Church of England schools

[Maybemaybenot76]

My son will be starting school 09/2024 so we are now starting to look at school open days.

I didn’t go to school in the UK and I don’t know much about it. I’m finding that most schools here are Church of England, but I’m not sure how much this affects day to day running of the schools.

We are not religious in the slightest and I don’t want anything pushed on to my children either. Is there compulsory church visits and religious sessions like there was for me as a kid? I was sent to a private catholic school, but not for religious purposes - I was sent as it was a languages school. Is the religious narrative pushed in every day school life here?

It depends on the school.

The historical reason why so many primary schools are CofE was that the Church set the schools up before education was compulsory... nowadays they are funded by the Government by the land still belongs to the church.

In a lot of schools, they are no more Christian than a non denominational school. They might have a harvest festival, the vicar come in at Easter etc. But its not "pushed" at the children. They still have to teach about all faiths. I know around here the Vicar attends all the schools for Remembrance Day as well except the one non-CofE school (ironically the ex-RAF school)

If the school has religious entrance criteria they are often more religious.

It will vary a biy from school to school.

My sins CofE school had a morning prayer, said grace at lunch and a going home prayer. The vicar did one assembly a week and harvest, nativity and easter assembly at the church. They learned about all religions

My other son went to a non church school. There were no prayers, they still did harvest and nativity but in school, the vicar still visited about once each half term. So there was less god but not no god.

All schools in the uk are supposed to do a daily of collective worship of a broadly christian nature.

I can only speak of my own experiences 40 odd years ago, but I’d say typically the religious narrative is pushed less at CofE schools than Catholic schools. At my schools it meant many of our assemblies were religious, with vicars sometimes coming in to speak, and also singing hymns. And we had to go to a church service at Christmas.
It didn’t otherwise affect things.

You may be able to exempt your child from church visits and religious assemblies.

The influence differs from some Catholic schools I’ve looked at where there is religious iconography all over the walls, prayers at the beginning of lessons, an influence over the curriculum (or at least the PHSE bit). And letters home from the head teacher containing exhortation to prayer 🙄

That said, I recently went to an event in a CofE secondary school and there was more religious stuff apparent on the wall displays etc. So it will depend very much on the individual school.

It varies a lot between schools. I work in a CofE school and we have:

Three assemblies a week: singing (prayer at the beginning, lots of Christian songs in the middle, prayer at the end), church (in the church next door, parents invited, a couple of songs, two prayers, a guest speaker who is usually from a local church) and celebration (two prayers, giving out certificates). We are very clear that children don't have to join in with the prayers or singing, but must sit quietly and respectfully if they are not joining in (rather than having a chat with the child next to them!). We don't say prayers at lunch time or start/end of the day. We have weekly RE lessons but cover all religions and the lessons are very much "Christians believe" rather than "this is the truth". We have quite a few Muslim children now (mostly Afghan refugees) and they don't come to church, but attend the celebration assembly (and don't pray), and I think most of them come to singing assembly too now.

We are not religious. We live in a very diverse area of a city and there are many Muslim, Hindu and Christian children at my 6yo c of e school. They celebrate Eid etc too but she's become absolutely fixated on the idea that she's a Christian and desperately wants to go to church and is distraught that we don't believe in god / Jesus. Not sure what to do really 🤷‍♀️

Thanks all. We’ve booked in to see as many as possible and will be reading over ofsted reports in the mean time.

Some seem heavily church influenced, but I’m finding it hard to know what is acceptable to me. I’m ok with a little bit, obviously, as they are Church of England schools. But, given what I’ve explained, should I avoid places where the reports state “their Christian values are woven through the curriculum” ?

@GetTheGoodLookingGuy

This is something I’m concerned about. The “this is what Christians believe”, do you find this is applied to other subjects? Like science? Because obviously science and the church view it very differently!

The Church of England is very mainstream with science. They believe in evolution. Im not sure you'd get anything other than the national curriculum taught.

But to give an idea of how a school can weave christianity across the curriculum, when my son learned about electric citcuits, the final project was they each made a nativity scene where the star was an led that lit up. He loved the project and learned about circuits but I was a bit amused it was a nativity scene.

Not in our school. In my experience, any debates about science vs religion have taken place in RE, not science lessons. We've been learning about fossils in science this week and nothing has been said about how some Christians (not many, as far as I'm aware) don't believe dinosaurs are real.

It depends what the Christian values are, I suppose. My school's values are Compassion, Confidence, Creativity and Curiosity. They are Christian values, but they're also human values, relatable to children of all faiths and none; that's what I particularly like about them. Our school prayer features these values, linking them to God ("Thank you that we are confident because we are loved by you"). Each class gives out a values award each week, linked to the value of the week, so we do talk about them in class to remind them of what we're looking out for ("we've got a lot of confident mathematicians in our class today!" or "I wonder who might ask some curious questions in our history lesson tomorrow.") so in that way our values are Christian values, and they are woven through the curriculum. But they're not overtly Christian and there's no shoehorning religion in here there and everywhere. Trust me the curriculum is too full for that!

This is one of the reasons we ended up home educating.
There were three schools we could get to.
1 was a CoE school that very proudly had a Christian ethos at the centre.
The other two were academy and state, both taught kids things like the baby Jesus/ nativity story and Noah’s ark as fact. I was shocked none respectively taught as a tale that some people believe in, along with other tales from other religions. I didn’t even know all schools had to have daily worship of a broadly Christian nature until recently.

