campaign for fairer admissions to faith based primary schools - your views...

[hopingforbest]

... on this www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22798206?

DoesBuggerAll - you said "are you saying my child shouldn't be able to attend their local Catholic school because some non-Catholic whiny middle-class parent wants their little Tarquin to go there?"

No, I'm saying that everyone who wants to go there should have an equal chance, whatever their reasons for wanting to apply. Schools shouldn't apply value-judgements on parents' reasons for choosing them.

"The schools are owned by the Catholic Church, they were built by the donations and hard work of local Catholics who gave of their hard-earned wages to set up schools for their children. You want a piece of that but don't want to pay for it?"

Many of them are on church land. Some of them aren't. All of them have their running costs met by the general taxpayer. 10% of their capital costs are met by the church, but that doesn't amount to very much, and in any case is covered by parents' voluntary contributions.

Anyway, if non-Catholic parents send their children to Catholic VA schools they will be asked to make the same voluntary contributions as the Catholic parents, so will be making an appropriate financial contribution.

"I suspect just because many faith schools have a good reputation then everyone wants a part of it."
Shebird - if the schools are good, or even if they aren't, then why shouldn't everyone have the opportunity to be a part of them? At the moment there is a lot of back-stabbing and innuendo about people's reasons for going to church. That's not good for the image of the church, and neither is the reputation for 'exclusivity', which doesn't sit well with many people's idea of Christianity.

shebird By the same token would you regard it as fair if your nearest Catholic School was in special measures and the community school was outstanding but you were excluded from the community school because you are Catholic? However you are merely highlighting that the issue is really about having access to good schools, and whether they are faith schools or not, faith criteria is a discriminatory and far less fair means of determining who gets a place in a good school than distance.

It is most certainly not a myth that Catholic Schools are more middle class than their local areas, three quarters of Catholic Schools have a more affluent mix than their local area www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/mar/05/church-schools-shun-poorest-pupils. I know full well that many Catholic primary schools serve their working class and immigrant communities well, in the immigrant community that I grew up in they reflect a local community that is now more than 80% Muslim, ironically acting as a vehicle for integration. However more often than not this happens where schools are effectively inclusive because they are not oversubscribed. It is the exclusive faith criteria that drives social exclusion.

bayjay has dealt with the issue of the financial contribution of the church who gain exclusivity very cheaply.

JakeBullet, every single Catholic school in my LA makes a distinction between Catholic looked after/adopted children and 'others', the latter being below the priority for baptised children who have never otherwise set foot in a church (although they are entirely dependent on their parents in this respect). Also, siblings are prioritised in the same hierarchy, even where the school may have provided a bulge class and had non-Catholic children allocated by the LA. Typical admissions policy:

1 Catholic children in public care/adopted
2 Baptised Catholic children from practising Catholic
families
3 Other baptised Catholic children
4 Other children in public care/adopted
5 Children from Catechumen families
6 Children from families with affiliation to Eastern
Christian churches
7 Others

If you really are desperate for your child to attend a faith school, then have them baptised and go to church every week.

shebird, do you think it is right that adopted or looked after children who have not been baptised are lower down the priority list? There aren't many of them but they are vulnerable and would benefit more than most from a caring ethos in their local community.

"If you really are desperate for your child to attend a faith school, then have them baptised and go to church every week."

Shebird, my area has so many faith schools,and so few community places, that that is exactly what people are doing in droves - not because they particularly want to get them into a faith school, but because they want to be able to get them into any local school.

There are more children than places, so on offer-day dozens of people are told they will have to wait until people higher up in the pecking order drop out of the system to go private. It is always the children from non-church-going families that are at the back of the queue. Last year 30 of them had to wait until Christmas before starting school, so a new bulge class could be built for them.

When school systems are under that much pressure, the faith schools need to open their doors to let others in.

shebird That is exactly what droves of parents are doing, but there are also people, even some who are genuinely of faith, who cannot do that. Those who come from countries, especially those that were communist, where it is simply not the local practise to baptise early, people whose family live in poverty who may not be able to make it to church each week because they are working, perhaps in two jobs, people who struggle to cope with life let alone organising all the paperwork required etc etc. It is why faith criteria are becoming a means for the middle classes to climb over other parents in order to gain the p[privilege of a school place, it is blatantly unjust.

It is also as I wrote further down the thread frustrating to genuine members of church communities to have their church filled with people who go through the motions without making any long term contribution and commitment and deprive children they know are in genuine need of the support of their community's school of a place. A friend who runs her church's support service for old people is fuming that she struggles to find volunteers whilst there is never any shortage of people to do the nice self limiting jobs like the flowers that will earn them points in the lottery of goodness for the most selective Catholic Schools.

I would agree that families who are not sympathetic to the faith ethos of a school should not have to send their children there, but since 2010 church schools are the only 'maintained' schools that councils are allowed to set up.

