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.

T4nut, you're ignoring the population increase.

they're not building anything, these come from a list of available former government/local authority buildings.

Rubbish! You are out of touch. Not enough of those I'm afraid.. In London and elsewhere they're being built in very expensive office blocks and on metroplitan open land.

I'm aware of the London commercial building school which is costing an exhorbitant rent. I am not aware of the government providing direct funding for a free school - you may be thinking of residential developments where the developer has to provide funds/buildings for local infrastructure and services including school facilities as part of the build, and then via local authority sponsors bid to open a free school on the site.

I'm not sure why you think the population increase is a major factor - school numbers expand and contract to allow for that.

And your argument that only faith families get a choice is spurious. Everyone gets a choice - not everyone may get their first choice as is now due to distance, siblings etc but with an increased number of schools comes an increased level of choice.

T4nut, the gvt funds the capital costs of every free school via the Education Funding Agency. Ideally those costs will be minimised by returning existing public buildings, but the supply of those has run dry in many areas, including London. They therefore by commercial property at market rate. If no suitable properties are available they build on open land.

They also fund the running costs. Sponsors are not required to put in any funds at all. (That was only a requirement in the very early days of academies).

I'm not sure why you think the population increase is a major factor - school numbers expand and contract to allow for that.

Currently they aren't expanding fast enough. There are thousands of children in portacabins. There is huge completion for places and an increasing number of people are getting none of their 6 prefernxes, never mind one of their top 3. The system is under huge pressure. New schools release the pressure locally but, can't be opened fast enough in some areas

Every time exclusive faith places .are created they benefit the local faith population, but overall no new space is created if the population is expanding. If you were cabable of understanding a mathematical model you could create one to prove it to yourself. That is the sort of thing people working at the NAO do and they have shown surpluses, and therefore choices, are decreasing not increasing.

T4nut I have skimmed the thread and most of it seems to relate to a very specific technical squabble which I don't quite understand and have no very useful opinion on.

Would you like to explain how it's a misconception and a prejudice to think it's unfair that discrimination against religious people in other areas of life (like the workplace) being illegal doesn't quite stack up with th discrimination that's allowed against non religious people in education?

Given that unless I win the lottery or start going to church my child will have no choice but to go to a very poorly performing school (while a particticing Christian child next door would have a reasonable chance of getting a choice between this one and a very good church school) I would welcome any insight that would show that I have either misunderstood this situation or wrongly interpreted it as a teeny bit unfair.

So non-faith families get the places faith families don't want, and only those places.

Those places are in the schools were the faith families now don't need to apply to (a non-faith school), and that non-faith families probably wanted to apply to as it was their local school for example.

Just because a Catholic family want to apply to the new Catholic school rather than the other non-religious school, doesn't mean that those places are no good places.

If everyone had local schools with a mix of religious and non-religious options then there wouldn't be such a problem, as the case of families that are not religious and live in an area where all schools are Catholic.

The problem is things are more complex than that. It's not only that the schools are faith schools, but what their reputation and Ofsted status is. Otherwise, why are some religious schools so popular that people start attending church and pretending to be religious when otherwise they wouldn't do that. Or in other cases, when the faith schools are actually bad schools, and religious families avoid them and prefer to apply to a non-religious school that would suit the child better from the academic point of view.

There should be more schools to meet the demand and population boom, and all the schools should be good independently from the fact that they are or not religious.

And school places to most emphatically not expand and contract to allow for population increases. School catchments are getting smaller every year round my way, new high density housing is going up every month, and no new schools. One school to my knowledge has expanded to provide more places, but in real terms it's still way behind in the game of catch up that is needed as despite the increased capacity the catchment has still carried on shrinking. For every family benefiting from a new place others have found themselves removed from a catchment they were previously in. And no new schools or other increased capacity to compensate.

My house several years ago was in the catchment for 2 schools, possibly 3 realistically speaking. Now it's only 1. And shrinking every year. At some point I fully expect it not to be in the catchment even for 1 school and for us to have no option but the unwanted dregs of school places from far flung corners of the borough.

Sleepy you're talking about London. What happens in London is do far removed from the rest of the UK its an anomaly.

The key simple point is no one is being discriminated against as no one is prevented or excluded from a faith school. Like every school a faith school has to list priority of admission in event of oversubscription. If a faith school is oversubscribed it gives places first to those of that faith. Just like your local schools give choice first to siblings, distance and feeder schools.

If you want to talk discrimination look at grammar schools as they do exclude and prevent admission.

more choice is a good thing

Faith schools lead to less choice, t4nut, unless you are of that specific faith.

There's five state secondary schools in the borough. If you are Catholic, you have a reasonable chance of getting into any of the five. If you are CofE, you have a reasonable choice of getting into two of them. If you are anything other than Catholic or CofE you will only have a chance of getting into one and a half (because one of the schools is a CofE school which does accept 50% pupils of any faith and none), and you will have to hope for the best as there's a lot of non-Catholic, non-CofE families here.

So, lots of choice if you are Catholic. Little choice if you are not. How is this fair?

No archery, just no....

I don't know how simple I have to make this.

Now there are 5 schools and all have 1000 kids. New school is built. Now there are 6. That's 1 more. You can now choose from 6 schools not 5. More. More choice.

I can't help but think you've got to be trolling to repeatedly have basic things explained to you. Are you?

if the new school is secular, and takes anyone of any faith, then yes, more choice, t4nut. But if it's a faith school, and can fill itself endlessly with children of that faith, it doesn't give others not of that faith any more choice at all.

A dozen extra Catholic schools could open in my borough, and it wouldn't increase my choice, as long as those dozen schools were keener to grab children of Catholic parents from as far away as they needed to fill those schools, rather than accept my child.

you can now choose from 6 schools not 5

And seriously, t4nut, did you miss the bit where three and a half of those five schools will not ever admit my child, so considering them a valid "choice" is meaningless?

"You can now choose from 6 schools not 5. More. More choice"

But if number 6 is an oversubscribed faith school, faith families have a choice of 6 schools they have a chance of getting in to. Non faith families have a choice of 5 they have a chance of getting into.

It's not about how many schools you can apply to. I could apply to a school 200 miles away if I wanted to. It's about schools you have a chance of getting a place at.

It's not about how many schools you can apply to. I could apply to a school 200 miles away if I wanted to. It's about schools you have a chance of getting a place at.

brb, embroidering this on a throw cushion, Bertrand.

Archery/Bertrand you've based your thought process time and again on no-one getting into a faith school other than those of the faith. Nationally this is clearly and openly not true.

Small pockets are. Most ate not. Please revise your thinking outside London where nearly everyone gets their first choice school.

And both - particularly archery - look up confirmation bias.....

So it's OK to have a ridiculously unfair admissions criterion because it is practically never used?

Faith schools will admit anyone who applies. Unless they are oversubscribed.

Yes, the capital city, which has 9 million people, is a "small pocket", and clearly irrelevant to the national discussion.

How sensible a position this sounds.

In a town near us there are 3 grammar schools, boys, girls and mixed. A Catholic high school, a CofE High school. And a non demoninational high school. I could apply to all 6, obviously.

...and quite frankly, I would still be cross if it only affected 9 people, not 9 million+. Religious discrimination in national life is despicable, however many people it affects.

This does make me wonder, though - if this religious discrimination will only ever be used in outlier cases and "small pockets" (like, er, London), why the political push to ensure it can happen wholesale in new schools, too? Why entrench the right to discriminate on religious grounds if nobody has any real plans to use it?