Making a school more diverse from within.

[SootikinAndSweep]

Quick backstory, our closest school (around the corner) is rated Outstanding and we are very likely to get in to it according to the criteria. Our immediate area is very middle class, and on the open day I saw possibly two non-white children in an intake of 90. The area of the country we live in is very monocultural.

The school we liked the most when visiting was 25 mins walk away at adult pace, we are less likely to get in due to distance and other criteria. This school does have negatives attached to it, namely the distance and the fact that there are two schools and a college next door, so traffic is awful. This school is rated Very Good with a couple of Outstandings.

The reason we prefer the further away school is that it is much more dynamic and fun in feel, and, crucially, more diverse in terms of socio-economic group, religion and ethnicity. I also prefer the HT.

I'm a fan of 'if you don't like something try to change it rather than just moan', so my question is, if we end up at our nearest school, how difficult is it as a parent to make a school more like the one you want?

I can't see how it's a good thing in 2013 for any child to go to a supposedly non faith school where Christianity is openly promoted to the exclusion of every other religion

So don't send your daughter there.

You're making multicultural judgements, unless you have personally interviewed the families of all children at the second school, based purely on skin colour. That's a dodgy start.

My nephew goes to a mainly-white school with many nationalities and cultures represented; his brother's college is all-English with different coloured children.

Did you just want your daughter to have friends of different colours or are you keen for to to actually experience other cultures? You can achieve the latter yourself by making sure she travels.

We had a similar experience in a school that was not privately run & supposedly had no particular religious bias. What you may come up against, as some of the newer parents at our school have found is that certain ideas & people, especially volunteering parents become 'entrenched'and it is difficult to work out whether the chicken or egg came first.
Ie: Does the school work with & tacitly support these people & their religious overtones (+ open prostheletysing) because they always show up & volunteer every time a hand is needed {and they just happen to be of a certain religious persuasion} or is there a pervasive culture through the school that you were perhaps not initially aware of - like so many of us?? (reception year.)
I didn't automatically assume very high academic results equated with a religious lifestyle. I'm sure a lot of people would not either, but I did assume it was because of the social demographic of the area. - ie: hard working parents in professional capacities, good real estate prices, etc. I am in part correct, but there are those at the school that openly disagree and happily try to 'spread the good word.'
I guess you have to draw your own conclusions as to why they have so much time to 'devote? & whether or not that is actually 'healthy' for everyone..

More interesting posts, thanks.

In an ideal world I would like DD to come into contact with a range of people in her life, and know about the wider world beyond our rather sheltered corner of it. Of course I will play my part in that, I'm not assuming it's all for the school to do, but the Christian bias of the school plus the socio economic and ethnicity factors (which of course the school can't do anything about) has made me think. Very interesting inanycase regarding the PTA etc.

Point taken about how skin colour does not represent nationality. However immigration here is a relatively recent trend, and it's extremely unusual to meet someone second generation.

Regarding the question of whether I'd just like DD to have friends of different colours, or whether I'd like her to experience other cultures, in an ideal world I'd like it to be both, with a mix of socio economic groups and religions too. Sorry, I know that sounds all very "I'd like to teach the world to sing..."

I'm very aware that compared to battling for an inner city school place, where sometimes facilities might be stretched, and alternative schools could be poor, we really have nothing to worry about. It's my first encounter with choosing a school and it's given me stuff to think about.

Hi Sootikin

Interesting question, and I completely understand where you're coming from. I think you can influence a school, but it's a long game and you have to be prepared to put in time, ideally as a parent governor, offer your services to help with things, etc. How successful you'll be depends on how open to change the head and other staff are, how good your influencing skills are, and how much time you have to devote.

The other thing I'd say is not to assume that kids absorb what they're told at school without questioning it, particularly if they come from a family that encourages discussion and debate. My kids go to a CofE primary, because it's our local school, but we're not a religious family. Both kids went through a phase of believing in god as a result of some of the messages they got from school, but both have now changed their minds. We've tried to encourage them to make their own minds up, and have had lots of 'some people believe this, others believe that' conversations. In some ways, although I'm against religious schools on principle, going to one has helped my kids think about issues and beliefs in a way that they wouldn't have done otherwise.

We've also tried to help them to mix with kids from different backgrounds and cultures through out of school clubs, which can often be more diverse as they're less based around a particular narrow catchment.