No secular schools in our catchment area. Do we need to find God?

[punchkins]

So, there are some amazing primary schools in our area but they are all faith schools and are massively oversubscribed so are making the admissions criteria tighter every year. The most popular one has 90 children in Sunday school vying for 30 school places and has just increased the church attendance criteria to two years!
DH and I are not religious so our almost 2 year old twins are not baptised but we will struggle to pay for private school so it's looking like our options are to move or find God. But we really don't want to move and we're in London so will probably find oversubscribed schools everywhere. I went to a CofE school and really wouldn't mind attending church but I'm not sure I could do it for the next two or three years, two to three times a month. And DH is half Jewish.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any advice?

You need to find out the admissions criteria for your local schools and work out how it affects you. The faith schools near me have practicising christians living within the parish, then other children of the parish and then pracitising christians (with all the attenance criteria etc) outside of the parish. So ultimately it's about living in the Parish as much as your church attendance.

You also need to check if VA or VC - if the latter, then it's 100% community criteria. And some VA CofE schools have a proportion of places on community criteria too. So check carefully.

But, you're in London. There is no part of London that is exclusively faith schools - simply because there are so many schools! Now, if you're in an admissions black hole, you have time to consider if you coukd move.

But these black holes also happen to those who don't quite make the (ever shrinking) admissions footprint do any/all type of school.

England doesn't have any secular state schools- this is a common misconception. Those that are not church schools are nondenominational.

In most of the country church schools are the only school and they take all.
London is different. They are oversubscribed and they can set the criteria.

There are no secular schools anyway. All schools have to have regular collective worship of a broadly christian nature. Some community schools are very churchy, some faith schools are not very churchy. If you don't get any of your preferences you will be allocated a school. If it's over 2 miles transport will be provided.

If that doesn't suit, yes, move or go private.