church schools and their fascist admissions policy

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i am currently choosing a secondary school for my son, i have not bought him up with any religion, he knows i am pagan though.
the only good schools in the area are c of e or catholic schools, it seems like unless you can go private or convert to a christian religion you cannot get a good education for your kids.
after a conversation with one of the schools this afternoon i understand that they do have places for non christian children but you have to be a "world faith" and proof from your place of worship is necessary. world faiths are jew, muslim, sikh, hindu. thats it!
so there are NO non-denom places available at any church schools.

can anyone else see the complete fascism in this ??
i don't exactly want my kids bought up christian but i want a good education for them. it seems like they will be shoved in the local non denom school which according to league tables means theres a good 70% chance they will fail their gcses!
has anyone had this issue before.

do you think they would have to consider my son for a world faith school place if i had some pagan priest write a reference for me.

Do churches still require parents to continue to attend, after their child has got a place at a church school?

I remember reading something about this.

And I have the same situation as OP - my local CofE school puts people who attend any religious institution, Christian or not, above non-attenders. Mad.

By Blu - 'Church is for religion, school is for education - why should the state pay to uphold religious practice?'

Exactly - that sums up my feelings too.

i dont believe the state should pay for religeous schools either - but they do - and i'm sick of the bitching that kids have to learn about religeon or be religeous at an effing religeos school

maybe instead of directing hatred at the admissions policy of the christian faith school - you shoudl direct your faith at the government and the head teachr and the council and the secondary school teachers and the parents of the 70% who are failing.

'Parent who send their children to faith schools are also paying taxes towards non-faith schools whether they like it or not (same as the other way round).'

Yes, but those who can attend a faith school would be welcome at either so they have a choice. Not so for the non-faith families whose taxes help fund the faith school.

I'm a CHristian and I wouldn't send my child to a faith school as I think many of you are right when you say that faith is something for home/church. I know a lot of CHristians like them, but its not somehting I'm in agreement with.

In Scotland it is slightly different in that there are Catholic schools and non-denominational schools, (I think there might be one Jewish school in Scotland too) so there isn't the issue about 'choice' as each catchment area fits into either a catholic or n-d school. There also doesnt see to be the same fuss about choice up here - most kids I know go to their local catchment school without any debate about it.

What the Scots do do (and the Welsh) is fund bilingual education for those who choose it (like me - my kids go to the Gaelic school in Glasgow). We get free transport provided for this, though we wouldnt for a placing request to any other primary school.

Workstostaysane - I'm not going to shot you down in flames that is exactly what I argued further down the thread.

You can't just say I'll have the benefits of the faith school and not have the faith. It isn't fair. Good schools are good because of the commitment of the pupils, parents governors and teachers. If you can't commit to the ethos of what makes a particular school good then why should you be allowed to send your child there at the risk of undermining what makes it an effective school?

There seems to be a commonly held belief (!) that faith schools do better than other schools.

Why is that?

There are a group of parents at our local catholic primary school campaigning to get a catholic secondary school built within our borough. They have complained that their children have to travel out of borough to attend a catholic school after leaving primary.

There is a catholic secondary school just over the border of our borough, a bus ride away from their primary school. It is under-subscribed and had a very average last OFSTED report. So, why the need for another school?

Luckily (in this case) we live in a swing-seat borough and there was very vocal opposition when the local press recently ran a piece about this campaign. Most of our secondaries need more funding as we receive lower funding per child as this is a wealthy area and therefore not deemed in need. I think there would be a major outcry if money was used to benefit a small group of children above others. Especially when their faith requirements could be met at a relatively local school.

mmj, nice theory, but while I'd agree with the idea at my house, most Christian parents I know are no more likely to be strict than a non-Christian.

Covert selection, Mercy. And possibly the extra support from the Church as an institution - organisationally, financially, etc. etc. etc.

Tbh mmj, I think it's becasuse many faith schools are/were quite small compared to non-faith ones. Especially Catholic schools.

Some parents saw that as a good thing. And some took advantage. And here we are with some well-off parents being able to move to the catcthement area of their chosen school or even rent a property in the area. Yoiu know the rest.

Because most of the major religions are big on work ethic, social responsibility, accountability as a family etc etc.

Which doesn't mean you can't have these things as an atheist BUT if you drew a Venn diagram of 'parents supportive of the school & keen for their children to do well' it would have a heck of an overlap with 'parents who profess a religious faith'.

SO if you let parents have completely free choice between St Cuthberts C of E & Bog St Comp, you would still end up with a higher proportion of kids from supportive, motivated families at the faith school. Which would then get a better reputation. So then you get the subset of 'keen parents of a different faith or none' clamouring at the gates.

