Faith schools to become MORE selective ...

[jailhouserock]

See the original thread in the In the News section for details, but the Gvt is planning to remove the 50% faith admissions cap on new faith academies.

*Trouble is, t4nut, it means in certain areas that means that some parents get a lot of choice, and other parents get no choice at all. Privilege based on religious affiliation for some, and discrimination against others.

(And I haven't even mentioned yet what a stupid idea it is to bring children up only mixing with kids of their own faith, when they are living in a multi-faith community. What a way to stoke up trouble for the future, eh.)*

Except neither of those are the case.

Nothing prevents you from applying to a faith school. And they are extremely diverse places - more so than those with catchment areas as drawing from certain locales leads to a very homogenous intake. Faith schools without catchment areas draw from a much wider demographic.

Following on from my previous point, here is a quote from a Public Accounts Committee document on school funding ...

"The Department [of Education] acknowledged that there is still work to do to establish the level of surplus places required in the system to meet its stated aim of providing not just sufficiency, but a level of parental choice. The Department planned funding to support an overall surplus of school places of 5%, but admits that this is at the lower end of a range required to provide flexibility and parental choice within the school system.13 13% of local authorities did not have this minimum 5% surplus for primary places in May 2012."

So when Theresa May, or anyone else from the Government, says reversing this admissions legislation is about providing "choice" they are talking absolute rubbish!

Nothing prevents you from applying to a faith school.

The school won't accept applications except on a form. They won't give me a form. if I stole a form it would not do any good at all because there are no current circumstances where this school would admit the child of a non-Catholic, despite being a state school. How do you propose I applied, t4nut? Skywriting? Chalking it on the pavement?

I notice you haven't answered my question about whether you'd be happy with having hospitals discriminate in this way.

You might also like to know, t4nut, that because of the school situation here, children are effectively segregated by religion, and grow up not knowing children of other faiths or other worldviews. Even the secular schools end up dominated by one or another faith, as those kids can't get into the faith schools - my DS's secular state school (the one in the other borough, where we had to walk to every morning instead of going to the state school on our street) was about 75% kids of Muslim parents, and since he's left it's gone up to about 95%, because none of those kids can get into any other school.

So - Catholic kids mixing only with Catholic kids. Muslim kids only mixing with other Muslim kids. Jewish kids only mixing with other Jewish kids. What could possibly go wrong?

I could not apply for a place because they would not give me an application form, because I was not Catholic

If a state school refused to allow you to apply it was acting illegally. They can push you to the bottom of the admission criteria but they cannot refuse to consider your application. If they have a vacancy and you are the only person applying they must offer the place to you. They cannot hold the place vacant until someone of the faith applies.

Of course, for the normal admissions round you apply through the LA. The LA will always submit your application to the school for consideration. The school may have an SIF which is needed if you are claiming priority as a Catholic. The SIF generally serves no purpose if you are not a Catholic so is not required for non-Catholic applicants. They must consider your application regardless of whether or not they have received an SIF.

Or, how about if you apply to a faith school under the faith criterion you automatically move to the bottom of any list for any non faith school. That would be fair, surely?

Currently schools are not allowed to know which other schools you have applied for, nor are they allowed to know the order in which you placed your preferences. They cannot take this kind of information into account. If you attempted this a lot of grossly unfair practises would creep in and we would be back to the bad old days of parents having to game their preferences instead of simply putting them in their genuine order of preference. And I really don't think that being high up on the admission criteria for one school should result in you being penalised by other schools. I don't see that as in any way fair.

You would be OK with admissions criteria that selected on the basis of race and skin colour then?

No, but I am happy with admissions criteria that select on the basis of sex - single sex schools. Sex and religion are fairly similar in terms of equality law. Discrimination on both grounds is generally illegal. However:

• single sex clubs can refuse to admit people on sex grounds
• religious organisations can refuse to admit people on faith grounds
• employers can refuse to employ people on sex grounds in limited circumstances
• faith employers can refuse to employ people of faith grounds
• schools can refuse to admit people on sex grounds if the school is single sex
• schools cannot refuse to admit people on faith grounds but they can prioritise on faith grounds if the school is a faith school

They must consider your application regardless of whether or not they have received an SIF.

It would be immediately filed under "W" for "wastebasket", phr47bridge. It would be an utterly meaningless exercise.

