Priests to control school admissions: Discuss

[TheKingIsInTheAltogether]

So the Catholic Education Service has devised a new admissions process for its schools putting the decision on whether a family is considered "practicing" or not in the hands of its priests. The priests will grant a Certificate of Catholic Practice to families who they deem to be following Canon Law, but are able to apply some professional discretion.

Families will need one of these certificates if they want a place at an oversubscribed catholic school.

However the Schools Adjudicator has thrown a spanner in the works by declaring the new process in breach of the Admissions Code, and that decision is going to be challenged in the courts ...
www.theguardian.com/education/2016/nov/20/catholic-church-court-priests-faith-school-places

It seems to me that the Catholic Church is actively promoting its schools as academically desirable and using that as a carrot to coerce all Catholics into following Canon Law to the letter. In areas where schools are very oversubscribed, families will inevitably need to compete for these certificates and the bar for obtaining them can be raised at the priest's discretion. Families won't dare miss Mass in case their faith is considered questionable.

I can't believe anyone would think that an acceptable admissions system!

I've never seen anyone appeal against the priest not signing the SIF and getting anywhere with it. Who would they appeal to?

Who would they appeal to?

The Local Authority's independent admissions appeal process of course.

Who is more likely to go to church every week? A SAHM with family who are well behaved or a single mum who's child regularly skips school and doesn't respect authority?

Who is more likely to go to church every week? A SAHM with children who have a well balanced early years education or a single parent who works at weekend and finds it hard to read to their children every night?

A Catholic school selects the former and rejects the later, thus they appear to have a more successful school, they get rid of the riff raff.

Supermummy you have a point, kind of. The parents of kids with additional needs, who can't attend mass, won't get their form signed, unless they go to the priest and throw themselves at his mercy. And then it's down to his judgement again.

Catholic schools are slightly more ethnically diverse than the typical, and in line in terms of proxy markers for income/deprivation. They take a lot of new arrivals to UK. OK, there are a handful of headline grabbers with apparent bias towards the middle class, such as the Oratory, but that's not representative. You see mention of the 'over my dead body' Catholic schools sometimes on admissions threads on MN.

What's noticeable about them is that they have lower rates of exclusion than typical, when matched to other schools with similar demographics, so there is perhaps something in the ethics.

And of course, Mass isn't just on Sunday's.

(hard to do similar demographic comparisons for CofE because there are so many of them to be formative if typical, or for Jewish, Muslim and Hindu schools because there aren't enough to be sure of the trend)

What's noticeable about them is that they have lower rates of exclusion than typical

That's because they can prevent admissions from children more likely to get excluded.

The JAM's who dont have the energy/time/ability to go to church just get told, "of course, Mass isn't just on Sunday's" so your obviously not Catholic enough for us.

Rancid ... Quoting from here: faithschoolersanonymous.uk/2016/09/five-ways-the-catholic-church-misled-the-government-into-a-u-turn-on-faith-school-admissions/ .....

"Catholic schools are ethnically diverse only to the extent that the Catholic population within urban areas (where the majority of Catholic state schools are situated) is diverse. More revealing, however, is that Catholic schools admit far fewer children from ‘Asian’ backgrounds given their local areas than pretty much any other kind of school in the country. 2013 research found that one in eight Catholic schools didn’t have any ‘Asian’ pupils at all, compared to just one in 729 schools with no religious character.

Furthermore, analysis of the school ethnicity data used by the Government in its green paper reveals that the cap has a significant impact on diversity within Christian settings. At CofE free schools (i.e. that opened under the cap), 63% of pupils are classified as of ‘white ethnic origin’, but at fully religiously selective CofE schools, 78% of pupils are white. At ‘other Christian’ free schools, 55% of pupils are white, but at ‘other Christian’ schools that are fully selective, 85% of pupils are white.

Of course, none of this is to mention that religious diversity is just as important as ethnic diversity, if not more so, and I would like to see anyone try to claim that Catholic schools perform well in this regard. If diversity is what the Government is after, Catholic schools aren’t their guys."

"That's because they can prevent admissions from children more likely to get excluded. "

That isn't the case - as I said, it applies after schools are demographically matched.

And yes I agree, it is ethic diversity with a (global) denomination in common.

But unless you are going to eliminate all parental choice, and bus pupils to schools based various actual and proxy markers to ensure 'equal' mixing in all schools, then yes you will only get as much diversity as exists in the catchment or actual admissions area of the school.

That applies to community schools too, whose intake can be quite different by postcode.

In my area of London the catholic schools reflect the catholic demography of the area - to an extent. They certainly do not reflect the socio-economic demography of the area, even though traditionally there is a big overlap between catholic communities and disadvantaged communities: black, Irish and now Polish.

Every additional layer of selection offers a barrier. Catholics who play the catholic game in terms of schools admissions get an extra category of choice: catholic or community school, and every catholic family facing disadvantage faces an additional barrier for getting into that selective institution.

It leads to polarisation. IME and IMO.

