Does anyone else find the anti denominational school stance depressing?

[Plaza]

I recently read a thread where the majority seemed to agree that state schools should be secular and denominational schools done away with altogether.

I found this pretty depressing, no least as it would have been my personal view about a year ago... I have since moved my DC to a COE school and cannot praise it or the Christian ethics enough.. What do you think?

Zoe- the head lied. Not saying that's a bad thing- but he did!

Good for him in that case, more power to his elbow:) I suspect though that in many good schools the fiction is one that inspectors are quite happy to buy into. After all presumably they attend assembly as part of an inspection. It is not like they are secretive about it - when we first went to the open day we were told very clearly that they were a nonreligious environment. They do of course study re, which is as it should be.

He will have had a special box ticking assembly for OFSTED. As you said, well done him.

I find funding schools that my children would be exempt from due to MY religeon very depressing. It's doesn't seem very Christian (or whatever faith) to exclude other children - in fact it seems a bit narrow minded and unkind.

Ofsted has stopped looking for collective worship www.theguardian.com/education/2004/jun/11/schools.uk.

My biggest problem with state-funded faith schools is selection on the basis of parental faith. It divides local communities and discriminates against children not being raised in the prevailing faith of the area, and whose parents aren't willing to attend church for two years to secure their children a place.

Where I live, it's rare for school catchments to be much more than 600m. All the schools are pretty good. But if you live in an area surrounded by CofE schools, like we do, you're faced with the likelihood will attend a school a 30 minute drive away.

Our nearest school has split intake - 30 kids based on CofE attendance, 30 not. Curiously, the 'open' places for the last three years have all gone to the younger siblings of children who got in under the church criteria - so no non-CofE kids. The local church actively encourages people to do the two years of churchgoing. So, because I'm not a hypocrite, my child has less chance of place at a state-funded school than his neighbour.

Exactly what part of that system is fair, or good for communities, or anything but subversive selection?

These threads tend to have certain things in common.

People claim that depriving a child of compulsory worship in their parents' religion is a bad thing that will harm them.

But at the same time compulsory worship for other people's children is not a bad thing because it has no effect on the child whatsoever.

Then there's the demand that all religious parents should have the right to send their child to a school that makes them worship their religion, but that only applies if Catholic/CofE. There's no suggestion that every catchment area should have schools for Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Hindu or any of the 1000s of other religions. I don't think there will be any Voodoo ceremonies in assembly.

Then there's the obligatory "why not move to another area that does accept your kind".

Then we have "but they will suffer if they never learn about religion" as though atheists want to ban RE. I can't believe anyone really thinks that is the case so it can't be used honestly can it.

Good summary backonly

And even if you are the right faith there can be no checking out different churches to find your spiritual home - bum on seat at the right service is what matters.

I think it's better in the long run for churches themselves to be self supporting in all their activities. The situation with the CoE is complicated and the relationship with the state is cozy for historical reasons but there is no excuse for the RC church to live in anyone's pocket. The RC church operates thousands of self supporting school in the US so it definitely can be done.

mathanxiety- certainlty can done. With an estimate of £15 Billion in the Catholic coffers.

just to add - I'm happy to see people here from both 'sides' of the debate can see that it makes sense to stop schools selecting children on the basis of religion. I strongly think that this is the most workable, practical step that will make state education work better for everyone, regardless of beliefs.

There is a campaign group working for this
fairadmissions.org.uk/
so do support them (and tell your MP that you do).

OK, OP, here's a thought experiment - something pretty much exactly like this happened to my parents' NDNs, in their small village:

So I let's say I live next to St Joseph's RC Primary. I'm an atheist but not overly fussed whether my dc go to a faith school or not - I just want them to go to their local school.

You live 3 miles away, in the next village. Your house is next to Anyvillage Community Primary, which is non-denominational (but will still be obliged to have 'broadly Xtian assemblies' etc).

St Joe's is excellent, & over-subscribed, & your eldest can have a priority place & travel 3 miles to it. My eldest doesn't get in as a result of you & other RC parents wanting the place. For the next two years you & I pass each other every day on the school run as I drive 3 miles to Anyvillage - which is just as good a school but less desirable to me because of the travelling.

Two years later, St Joe's isn't looking nearly so attractive. The HT has left, say, & the new one's a basket case. You decide to move your eldest to Anyvillage & to send your younger child there, too, when he reaches school age. OK, they'll not be at a faith school, which is important to you, but on balance you're just not happy with things at St Joe's, & Anyvillage is on your doorstep, so that's a bonus.

I apply to send my younger kid to Anyvillage too, so he'll be with his brother. Because I'm 3 miles away & you (& the other RC parents in Anyvillage) don't fancy St Joe's anymore, he doesn't get a place. He'll be going to St Joe's. I'll have to drop him off at the Breakfast Club each day before taking his elder brother to Anyvillage, unless I decide to uproot the elder one from the good school he's happy in & send him to failing St Joe's, too.

Basically: you get two choices at every stage. I get the choice you don't want. How is this a fair way of doing things?

I think that would be a good first step, but I think that there would still be a problem in that many schools would still be religious in nature. This would cause segregation and limit the opportunities of those who don't adhere to a particular faith from attending their local school if it retained its faith specific activities. For example, I doubt that many non-Catholics would choose a school that had frequent catholic masses.

You might well want your child to go to their local school, but if you objected to the religious practices, I imagine that you would be told "well you did choose a Catholic school".