If they have a vacancy and you are the only person applying they must offer the place to you.

And in London and other cities this is the reason it would be a meaningless exercise - schools are generally oversubscribed. There will never ever be a vacancy at this school that they could not find 100 children of Catholic parents to fill immediately.

The school does not provide the CAP - the local authority provides the CAP.

This is why I think you misunderstood, didn't get a form and didn't apply so you don't know if you would have got a place or not.

I assume your child got a place somewhere - on what form did you apply for that?

It would be immediately filed under "W" for "wastebasket", phr47bridge. It would be an utterly meaningless exercise.

Again schools cannot do that as it would be against the code.

You didn't apply did you? Even though you could have, you didn't.

This gets very dull. It is discrimination and it is discrimination sanctioned by the state. nothing will change my mind and all the bleating about "straw man" arguments just screams "ignorance"

There are local schools that only admit Catholics. It pretty much states this in their admissions criteria where it makes it absolute clear that they over subscribed by applicants who are Catholic. A non catholic cannot attend.

That is discrimination.

Sex and religion are fairly similar in terms of equality law

Whether you agree with it or not, admissions discrimination on the grounds of sex is a much simpler issue. Provided each girls-only school is matched with a boys-only school in the same area (unfortunately not always the case) then all people are at least being treated equally.

As far as I'm aware there are no cases of people giving their children sex-changes just so they can get into their local school! Nor do single-sex schools generally have lists of criteria that determine whether one child is more feminine or masculine than another.

The faith school admissions issue is much more complex because there are many religions, and many degrees of religiosity. It should not be for schools to apply criteria to determine which family is more eligible for a faith school place than another family. If a family wants a faith school place, and applies for a faith school place, they should be ranked by religiously neutral criteria such as distance, not by the frequency with which they go to church, or the type of church they go to, or the date they were baptised, etc etc.

*This gets very dull. It is discrimination and it is discrimination sanctioned by the state. nothing will change my mind and all the bleating about "straw man" arguments just screams "ignorance"

There are local schools that only admit Catholics. It pretty much states this in their admissions criteria where it makes it absolute clear that they over subscribed by applicants who are Catholic. A non catholic cannot attend.

That is discrimination.*

No, it isn't.

If the school published criteria that said you may only attend if you are catholic then it would be. If its criteria are in line with the admissions code they say in event of being oversubscribed we give priority in this order.....

The school does not control how many applicants and of what faith or point on the admission criteria apply in any given year. They can manage expectations and say they're heavily oversubscribed and you can draw conclusions.

One of my local schools is catholic - excellent reputation, heavily oversubscribed but only manage to fill about half its places with catholic and other faith based applicants - rest is feeder schools, siblings and any other based on proximity.

The faith school admissions issue is much more complex because there are many religions, and many degrees of religiosity. It should not be for schools to apply criteria to determine which family is more eligible for a faith school place than another family. If a family wants a faith school place, and applies for a faith school place, they should be ranked by religiously neutral criteria such as distance, not by the frequency with which they go to church, or the type of church they go to, or the date they were baptised, etc etc.

Not sure where you're getting that from.

The criteria may prioritise certain parishes, usually stemming from when the school was set up to serve the local community. It may specify baptised, it may specify practising. Usually there's a form to be signed by the faith leader verifying this.

The criteria will eb specific tot he faith of the school - be it Anglican, CofE, Catholic, Jewish etc.

You didn't apply did you? Even though you could have, you didn't.

t4nut how? Writing it on the side of an elephant and sending the elephant into the playground? Semaphore? Pavement chalk? Interpretative dance from the nearest rooftop?

Elephants and pavement chalk would have got me the same chances as if I'd put it on the regular form without also filling out the school form, which they would not give me - ie zero chance.

Discrimination doesn't stop being discrimination just because you vigorously claim it doesn't exist. You seem very invested in defending religious discrimination, t4nut - why?

t4nut if a local A&E said that sure, it would treat everyone, but Sikhs took priority, and if that A&E was in an area with a lot of Sikhs who were all very accident-prone, so there was never a time when there wasn't a Sikh who could push ahead of non-Sikh you in the queue, so you ended up dying on the pavement, would you claim that wasn't discrimination, too? Because after all the A&E did say they'd treat everyone, and it was just a pity they never got around to treating you.

