Primary admissions - its a faith school - parents committed etc really?

[crochetcircle]

Erm, feeling a bit silly and naive and under-prepared. We will be applying for a place for our dd1 in January 2015. Be gentle please.

Have just read the admissions criteria for our 'local' primary school and the first priority reads like this:

Children whose parent(s) are committed members of and regularly worship in the parish church of St XX in XX (that is at least having attended fortnightly over the past six months)

Firstly, I'm sure this wasn't the case when we moved here - I thought they just allocated places to local people and the faith stuff was incidental. Could they have changed the criteria to be more religious in the past year?

Second, argh. Do people really do this? We haven't even looked around schools yet let alone started attending a church in anticipation! (And I don't attend church, never have. Not sure I could do this without having faith - even if we really liked the school. Do people really do this? I thought this was an urban myth.)

Practical questions:

How can we find out if we have any chance of getting in without going to church? Can you just ring the school and ask them whether this happens?

We only have 5 months of possible church-going from now until the January 2015 application deadline. Would this mean we now have no chance of meeting the criteria anyway? How on earth do you get this on the record - are parents signing in at church every weekend? I mean, really.

Yes, there are other schools locally so we won't miss out on a school place. But this one is so close it seems a shame not to even have it as a choice.

Yes, people do go to church to get their children into a faith school.

Yes, churches do have books to sign so people can prove they attended.

For some faith schools this is really important.

For others the faith school is the only school in the village and everyone gets in anyway.

Contact school or LA (or it might be in a booklet?) to see how many were admitted under each category last time.

Yes, you have been a little bit naive. Some schools have a 1 year criteria. But if they are massively religious in the school, and you aren't, then you probably won't want your child to go there anyway.

First phone the school and get the admissions data for the last year. This will tell you how many people were admitted in each admissions criteria.

My DCs primary had a top (after SEN and children in care) of members of church Y, this was never the last criteria for admissions.

The simple answer is that the school will have to admit pupils on the basis of the school admission criteria. So if it has what you have stated as the first priority then that is who will get admitted first. Actually if this is the first admission criteria, they are breaking the law because the top priority has to be to pupils who are looked after children or adopted children who were looked after children.
The school should administer this strictly but a lot depends on how they are going to decide whether you are a committed member and faithful worshiper. It should say somewhere on the admission criteria. So you need to look very carefully at the different criteria and see where you could fit - it sounds like you would only fit in a distance criteria. Then go to the LA admission booklet and somewhere in that should be some information about who was admitted last year. This will tell you whether the school was vastly over-subscribed and what was the lowest criteria that they admitted in sept 2014.
You have a minimum of 3 preferences and it could be that if the school is very close to your house that it might be using the first preference for this school but that will depend on what else you find out and how sure you might be of getting a school place the schools you put down as second and third preferences

Right, a bit of googling later and it really is real. I had no idea!

So, please ignore my questions.

I guess how this plays out depends very much on local circumstances and how popular the school is. We will need to do some more research!

Whoops, sorry all didn't see my three replies - that was quick, thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I need to get into the real world clearly!

The admissions data is not available for faith schools for my borough (at least not published) so I guess the school would have this information. I have just sent them an email asking for all this but to be honest I'm not sure I agree with that sort of selection criteria on principle. And as I am not a committed Christian maybe this isn't the right school for us.

Bit of a minefield clearly.

And yes admission, you were right, this was the second criteria not the first!

My DS is at a faith school, the criteria has several different categories and about 40% get in on the first "practising" category. We aren't religious and didn't pretend to be.

It depends on whether the school is over subscribed, if it isn't you may get a place on proximity, but if it is you won't get a look in.

The school have to give you that data, and most are only too willing. It is often something they have available for Open days/visits.

OP welcome to the mine field of admissions - most parents research options well before the booklets come out and are obsessed with the while thing by the time DC is 2 or 3. As they start school nursery at 3 here, it starts early!!! People very much appear at church and all the other things you hear about to get into the school they want. (Lying cheating renting etc) Go visit a few and you may decide you don't wants faith school anyway. Good luck

My local school is similar, crochet. LAC, statements, siblings, then the next category is children living in a certain area whose parent(s) attend one of two churches twice a month for 12 months, then everyone else.

My LEA are really good about publishing last distance offered. Over the last five years, there have always been places under the last category, but the distance has been about 0.2 miles so you need to live pretty close. You may find you are OK, since you say it's your local school.

(This is in contrast to our third closest school, where you might not get a place even if you are a church goer living in the parish - these things vary!)

We will be applying this time next year, but we have decided not to turn up at the relevant church. We go to a different church, so it wouldn't be a great theological leap, but we've decided to chance it on distance. If it doesn't work out, we have two other perfectly good and usually undersubscribed schools within easy walking distance - if that weren't the case I'd be more inclined to discover Anglicanism!