But unless you are going to eliminate all parental choice, and bus pupils to schools based various actual and proxy markers to ensure 'equal' mixing in all schools,

Nobody is suggesting that. Having more open admissions to faith schools doesn't finish choice, it just distributes what little choice there is a bit more fairly, helping to make sure it's the parents who choose the schools and not the schools who choose the parents.

But unless you are going to eliminate all parental choice

RancidOldHag parental choice is already effectively eliminated for plenty of parents, by the existence of faith schools.

Say you have six secondary schools, four of them are Catholic, one is CofE and one is secular.

If you are not Catholic then you can apply for a place at the secular school, or try for one of the non-faith places at the CofE school. So, a maximum of one and a half possible choices of school.

If you are Catholic then you can apply for a place at any of the six schools.

Some parents have more choice than others. Some have hardly any choice at all, even though they live in the same locality. The proposed changes re-enforce this unfairness.

Where are there 6 secondaries where FOUR are Catholic? It's a minority religion! Even in Liverpool you wouldn't find a mixture like that!

If ArcheryAnnie had used CE Primaries instead of RC Secondaries in her logic, then there would be lots of examples.

Actually there's an area near me that has 5 faith schools (2 Catholic, 2 CE, 1 Sikh), and 5 mixed community schools. Bearing in mind the CE schools prioritise all Christians equally that does give Catholics a lot more choice than others.

The RC school puts other Christians high on their list too and both the CE and RC schools prioritise "other religions" above no religion, so the Sikh families have quite a lot of choice too.

Anyone who doesn't regularly go to church/temple/mosque regularly gets least choice, and some of them probably have to travel quite a long way to get to one of the community schools.

I would remove all religion from state schools and let the religions just fund their schools as totally private charities like the other fee paying schools in the UK.

However that is not going to happen. We have chosen fee paying schools from 5 for our children as my parents did for me (my primary school was a Catholic private school).

I think it's perfectly fair that if you are a religious school you can set the rules. I would prefer we abolished state funding for them however and that would mean they could keep ownership of their buildings - currently I believe they are jointly funded by the religions concerned (we have a hindu primary locally and muslim and lots of Jewish ones never mind C of E and Catholic but that is just because we are one of the moest mixed areas of the country).

Also it deopends where you live if this is an issue. In the part of the NE I am originaly from there is nothing special about the Catholic schools and to fill places they will take many different kinds of people - there is nothing like the London area push for places at all. it's another world.

Why does it bother you so much that you must show strong evidence of Catholic practice to qualify for a place at a Catholic school?
Is it because it discriminates again non Catholics (who really shouldn't want a place anyway)

Why? There is a Catholic school near me which is very big on a particular modern language that I would have liked ds to learn. But he would not have got in even if we had moved to be in catchment.

Schools should not be able to discriminate on religious grounds. I don't' actually care where the funding for them comes from. It is simply wrong to ban someone from a particular school based on what religion their parents are. Kids cannot choose that, any more than they can choose their ethnicity. We'd never allow black-only schools because they were paid for by the black community. So why do we allow it for religion?

EnormousTiger: currently I believe they are jointly funded by the religions concerned

No, this is a myth. See definition ofVolunary Aided School on Wikipedia.

The very small voluntary contribution of VA schools towards their capital maintenance costs is generally covered by parents. The greater part of their funding comes from the public purse.

And if they convert from VA to Academy status, or start their life as a Free School, then they are fully funded by the public purse (though I expect many will still continue to collect parents' voluntary contributions for other purposes).

But isn't the building owned by and provided by the churches which is a massive contribution?

Yes EnormousTiger it's a significant contribution, but it doesn't amount to joint funding which is what you implied in your post.

The ownership status of the buildings is probably the main thing that's stopping our existing faith schools from becoming secular, as well as their continued popularity of course.

However, none of that is at all relevant to new faith free schools - their buildings are being fully funded by the Education Funding Agency just like any other free schools.

In any case, as discussed up thread, the Church of England describes it's schools as "Church Schools for the Community not faith schools for the faithful". It is moving towards more open admissions (it just needs to persuade it's schools of that, which isn't easy when they are their own admissions authorities). So there is no reason why other faiths can't do the same.

Update on this topic in the news today .....

schoolsweek.co.uk/catholic-church-backs-down-on-faith-certificate-court-challenge/

Doesn't it just bring Catholic Schools into line with Jewish faith schools?

To be clear, the new process introduced by the Catholic Church was ruled unlawful by the adjudicator. The Catholic Church said it would take that decision to Judicial Review, but it has now backed down and compromised.

They're still keeping the new Certificate of Catholic Practice, but they're also having to put back a clear and consistent definition of what Catholic Practice means in their admissions policies. (That was what they were trying to get rid of).

It's interesting for 2017 admissions in particular, because at schools that use this process lots of families will already have been offered places on the basis of less than the required 5 years' practice. That leaves those schools wide open to appeals from families who missed out on places as a result.