"just to add - I'm happy to see people here from both 'sides' of the debate can see that it makes sense to stop schools selecting children on the basis of religion. I strongly think that this is the most workable, practical step that will make state education work better for everyone, regardless of beliefs."

Yes. It would stop 'pretendance' and clear the muddy waters a little.

Oh my God (as it were!), how infuriating.

OP, there are no secular schools in the UK

There are no secular schools in the UK

Secular schools in the UK don't exist

The UK has no secular schools

A UK parent cannot choose to send their children to a secular school because THERE AREN'T ANY

FFS.

It just seems like they're secular as the vast majority of people that attend them leave with no belief in God (unless they were already from a believing religious family) and the occasional vaguely religious assembly has no effect. I know when I went to primary and secondary in the UK I knew absolutely no one who actively believed in Christianity. I had friends who were Muslim and Hindu who believed.

Where I live (in western Canada) in our school district there are just over 30 primary schools and 10 secondaries. There are also two Catholic schools (one primary and one right through) and one right through interdenominational Christian school (ie for all the non-Catholic Christians). The religious schools get fees per child the same as the state schools, but are not otherwise supported and they do lots of fundraising (it's compulsory for all parents to be involved). It's not a very diverse area so there aren't any schools for other religious groups.

It seems to work really well. If you are very religious you send your child to the very religious schools and you get pretty good facilities etc as a result of the fundraising you are required to do. I've not heard of anyone who wanted their child to go to one of the religious schools being turned down, and the children get picked up by bus, so no one excluded. Everyone else goes to their local school (no private schools in our town).

Places at the religious schools seem relatively proportionate to the number of regular church goers. In England I think it's only about 5% of the population that regularly (ie weekly) go to a Christian church, so clearly there is a huge oversupply (30% or so of state schools are Catholic/CoE). I really struggle to understand why anyone thinks that is reasonable.

Honeyandrum that's a very odd way of looking at things! I went to a Catholic school and am now an atheist. That doesn't in any way invalidate the Catholicism of my school (which was run by nuns). My children's community school for a while seemed to be more religious than the local faith schools (the HT was great friends with a local vicar) with lots of visits to the church and what I thought was pretty much envangelising going on. Then the HT changed and all the religious stuff disappeared (along with the vicar). As a parent of a primary child it's actually quite hard to find out what's going on - we were very surprised at some of the things our dd suddenly believed in because Father X with his house that was bigger than ours said so (no reasoning with six year olds!)

There are 16818 Primary Schools in England (govt website)

There are 1,957 voluntary aided C of E Schools (C of E website) Not all of these will have a faith criteria in their over subscription criteria and not all of the ones that do are oversubscribed. So even with RC, Jewish, Muslim primaries and academies the vast majority of schools in England are not selecting their pupils on the basis of the faith of their parents.

The minority of schools are not evenly spread so not good if you are in one of those areas which is why I've said up thread that I would like to see the oversubscription faith based criteria go.

Loopydoopy, you are getting hung up on technicalities! In practice, my dds school IS secular. No hymns, no religion anywhere except re. The 'requirement' for a religious assembly is more honoured in the breach these days, and the article above suggests that Ofsted has ignored it in sec schools since at least 2004. There are schools run by churches and ones that are not, though both get money from all our taxes. It makes a difference!

I live in scotland where the sectarian aspect of religion is stronger than England. I see first hand the deep divisions that religion has on communities. Not different religions, but different factions of so called christianity.

It is very unusual for a non- catholic child to be sent to a catholic school here. Parent would not make that choice unless for religious reasons.

Our local secondary school is a campus facility. There are two schools based on the campus - a large (1500 pupils) non denominational and a catholic ( 800 pupils) schools.
Although the schools share some facilities- sports, dining etc, there is a high level of segregation between the two schools. there are high fences separating the playgrounds and barriers in the lunch hall. The timings of the start and end of day are staggered so pupils from the school don't have to walk together, and pupils from both schools are advised not to talk to each other, or the staff. There have been violent outbreaks.
As a result families within the community keep themselves separate, everyone knows which side of the fence people are on,.

Children from these schools are living in the same community, perhaps even neighbours, yet divided at school by high fences and barriers. It disgusts me that religion has cased these deep divisions in a community where none should exist.

KEEP FAITH OUT OF SCHOOL!

thegreenheart

CofE website tells me:

"Approximately 1 million children attend Church of England schools, with 4443 (25%) of all primary and middle schools the responsibility of the CofE and 221 (6.25%) of all secondary school the responsibility of the CofE. The schools include infant, junior, primary, middle, all age, secondary schools and academies."

This includes voluntary aided and voluntary controlled schools.

Why did you choose to only quote the number of voluntary aided schools?

I think you are also remiss in saying "even with" especially when it comes to RC schools of which there are a great many in some areas.

Also although some people have said their biggest issue is being excluded from local church schools, for others (like me) the issue is being forced into church schools, or for their children to end up at schools that turned out to be church schools even though they weren't advertised that way.

I don't want my children to be told that Christian stuff is real at school, they have plenty of family to do that already, and for small children teacher influence can be huge. I don't particularly want them to be 'taught' atheism either, I think learning about different faiths, thinking about ethics and morals is really important but I don't think that school is the appropriate place to learn how to believe/disbelieve, rather to learn and question. If you want your child to have religious teaching, then send them to catechism classes, Sunday school etc, don't force a whole other bunch of kids to be indoctrinated just because it's the only school their parents could get them into.

"I don't particularly want them to be 'taught' atheism either,"

What is to be "taught" about athiesm? Athiesm is a default position, we are all born athiest.