Is this an OK thing to ask to help with admissions to a primary school?

[srednivashtar]

We have a very good, very oversubscribed local school, which I would like DS to go to. We live a stones-throw from the door but because it's a CofE school, nearly all the places go to churchgoers and then siblings and then after that last year only one place was awarded on catchment.

They have a big thing about teaching Spanish in the school and are currently looking for people to volunteer for various Spanish activities. I speak fluent Spanish, have a professional qualification and have teaching experience, including teaching children.

Now I'm sure you can all see where my brass neck is heading. If I volunteer at the school, would it be awful to ask if that would help me get DS into the school next September? I don't want to do it if not, but I would be happy to do it if it would, including on an ongoing basis.

I can't begin to imagine how I would phrase it. What does anybody else think?

"If they define faith as baptism and you get your child baptised, it doesn't matter that you never set foot in a church again. If that's how they choose to define faith and you meet that definition then you're in!"

The more parents choose to lie about their faith to get into these schools - which are not 'good' because of anything the school do, they are 'good' because every child has parents willing to go to such dishonest odds for their education - the more these schools and the government and the church can claim they are 'serving churchgoers' or that these schools need to exist to cater to 'Christian' children. The parents who lie are creating the problems in the first place.

Maybe the school really isn't so great. A class of well-off middle class children without difficulties and with involved, enthusiastic parents - plenty of schools just coast along, not actually stretching them or only teaching them to pass SATs. I feel any school with such a discriminatory policy isn't worth it. Look into schools that don't discriminate and become part of the solution in ending religious discrimination in schools.

You'd have to lie to get them baptised, though - the ceremony involves a whole lot of statements from the parents about what they believe and what they promise to do. So lying is still involved.

I didn't say it was wrong ; I said it was lying . If both parents don't believe in God then in order to get their child into a school-that-requires-baptism they need to lie at some point. Which is what Kumiho said. They don't have to lie to the school but they have to lie.