Most of our primaries are Faith schools, it's only ever a problem when the whole LA has a boom year for admissions.
Usually they take any child whose parents apply as they are mostly under subscribed.
We don't have the same problems for admissions to faith schools as other parts of the country.
The only time parents surprisingly find faith is for a full year throughout the county. This has only happened twice in the past 3o years

t4nut how? Writing it on the side of an elephant and sending the elephant into the playground? Semaphore? Pavement chalk? Interpretative dance from the nearest rooftop?

In the same way you apply for any other school - on the Common Application Form which you get from you local authority (or even through an online portal). Tell me the name of the school and I bet you I can link it here - it'll be the same form you used to apply for the school place you did get.

t4nut if a local A&E said that sure, it would treat everyone, but Sikhs took priority, and if that A&E was in an area with a lot of Sikhs who were all very accident-prone, so there was never a time when there wasn't a Sikh who could push ahead of non-Sikh you in the queue, so you ended up dying on the pavement, would you claim that wasn't discrimination, too? Because after all the A&E did say they'd treat everyone, and it was just a pity they never got around to treating you.

Strawman, irrelevant.

Why is it a strawman, t4nut? What makes that situation any different at all?

Not sure where you're getting that from

t4nut, you are clearly not familiar with the broad range of faith criteria used to "rank" applicants at some faith schools.

Try looking at the Admissions Adjudicator's website and sampling some of the many complex cases that they have dealt with in recent years.

t4nut how? Writing it on the side of an elephant and sending the elephant into the playground?

For the normal admissions round you simply name the school as one of your preferences on your LA's application form. If you are not a Catholic the SIF is irrelevant. The LA will send your application to the school. The school WILL consider it. They have to place the applications in order and return the list to the LA. If the list they send back does not include all the applicants the LA will simply send it back to the school and tell them to try again. You may be near the bottom of the list but you will be on it somewhere.

if a local A&E said that sure, it would treat everyone, but Sikhs took priority, and if that A&E was in an area with a lot of Sikhs who were all very accident-prone, so there was never a time when there wasn't a Sikh who could push ahead of non-Sikh you in the queue, so you ended up dying on the pavement, would you claim that wasn't discrimination, too

That would be illegal discrimination. But you could use the same argument to say that schools should not be allowed to prioritise LAC or siblings. Some schools find that some years they have so many siblings that no-one else gets in.

Why is it a strawman, t4nut? What makes that situation any different at all?

Because its a nonsense argument that has no bearing on reality.

Back to reality - given what looks like happened is you messed up the application process, can you link the school and ill check their admission and application mechanism.

you are clearly not familiar with the broad range of faith criteria used to "rank" applicants at some faith schools

I am. London Oratory, the worst offender by far, has been brought into line. However, it is normal to use regular church attendance as one of the criteria. Some RC churches also prioritise those who were baptised within 6 months of birth as required by canon law. Most faith schools prioritise those of their own faith, so RC schools prioritise RC applicants and CofE schools prioritise CofE applicants. Many, particularly the CofE schools, also give priority to applicants from other Christian denominations.

In essence your comment about religiously neutral criteria is the same as your basic argument that faith schools should not be able to prioritise on faith grounds.

Because its a nonsense argument that has no bearing on reality

If you were designing a school system from scratch, and someone proposed the current system, that would look like nonsense too!

Imagine ... You have 100 four-year-olds on your new planet. 25% of them have no religion, 10% are Roman Catholic , 50% a range of other Christian, 5% Muslim, 2% Hindu, and the remainder a mix of other religions. You have money for two 2-form-entry primary schools. Which option will satisfy the greatest number of people, give the greatest amount of choice, and ensure that everyone has a well rounded education? ...
a) 2 community schools.
b) 1 Roman Catholic school and 1 Church of England School.
c) 1 Roman Catholic School and 1 Community School?

t4nut and the current Government would presumably give the answer b or c!!

strawman

t4nut just repeating "strawman" without offering any supporting argument does not mean something is, in fact, a strawman.

If you give one child automatic rights over another because the parents of that child are a particular religion, or a particular colour, or a particular class, or a particular sex, or a particular sexuality, or any other criteria which the children have no control over, then you are practicing discrimination. It's not hard.

That the discrimination is perfectly legal and longstanding, and that the people who benefit from that discrimination think they are terribly good and moral people, still doesn't stop it being discrimination.