Catholic Primary School Novice- Help needed

[Guntie]

Hello,

Both my DH and I are Catholic and are expecting our first child soon. We were married in our local parish and attend church there regularly. I am not from the UK and literally have no idea how the school system here works.

I also do not really know any catholic people with children in our area (yet). Well, not well enough to quiz them on the ins and outs of getting your children into catholic schools. Most of our friends with children are CofE and are sending their children to expensive fee paying schools.

As we are expecting, people have begun to ask me where I am going to put our child's name down for schooling. Cue panic.

We live in SW London and are aware that there are a number of very good Catholic high schools near us, like the Oratory, Cardinal Vaughan and Sacred Heart (please enlighten me of others, I really do not know a great deal).

There are a number of Catholic primary schools in our borough, including one attached to the parish where we attend mass. I looked at their admissions criteria and it seems that we might be able to get in. Catholic family, who attend mass regularly etc. However there is another Catholic primary school which is in our borough that teaches a language that we both speak. Ideally we would like our child to learn this at school.

I suppose what I am asking is...

1. How closely do schools adhere to their admission criteria?

1. How can you tell how over subscribed a school is?

1. Can we ask to attend other Catholic school in our borough (due to language reasons) or will that affect our chances of getting into our local school where we attend mass?

1. Is attending mass regularly really enough to for your children to attend "top" Catholic schools like the Oratory? Or would we also need to help at the church in other ways?

1. Could anyone share their experiences in getting their children into Catholic schools in SW London?

It is very important for us that our child receives a catholic education. I know it seems really premature to be asking such questions but I would really appreciate your insight.

Thank you

You need to speak to the two schools you are interested in. This is the time to be asking these questions, not when your child is about to start school -- not a bit premature.

Is there any possibility of attending Mass in the parish where the school that teaches your home language is?

In the state sector:

1. absolutely: there is the force of law underpinning the Admissions Code, and departing from it means e children who should have been granted places had it been properly applied will win their appeals and the school will be forced to take extra pupils.

2. ask: try the school wen site, or send and enquiry

3. yes: and applying to others won't make any difference to your application to the others. You will be asked to list schools on your application; you will be allocated a place at the school highest on your list for which you qualify.

4. distance from school gates is often the tie-break criteria. There may or may not be a points-based system for aspects of the faith qualification. Look at the entrance criteria and the supplementary information form (on the websites) of the schools you are interested in and see what they ask for.

I have relatives with kids in catholic schools in SW London. A prompt baptism helps, they had to get exemptions from the Bishop as they waited til child was 18months. You got priority points for age at baptism and church attendance. And like all state schools, proximity to school helps. All schools are different so look carefully at rules - they are v closely adhered to.

Schools in SW London are very over subcribed. The LA should be able to tell you distance of last admission last year.

One worry you can ease off from however is that of "putting DC's name down". In the state sector, you won't be able to do this. There is an applications window which runs from the autumn to the mid-January of the academic year before the year your child starts.

I'm not an expert, but happy to try and answer your questions...

1. • Schools have to adhere to their admissions criteria. If they didn't they would be open to parents whose children did not get in appealing. In essence, this means that you need to read the criteria very carefully. Admissions critera vary from school to school, but most, if oversubscribed would have some sort of distance rule eventually. The admissions criteria may talk about those worshiping in the parish, rather than living in the parish - you need to check.

2. Contact the admissions dept in your LA. I think most publish data these days indicating School choices, preferences etc. The actual school will give you this information too.

3. You put preferences down on the form, there is nothing wrong with you putting a school further away down as your first 'choice'. I don't think any schools can have the 'This must be your first choice school' thing anymore. I know that schools such as Sacred Heart used to have this, but it is no longer allowed. You will be offered a place at the school where you meet the admissions criteria which is highest on your list. Does that make sense? ie. if you don't get into your first, or second choice, but meet the criteria for third, you will be offered there.

4. Things are changing. I know that for some (secondary) schools they still ask for 'extras' to show that you are an active member of the church, rather than a 'bum on pew' for admissions reasons, but this appears to be changing so I really would not worry about this yet.
   I don't know of any primary school which asks for anything other than regular church attendance, baptism, priest reference etc.

5. I am in SW London - feel free to PM me if you need more detailed info about a specific area.

What I would say is talk to the schools that you are interested in and treat your application like an appeal. If you have special reasons for wanting to attend a particular school, say why. But unless the special circumstances are particularly 'special' it may not get you in above the rest of the applications.

I am clearly a slow typist and not very good with my grammar

Re no 3 - meditrina put it far better than me..."you will be allocated a place at the school highest on your list for which you qualify"

I'd really relax. You are pregnant, you have a looong time before you have to fret about schooling. The schools you mention are all state funded and so you can't "put your name down for them": you apply in Y6 when your (unborn!) child will be 10 or 11...

Some Catholic primary schools in London are very oversubscribed, others are not. The one attached to the church close to us only has one-form entry (ie, 30 pupils a year): when you take into account there can be 25 siblings who will get priority over other children meeting the criteria, you can picture how competitive it is... There is usually a lot of information on the school website: eg, how many applications were received, how many children were accepted that weren't Catholic attending mass in the local parish (usually 0 in the popular schools) or what the greatest tie-break distance was in the previous year.

The schools that accept state funding (no matter if they dress it up as "voluntary aided" etc) have their admissions controlled by the local authority so, although you may need a letter from your parish priest (often the parish priest whose church the school is attached to), the usual rules will apply after that. There were rumours at our local church that the priest would refuse to sign letters for people he didn't like the look of...

I think it is really worth getting to know both the schools you are interested in over the next few years. For example, the Catholic school nearest to me was/is extremely Catholic as the priest openly encouraged Opus Dei involvement. Others are a lot touchy-feelier in outlook. You might find that you naturally gravitate towards one.

I know people whose children have got into the Oratory and, although they were all regular mass-goers, they spent quite a lot of time polishing their Catholic credentials as their children reached secondary school application age: eg running Church events, volunteering for various committees etc. I think it is a disgusting system, fwiw, and I'm not sure that some of the Catholic schools don't keep their intake deliberately small in order to "encourage" this kind of commitment .

BTW, if you're really keen to have your child attend Catholic school, make sure that you have him or her baptised within weeks of giving birth. I think it was the Oratory that penalised children who were older than 6 months when they were baptised .

At the moment, most RC secondary schools stipulate baptism within a certain time limit. Good RC secondary schools are over subscribed so they 'whittle' the children down by various canon laws (one of them being baptism within the 1st few weeks of birth). Primary is normally baptism by time of application.

You need to look at the admission criteria for the schools you are interested in and note what is necessary. The first thing is to get your child baptised ASAP because you need the baptism certificate for admission purposes.
There will then be some kind of criteria about attending church. In the most over subscribed schools this tends to be attendance at church once a week and you need to be sure to be seen or recorded as attending the services.
But you are a long long time away from this situation, admission criteria can change, so when your child turns 3 is the time when you should review the school's admission criteria and then make sure you are making the criteria required.