren't any more socially selective than anywhere else. Some faith schools have parents jumping through hoops and so do some non faith schools, often riding on an underserved reputation of being impossible to get a place at therefore 'the best'.

Are you suggesting that they don't hand the schools over, continue to pour resources into them but not have any selection criteria even though they are oversubscribed. Why should they? Should desirable non faith school also have to take all comers or should they continue as they are, taking from an exclusive catchment and charging £17 for a jumper and going on skiing trips just in case any poor people were thinking about applying.

You can't have it both ways. Either they become fully state funded and the state buys out the organisation that actually owns the school and, or they are left as they are, part state funded, part church funded, selective on the basis of faith, or they become independent of the state and dcs whose parents can't afford it will have to be found places in the state system. Being funded by the church and run by the state isn't going to happen.

I would agree (as the Bishops conference said) that admission should not be a box ticking excercise that allows 2 parent professional families to meet criteria that are near impossible for poorer single parent families. I don't know what they should be though. Admissions criteria have to be clear and I can't see Mr and Mrs cleaning rota and reader sitting back without a place whilst Mrs lone parent immigrant only goes to mass twice a month because the bus cost a lot and she works alternate sundays gets a place for her child.

Unfortunately they do run according to the laws of the country, but most of us now have better ethics.

Most other forms of discrimination have rightly been outlawed; for some reason religions are exempt. Discriminating against a child because of the (real or pretended) religion of their parents is clearly unethical to just about anyone without a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They also can, and do, discriminate when hiring teachers. DH has a friend who, having trained as a teacher, is finding it impossible to get a post in our area simply because he's a humanist. This would not be allowed in any other employment sector (well, apart from actually being a vicar or whatnot, but that's self-selecting )

Bobblemeat - a compromise I would be happy with is that if the taxpayer is payning 90% of the running costs of the school then the LEAs standard admissions policy should apply for 90% of the places. They can allocate 10% of the places based on church attendance. This would mean for us that iour local school could have a much more balanced intake reflecting the local demographic. However to do that properly, the system would probably have to insist that we cant choose elsewhere and must use the local school.
In our area, catchments would work.
I wouldnt mind if they changed th single-sex schools to co-ed so long as they ensure that setting or streaming isnt tinkered with to engineer similar numbers of girls and boys in a class.

"Of course one could question how the churches, especially the CofE, got their valuable assets in the first place. AFAIK it began with essentially mandatory taxation of the populace."

No, I don't think so, not really. The Church levied taxes pretty much as any landowner would.

A few things however made them wealthy.

• They became exempt to passing some of the taxes paid to them onwards up the feudal chain.

• Most other landowners were expected to perform military service in return for the land. This was expensive in terms of equipment and training. Churches didn't need to do that, a considerable saving.

• They became centres of learning and thus became clever and good at business earning good money.

• People gifted them more money and land and expected nothing "physical" in return. It's those gifts that really made the Church wealthy.

Now you might argue that the gifts and donations were a form of "mandatory tax" given the impression that the Church gave to people of the world. However that's about as far as that claim can go.

The alternative is discriminating against a child because of the wealth of their parents, which is clearly unethical too...

faith schools generally are a huge problem here (NW London). In this borough well over 50% of schools have religious entry criteria, most are the sort where there are no "community places", it's all on religion. This leads to all sorts of problems with people faced with a choice between finding religion of one sort or another, or potentially ending up with a school miles away or none at all.

As for the OP it's not a shocker is it. it was only a couple of years back that a study in 3 areas found that faith schools were asking illegal questions on forms (parents education level etc) and donations upfront (AKA bribes). One of the areas they looked at was my area.

I accept that in other areas it's not such a problem, and that there are realistic alternatives. Here it's a disaster.

Personally I do not believe that schools should be allowed to discriminate on the grounds of religion.

It's not "the alternative" at all, betsyboop. It's not an either or situation. As we have already established, the performance of many schools already depends to a great extent on the affluence of its intake. Faith schools having their own admissions doesn't alleviate this, it just adds an extra tier of unfairness into the system.

Bobblemeat you are being over generous in your attribution of 10% of running costs paid by the church. This is not the case. 100% of running costs are met by the state, and 90% of capital costs. The financial contribution of the church is tiny.

I can see I'm probably going to be in a minority with this view, but I don't see it as discrimination.

That's like saying schools are discriminating against pupils that got all F's for GCSE by not accepting them onto an A level course. Or that the NHS are discriminating asgainst me by not employing me as a nurse when I have no medical training.

People can go to Church if they want, whatever church they want, and they can apply to whatever school they want. But schools are over subscribed so they have to have some sort of selection criteria. It's not like children that don't get into a failth school don't get to go to school at all.

Faith is very important to some people, and if they want their children to be educated in a religious environment then that should be allowed. I don't think it would be fair that non religious families got places in faith schools over people that are religious. The Church and it's community often have alot to do with the fact that the school is succesful.