Yes, I know that sinking feeling when you realise that you are within a couple of hundred yards of a top-of-the-tables faith school which requires two years of regular attendance, after LAC and sibling criteria. And the further drop in the stomach when you realise that no one has got in on distance for years...

I think the sooner all VA schools have to allocate a percentage of community places, the better.

In the end we sold up, moved out of London and went for an independent school. That was actually a cheaper option than moving within the catchment of equally good community schools.

Really? You thought the "faith stuff" was incidental??? In a faith school? Sure it is.

Six months? Lucky you! Ours is two years of weekly attendance. Almost every parent I know only did it to get in the school. One family were genuinely religious the rest were, as they actually called it, "playing the game"

Good luck. We were similarly underprepared and naive but I think faith schools are discriminatory bullshit anyway. Especially when most if the pupils aren't really religious.
We ended up getting our sixth choice we have to drive to.

For the admissions experts. Our local faith school has a 2 year attendance requirement, but the church it's linked to doesn't actually keep any attendance records, so can't provide objective evidence.
I thinks it's very much how well you get in with the vicar.

I can't see how this is 'correct' but who do I complain to. Is it the Schools Adjudicator?

Thanks

Our local RC school's top admissions category (after RC LAC/FLAC) is baptised RC children who live in the parish. If oversubscribed in this category (which it always is), then church attendance is the first discriminator. (Second is siblings). Church attendance is grouped into 3-4x/month, 1-2x/month, less than that, never. Only one parent has to attend (no children). There is no time limit - it doesn't say anywhere for how long this kind of attendance has to have been going on. You don't have to attend any particular church. So as long as you live within the parish, you can choose to attend any neighbouring parishes' church and may find a sympathetic priest who will sign your form for you. Or you can attend a different church every week and find that despite going all the time, no priest will be willing to sign the form for you.

There is no paper trail whatsoever to determine how often you have been to church. You just need to tick the box you think you can get away with and hope that the priest/Deacon agrees. He takes your form and ticks a box as well, which may or may not match the one you ticked, you never find out; hence can't appeal either.

I believe this is not quite lawful...?!

DS did get a place at this school so I assume we cannot 'appeal'.

And yes, DP who is RC, but lived his faith in a non-church-going way, did strategically start going to church regularly in order to keep our options open. And I who am of not-much-faith-at-all did agree to put it in first place because I like everything else about the school (everything except the faith aspect); and don't much like the alternatives we had.

But you do need to be aware that some faith schools really do push the faith aspect. Ours assumes that everyone has chosen it for its faith aspect (rather than despite it, as in my case); and for example, parent information evenings start out by praying together. DS has been to school for 4 half days and has already learned prayers and religious songs (but no phonics or numeracy yet). But not all faith schools are that much focused on the faith thing. If you like the school in general, it's worth finding out how central the faith is in the school's every day life, and if that level of immersion is something you can agree to.

Our local RC school is similar to Meita's. There are no signing in sheets or anything but there is a sliding scale of attendance and you get your Priest to sign to confirm what you have ticked (the sliding scale does include boxes for where the child goes along too so you do really have to have at least one parent and the child attending). There is no specific period of attendance to fulfil though as far as I can recall.

In our case, you did get to see what the Priest ticked though as you could take it along to him to sign and then drop the completed form off at the school.

It sounds from what Tiggytape says like that might be a bit iffy but it does mean you get a bit more flexibility with going away etc. If you are generally a weekly attender but are not there for a few weeks while you are on holiday, the Priest can make allowances for that where he knows you are otherwise committed to the Church. Whereas, if it is all down to weekly signing, presumably you have to make sure there are no absences at all from the particular Church to be 100% sure of a place - pretty difficult over a 2 year period?

It is definitely a wink from the vicar for several of our schools closeby.

If you really want a place OP start going now I think you'd be ok from what I've seen of parents round here

God I do love living in the countryside!

All 4 of our local schools, all close on 3 miles away, are CofE and all are undersubscribed, so the faith criteria lurking somewhere in their admissions codes is never envoked.

No definitely no signing in or slips given out, it seems to be done on memory which is where my issue is.

I'm going to email the school office now.

I did wonder with one of our local schools if it was a 'face fits' with the church criteria. I was suspicious that they asked to see birth certificates which I think is disallowed. I thought about complaining but now we have a lovely school place elsewhere which is a faith school but accepts using a catchment map regardless of whether you go to church or not. It's a true community church school which I think more should be like.

Op if you don't have the same faith that the school caters for send your child to a different school. Or apply and accept that the children who do have that faith will quite rightly get priority. It's that simple.

Asking to see birth certificates is not "disallowed". If you had complained you'd have looked a bit of a tit, frankly.