Faith Schools: Are you choosing a religious primary school for your child in order to obtain the best local state education?

[rcc16]

1. Are you in a situation where you have chosen a religious primary school for your child in order to get the best state education for them? (regardless of whether you are religious or not)
2. Are you attending church and/or baptizing your children in order to get a place at a faith school when you wouldn't have done so otherwise (regardless of whether you are religious or not)

I'd like to know how many other people are in a situation where the best local state education is available through faith schools.

Surely it depends on what you mean by "best"

My child goes to a religious state primary because it's our nearest school. It also happens to be Ofsted Outstanding, but that's incidental for us.

In many places there is no choice - the local catchment primary is often a Church of England (voluntary controlled) school, so unless you put as first preference an unpopular school miles away, you get given a religious school whether you like it or not.

If there had been any such thing as a completely secular school available in my area for my DCs, I would have chosen it, but there wasn't.

exexpat - I agree if I wanted the local school I had to have CofE -would have prefered secular
where I used to live the secondary school with the best results was catholic and people did rediscover their faith I think!

Interesting first post. Is there a specific reason you would like to know - are you in this situation?

My children go to a CofE school, and I'm not particularly religious. It's the best school I could have chosen, but out of 5 we looked at, only 1 was secular.

I went to my cousin's child's baptism last year, and she freely admits she was only having her child baptised because the catholic church was the only good school in the area. The school closest to her house narrowly avoided special measures, and as she lives in a deprived area and is just trying to get the best education she can for her child, I don't blame her at all. I would have done the same in her situation.

1. No the nearest 3 schools to us are all secular
2. We go to church regularly and had our child baptised because that is what we believe. Nothing to do with school admissions

I would have liked the option of a CofE or methodist school for DD but sadly in our area there aren't any.

A religious school may not necessarily be the best surely???

Not necessarily, coccyx, but often (especially in deprived urban areas) their admission policies filter out a lot of the most difficult to teach children, making it much easier for them to achieve good results.

Would have done 1 but would have had to do 2 and after a lot of deliberation as a lapsed Catholic I couldn't quite stomach it. Is a commonplace course of action around here though.

Our local Catholic school is now 50% EAL, presumably these children would be classed as "difficult to teach"( at least initially) so not sure how an admission policycan "filter out a lot of the most difficult to teach children" if it is based on religious observance? Attendance at church isn't restricted to the most intelligent ( in fact, many would say the exact opposite!)

No.

Whether the 'best' local education is available through our local faith school or not is debatable. Personally, I think its probably on a par with the local state primaries, at best. But in any case it wouldn't have occured to me to apply to a faith school, as we're not religious.

spanieleyes, our local RC school is about 50% EAL too, although it's somewhat higher in the local community schools.

However, having English as a second language does not necessarily make children difficult to teach - certainly at dd's school I have noticed that most of the best readers in Reception fall into this category.

The children most likely to struggle are those from transient, socially disconnected or chaotic families, and you do not find many of these families turning up for church every Sunday morning for the requisite number of weeks ticking their names off the register.

When dcs were little, it seemed to be an axiom of faith that the local faith school provided a better education. In fact, there was no observable difference in results and some definite problems with pastoral care at the faith school (I believe they have improved since). But people just assumed faith school had to mean more stringent and in some circles mentioning that you were sending your children to the non-faith school was equivalent to saying that you didn't care about their education.

In other words, it's certainly not that children from faith backgrounds are more intelligient, but that many of those who are most likely to struggle are very unlikely to find themselves anywhere near the top of the priority list for oversubscribed VA schools.

Very observable difference in results between VA faith schools and community schools here, but I have no doubt that this has nothing to do with the quality of the teaching.

Yes, EAL doesn't necessarily make the DC's difficult to teach at all.

The 'success' of faith schools is due to the same factor at work: selection. In the same way as the faith school can select by religious 'conviction, the immigrant family who probably went through hell and high water to get to the UK are possibly if not probably far more likely to be willing to 'do what it takes' to ensure their DCs profit from education, i.e., do well in school. 'Selection' via commitment.

The government got it wrong in promoting faith based education. They looked at the great results and extrapolated the base reason, but chose to 'misunderstand'. They didn't recognise a couple of salient points: DCs brought up in religious homes are, as a result of the tenets of their faith, more likely to a) respect their parents, b) respect their school teachers and c) (excuse the pun) all be singing from the same hymn sheet. Less religiously committed parents who are prepared to a) baptise their infants into the faith, b) attend church or similar every week for years and c) do what is necessary to cosy up to the admission authority of that church (flowers rota, church cleaning, elderly visiting rota) are also the sort of parents who will be committed to their DC's education.

Win win..?!

Which is why I said "initially" difficult to teach.

1. No they go to a CoE school because when we moved it was the only school with space for all 3 children I needed a space for

2. No I have not and would not.

are you

1. writing an article
2. reasearching for a channel 5?

Probably, in that it's the only school ds is likely to get into on distance grounds and if I don't put it as a preference he would get dumped somewhere at the other end of the borough.

Luckily, I live in such a mixed area that despite reserving 50% of places for qualifying Christians, only 10 such applicants were received last year out of 30 potential Christian places (leaving 50 for everyone else). So hopefully despite being VA the religion aspects won't be too onerous.

Is anyone doing this? What religion is the Pope again?

Worth mentioning most CofE schools are not 'faith' schools in terms of admissions.

Absolutely right adelaofblois, our local school happens to be CofE. All this means in practice is a handful of regular church attenders in catchment get in at the top of the list then then rest of the catchment children in distance order.

As it happens the school is extremely over-subscribed, but very few people apply on the church rule. We are fortunate as DS2 will be starting next year and we are confident he will get in because he's a church rule subling in catchment, so pretty near the top of the list priority-wise.

Although, mrsbaffled, that is a faith school in admissions terms because it is giving priority to churchgoers, it's just that that doesn't overly affect who comes (I assume it is VA?).

What I had in mind were our first three preferences, all of which are CofE, none of which have any criteria related to faith.