It awfully rapidly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that a 'good' school continues to be good & a school perceived as inferior becomes inferior.

it is because they can keep out the riff raff
yes, I am opposed to faith schools in principle because I don't believe in indoctrination, or in segregation. I don't think either indoctrination or segregation are what education should be about in a post-enlightenment civilisation. I believe children should be educated about all religions and allowed to have a free choice. I also think that it is not appropriate to teach any one religion as truth in an educational setting, because it isn't rational.
obviously if you choose to send your child to a private faith school, that's your prerogative.

very late replying to Hermionegrainger but the other faiths do not all believe in one god. Hindus do not believe in one god. Yet a hindu child would take precedence over my child even though we need a local school too.

The difference in faith system between Hindu and Christian is massive. What connects them is that they believe in something supernatural, for want of a better way of putting it. I don't. Funny way to structure an education.

And just to reiterate, where I live, there is no choice. ALL my local schools are faith based.

me too margo, all the schools around here are faith based apart from one, which was massively over-subscribed.
thankfully the secondary schools are not faith schools.

I think it's fair to say that if you took any group with a defined, vested interest in a school - whether it was a Christian school, a Muslim school, a Manchester United school, a vegetarian school or a Wear Yellow On Thursdays To Prevent The Apocalypse school - they'd then feel an obligation to participate more fully and contribute financially, in order to preserve that exclusivity.

This does not prove that this exclusivity is per se a good thing.

edam has expressed the paradox very clearly in her post of 20:23:43. People who express a religion have a choice between denominational and non-denominational schools - they are not barred from non-faith schools. People who do not believe in religion, unless they are prepared to be hypocrites (and I don't deny at all that some are) have the choice only of the non-denominational schools.

This clearly shows the flaws in the argument of the people who say "stop whingeing, you've got non-faith schools, don't send your kids to faith schools if you don't like them, etc, etc."

Otherwise I can only repeat what I said before, and which has still not been adequately answered.
I do not see (still) what is remotely controversial or outrageous about saying "all state schools should be accessible to all state pupils in the catchment".

But I do agree (and here I think I am agreeing with custardo - help!) that we should be addressing this issue at the level of root cause (Government policy) rather than at the level of symptoms (individual schools' admission policies).

Niece, who is saying on this thread "I'd like the benefit of a faith school without having the faith"?

You are being deliberately obtuse.

Overall, people are saying they want to send their child to the school that is closest geographically in their area, but the selection process used by "faith" schools restricts the intake.

But since they are paying through their taxes for that "faith" school, whether they share the same religious beliefs or not, then the system is deeply unfair indeed.

And I will never see how it can be argued otherwise so am stepping away from this thread right now.

Thanks Daphne, you said it just right.

I really don't care what churches want to do with their own money and as long as I have a school near me that I can send my child to, then I don't care what religious-based education is available elsewhere to people who want to use it.

But actually it's my money they are using and I do not have a local school I can send my child to because they are all faith based and quite strongly selective.

Here's a thought.

Imagine I am an eccentric American billionaire with an unswerving belief in The Church Of The Invisible Pink Unicorn. I buy up some land in the UK, get planning permission and build a new church, and a new primary school for a small community which does not have one. All pupils attending the school must swear daily allegiance to His Holy Invisible Horn and offer up praise to His Glistening Invisible Mane. They, and their parents, should be expected to be regular attenders at the Church.

Should I expect that this school is to be funded by:

a) The state, through general/local taxation?
b) My own personal wealth?
c) Parents' contributions, through fees and donations?
d) The church's money - perhaps through trusts and charities set up over the years?
e) A combination of the above?
f) None of the above? (Please give alternative suggestion.)

'Niece, who is saying on this thread "I'd like the benefit of a faith school without having the faith"? '

OP: 'the only good schools in the area are c of e or catholic schools, it seems like unless you can go private or convert to a christian religion you cannot get a good education for your kids.'
that seems to be exactly what the OP would like.

anyway, i'm off to bed, but it does seem to me that this must be a regional/local matter. there are plenty of people on my street who never go to the local church, whose children attend the school attached to that church.
and really, are all the schools with no faith behind them so terrible?

funny post undad,
but i asked my question first and i'm still waiting for someone to reply.

night!

worktostaysane, the answer to your question is catchment area. You go to the closest school. End of.

Since the religious based schools are obliged by law to provide a rounded education covering all faiths (though tbh I strongly suspect church schools do this more than other faith schools), no one would lose out.

This is actually what happened at my school which was a faith school but did no selection and just took all the local kids.

If you want really specific Catholic education (or whatever other religion) covering very particular parts of the Catholic belief system then send your child to Sunday school (or the equivalent)

faith schools perform well because God wants them to.
and non faith schools don't perform so well because they don't enjoy the power of prayer.