In areas where there isn't a shortage of places, if parents are sympathetic to the faith ethos of the school but are not practising themselves - perhaps because have different cultural traditions but respect each other and/or have not been settled in a community for long - the school can provide both continuity and an education in the beliefs and traditions of that faith. Ther children are likely to be influenced by their friends as much as their parents, but will come to their own understanding. Assuming there is still choice in some areas, it is in keeping with religious values not to discriminate against those families who show an interest but need support and encouragement.

It's not just that discriminating by faith upon admission is downright immoral - and many faith schools do this not just with children but also with staff -; the whole idea of indoctrinating children in a state-run educational institution is a howler in itself. What children need is to be taught critical thinking skills; not blind faith.

Little Storm, "the whole idea of indoctrinating children ..." is not something that the Fair Admissions Campaign is dealing with. That's a much wider debate, being led by groups like the BHA and others. The Fair Admissions Campaign is isolating the single issue of admissions, specifically because many people from both religious and non-religious backgrounds agree on it, and can work together in a positive way to bring about change.

Someone else mentioned discrimination against teachers. There are also wider campaigns that deal with that issue.

There is no place for any faith school in our society - religious indoctrination of infants and children is wrong at every level. Most people in this country not not actually believe in a giant fairy in the sky or anywhere else. If people stopped colluding and 'pretending' to be a christian by going to church to get their children into 'faith' schools, things would move much quicker.

Please, please, please stand up for secular education.

KatyMusic, lots of people might agree with you, but many others wouldn't. That's a debate that won't be resolved for a long time. The Fair Admissions Campaign has a much narrower focus, and is isolating an issue that can be resolved much more quickly.

The fact is that we do have faith schools, and lots of people would like to get their children into them for a whole host of reasons, often simply because they're their closest neighbourhood school. They should be able to access places without having to jump through hoops.

My own children go to a faith school that has 30% open admissions. Rather than being 'indoctrinated' the children are encouraged to discuss their own views in RE. It's healthy for children from the incumbent faith background to hear the views of children from other backgrounds. If parents have had to 'pretend' to be religious to get their children into faith schools, then they may also encourage their children to repress their views when they're at school, but if the children are able to talk openly about having a different perspective then it can be a positive thing for everyone.

Another one who thinks there is no place for religious schools in modern society.

If we are stuck with religious schools then at the very least, access to them should be fair and open to all.

KatyMusic Maybe it's attitudes like that that make Catholic parents so against opening up admissions to the wider non-catholic community.

'That's a debate that won't be resolved for a long time. '

I think that's true. But with the pace of academy conversion, we may reach a point when voluntary aided schools start to outnumber community schools within the category of maintained schools. These are the only schools to which the national curriculum and rules on qualified teachers and salaries, etc. apply. Academy schools aren't even recognised as legal entities - unlike the trust or chain that controls them. So many parents would still prefer the stability of voluntary aided schools to academies operated by underperforming or overcontrolling chains, perhaps hit by financial problems that may lead to closures, with a curriculum that is experimental or more vocational. As maintained schools VA schools are therefore more similar to community schools in terms of structure, governance, standards, programme of study.

KatyMusics post has just demonstrated beautifully that intolerance and bigotry is not exclusive to people of faith but alive and well in atheists too.

buffy, you're quite right that intolerance isn't confined to any particular group. If KatyMusic made that comment in a room full of people who shared her view then it would go unchallenged, but in a mixed environment like this it doesn't. That is why the best way to keep intolerance of all types to a minimum is to get children from different backgrounds mixing at school.

Katymusic actually the 2011 census shows that 75% of people do believe in your words "a giant fairy in the sky" in one form or another. Only 25% of people on that census said they had no religion. Whilst I wouldn't describe myself as having a strong affiliation religion, I believe that people have a right to have a faith (or not) as a personal choice and why shouldn't they therefore teach their children about their faith. Most children grow up developing their own beliefs and making their own choices regarding faith no matter what they are taught at school it elsewhere. You have a perfect right to be an atheist but you don't have a right insult other people's beliefs.

I support this campaign. I think faith schools with church attendance criteria are a bad thing.

Religion should be left at home.

There is no reason at all for establishing religious schools. They increase segregation and children get nothing beneficial from them.

My two dgs go to a CoE primary school. Neither is baptised and this has never been a problem. However anyon who started bleating about prayers in assembly or learning about Jesus in RE would, I am sure, get short shrift and be directed to the large non-faith school down the road.

thegreylady, I agree it's reasonable for anyone actively choosing a faith school to respect the ethos of the school (provided they do have a choice; some people don't). Most schools these days have a parental agreement, which encourages people to declare their support. However, as you say, that doesn't mean they need to share the same religion as the school, or not talk openly about their own beliefs.

wonderingagain - your views are more inline with the BHA, than the Fair Admissions Campaign. The Fair Admissions Campaign is ecumenical and is supported by religious groups, as well as by humanist groups and others.

I'm shocked by the hostility shown in this thread toward faith-based schools? What is wrong with encouraging children to have faith?

Nothing wrong, there is no hostility, but us non religious people think religion should be practised at home. It has no relevance to a modern education system and frequently works against it. Church is church, school is school. The two do not need to come as a package.