Many people don't want their children to be educated in a religious environment, and they have that choice.

Priests of Vicars or whatever that make parents jump though hoops and don't write letters for parents that attend are doing wrong imo, but no more so than when they say that people have to attend Church regularly before they can get married there. That's just the way the Church works, and when so much history is tied up in religion, it would be unfair to dismiss it completely.

Good grief. Time to hide the thread for my own sanity.

Can someone else point out the cretinism of curlymama's comparisons. I'm joining Zephrine.

But the problem isn't the religious schools. It's the fact that for many parents the choice they have is between a good faith school or a crap comp.

If the system didn't have those flaws then most of you might not be quite so bothered.

curlymama would you be entirely happy then if in your area all of the state schools were Jewish (I am assuming that you are christian), meaning that your children could not attend any of the local schools?

If the answer is no, then please explain why not.

Of course I wouldn't be happy about it, because I don't want my children to practice a religion that I know little about. But then I would feel that the LEA or the government was at fault for not providing a range of school, I wouldn't blame the individual schools.

Btw, I'm sort of Christian, believe in God but only got to Church for weddings, funerals and special services, and my children go to a C of E school.

I don't think that it is the fault of the school. The middle classes know how to play the system and they do.

removing faith criteria on admission might increase choice for the affluent non-church goer (they will have a choice of more schools they can buy a house close enough to) but it will actually decrease choice for the poor church goer.

At the moment if you are wealthy you have all the choices

1. go private
2. buy a house close to outstanding community/VC school
3. buy a house close to outstanding VA/academy/foundation school & do whatever you need to do to meet the entry criteria
4. (in some areas) pay for tutor to help your child pass the 11+ (and if we are taking FSMs percentages then grammar schools are the worst offenders!)

The poor only have a choice of

1. their local school, and often cheap housing area = not-so-good school
2. (in some areas) enter their child for 11+ & if they are super-brainy they might just get a place with all the tutored kids of yummy mummies.
3. for the poor church-goer apply to the VA faith school

The bottom line is that every school should be an outstanding school, all our children deserve the best. There are many examples of excellent schools with higher than average FSM/EAL/SEN or whatever "disadvantaged" criteria you pick, both faith & non-faith schools.
Changing admissions criteria won't magically fix the poor schools, just change the children that have to attend them & that solves nothing.

Those of you posters who have quoted the rates of free school meals in schools, where do you get this info from please?

I would agree with most of that Betsy

More needs to be done to make all schools better, but too many people blame the schools, when education has as much to do with the attitude of parents as it does the school.

But there are alot of people who are neith poor nor weathly that have the same problems as the 'poor'.

Even fairly well of people (by comparison)can't always afford to just move house when they want, or pay for private schools.

I don't think it's even the fault of grammar schools that they have a low percentage of children with FSM. I have entered my child for the 11+ because he is clever and I think it will provide the right environment for him. The school actively states that no tuition should be needed. Of course I know that parents will pay for tutors, but we can't afford that so we we've done work at home.

Being poor is not a barrier to knowing how the system works.

betsy you assume that people are going to faith schools because they are better

you are overlooking the fact that in some areas it's faith or nothing

your lists don't stack up with how it operates in this part of the country

ISNT - this thread is debating whether faith schools discriminate against poor children - not the rights & wrongs of whether people should have a choice of faith/non-faith schools

I would totally agree that in some areas parents only realistically have a choice between different faith schools and this isn't right. (I also don't think denying parents the option of a faith school is right either, but I know not everyone agrees )

In my ideal world, all schools would be equally good and all areas would have a choice of faith/non-faith schools in suitable proportions. The (usually middle class) families "finding faith" when PFB hits 3 would then disappear...

bubbleoseven - I just goggled "free school meals statistics" + my LA name :)

Your post listed the options open to rich and poor. I was pointing out that the lists were not applicable in some areas. I think it is pertinent to the thread to point out when people's arguments do not tie in with real life.

This thread really is highlighting the huge differences in the systems we have across this tiny country.

Peoples 'real life' seems to be vastly different depending on where you live.

It does always come up on these threads that people are talking about completely different things.

In areas where there is a perfectly good community school and a marginally better religious school and some parents suddenly develop religion, I can see why hackles raise.

In areas like this, developing religion is the default, and i can't say I blame anyone for it. The choices just aren't there.

Out of interest dud you see my post about religious schools asking illegal questions and for bribes donations, earlier upthread? That certainly weeded out the poorer students. The schools in the report way they have tightened up since then but it wasn't too long ago and TBH you've got to wonder.

Yes, in our area the faith schools are very, very middle class. Why? Because middle class parents play the system: not only discovering religious allegiance two years before school admissions, but they also have the time/resources to take voluntary roles at the church (running sunday school, flower arranging etc) with gains them extra points. The social apartheid in our local schools has to be seen to be believed.

I know it's not like this everywhere, but it certainly is round here. The churches should be ashamed of themselves: they do anything but reach out to the poor.