There were other reasons the schools didn’t impress me too. But this alone would have been enough for me to be honest. I’m just not sending my child somewhere that’s taught as fact. Kids are impressionable. Obviously it matters to others less.

It's probably worth pointing out that any state school in England can be quite religious, or not, in practice depending on the nature of the senior leadership team.

We don't have the church/state separation that e.g. France and the USA have. However, schools more or less ignore the requirement for "acts of worship", especially at secondary. But this can change with a new head teacher.

So yes do look out for the "Christianity is woven through the curriculum" type statements.

Having said that, I experienced quire a bit of that type of education and remain an atheist but know quite a lot about Christianity! However, it was obvious to me even as a 5 year old that my parents didn't believe a word of it.

Both of ours went to a C of E school and they are the least religious you could come across, must take after me, as I'm an atheist.

The school didn't seem to push it much.

Even non church school can end up pushing religion onto children. My ds went to a school where the head was atheist so the school as a whole was very light on religion (remember all uk schools are required to have daily religion usually in the form of a reflective thought). The reception teacher at that school was very religious. She definitely told her class bible stories as if they were fact in lessons. Really got my goat when I was helping out and overheard these instances.
Then my dd went to a Church of England school. As others have said there were harvest festivals at the school and the odd religious song but it wasn’t too over the top. They also had a much better attitude towards inclusivity and being kind. I never heard of any bullying there and they had a wide range of children. Some who wore noise cancelling headphones, some with English not first language, some trans etc etc. They published parental comments after ousted visited and everyone said how welcome and safe their children felt.

Appears to depend on the individual school. Youngest went to CofE they did more about other religions than church of England. Oldest went to catholic did very little religion had to go to Sunday school catholic education for confession etc.

Well, why shouldn't Christian values be woven through the curriculum?

They are woven through our country, our laws, our ethics and ideals.

The Ten Commandments are ideal rules to follow for a good life. No-one can go wrong with them.

The majority of the UK population are not Christian. Or if they are, they are keeping their light very much under a bushel (I hope you like my Old Testament reference).

[from the House of Commons Library]

The 2021 census asked people about their religion. This was a voluntary question, answered by around 94% of respondents.

A person’s religion is self-defined regardless of whether they practise their religion or not.
The census question on religion included eight tick-boxes for different religions. Respondents could also choose to write in a different religion if theirs wasn’t included among the options.
Across England and Wales, 46% of people identified as being Christian, 37% said they had no religion, 6% identified as Muslim, and 2% identified as Hindu. Around 2% identified as being Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish or of another religion.

The C of E doesn't have any conflicts with science so you're fine with that. The Christian ethos through the school thing isn't a worry either because it's usually generic stuff like kindness, forgiveness etc.

All UK state schools, church or otherwise, are required to hold a daily Collective Worship (usually called assembly), which is broadly Christian but schools usually interpret this to suit the diversity of their community. C of E schools are likely to sway more towards a Christian theme for the assembly.

What you'll usually have in a C of E school that you won't necessarily have in others is a regular visit from the local vicar who will lead an assembly. The school might have regular visits to the local church for assemblies or special services eg Easter. The Religious Education lessons in a C of E church will be 'education' not 'instruction' and will also incorporate learning about the other main world religions.

In all UK schools, you have the option to withdraw your child from any religious activities including Collective Worship and RE lessons. The school has a responsibility to supervise the children who have opted out (few do).

I've taught in C of E schools and been the headteacher of one, although I'm now an atheist! My adult children went to C of E schools and they're all atheists now but they send their own children to C of E schools!

Something you will find is that if the school you want is oversubscribed, their admissions policy can favour families who are practising Christians over those who aren't. However, if there are places available, they have to offer them to you, regardless of your religious affiliation.

It's worth also knowing that there is a CofE equivalent of Ofsted which checks whether Christian values are being taught through the school. This is why you'll see comments about Christian values and the curriculum on school websites etc - it doesn't necessarily mean much other than that they know what they have to say in order to secure the CofE funding!

Christian values might well be kindness, tolerance, forgiveness etc rather than anything more prescriptive.

As pps have said, you won't find Christianity drifting into science lessons (for example), and hymns / prayer is often a key part of secular primary school in any case.

As far as I'm aware, most people don't think too hard about sending a child to a CofE school in the UK. They're often just the good local catchment school and not much different from other primary options.

In my DC's school they do teach Christianity as part of the curriculum because they have to. However, the only do the nativity in reception, after that it is a non-religious school play at Christmas time in years 1 and 2 and then no school play until year 6 when it is at the end of the year.

They learn about other religions, read books which feature characters of other faiths and within the class itself children whose faith is not CofE get special mentions for days that are important to the. If there are Jewish children or Sikh children and there is a celebration of their faith then the children in their class are taught about it on the day. Sometimes this includes them bringing in sweets. So even if it isn't in the curriculum they learn about other people's beliefs.

Christian values are just things like kindness and thinking of others. Children are told Christians believe, Hindus believe etc. Children may sing hymns it won't brain wash them. As parents you have a lot of influence over your child. My friend is Muslim and her beliefs are different to mine (atheist) both our children went to that school, neither of them changed their beliefs.

It isn't something to really worry about. Honestly, I was raised Catholic went to Catholic primary, secondary and sixth form. I am not a believer. I went to mass every week in the school chapel on Fridays plus on Sunday with the family, we said prayers every lesson, Holy Days of Obligation and yet I stopped believing before I was a teen. No one was telling me anything different. It just wasn't for me.