Catholic school

[purpleme12]

Is a catholic school lots better than a normal school? my little girl is not due to start school til next September but to be honest I'm worried shitless about the whole thing.

I don't think Catholic schools do have to take non-Catholics as a quota - they only need to be prepared to admit them if the school is under-subscribed by Catholics. At my kids (very over-subscribed) Catholic school, the parish priest has to sign a form that states you have weekly mass attendance for at least 3 years. Priority is given to siblings, then it's by distance to the school. There are never enough places for the practising Catholic children of the parish, so children of other faiths have no chance of getting in.

Allthebestnamesareused that may have been the situation at your school but it is certainly not the situation at most Catholic schools. The three closest Catholic schools to us are so over-subscribed that they never get far enough down the criteria to take more than a few non-Catholics (or sometimes none at all). Makes no difference to their funding whatsoever.

I have dealt with 2 Catholic primary schools & 3 Catholic Secondary schools & in all honesty I've met some amazing staff.

But with my younger dc (ASD & ADHD) It was disgraceful how we were treated.

I have a 3 year old that hasn't even been Christened after my experience of Catholic schools !!

I am baptised RC but don't practice and we actually moved to avoid being in a catchment for any religious-connected school.

I prefer DD to learn about religion in an objective way, this will not happen in an RC school. We have one nearby and my friend, a practicing RC, refuses to send her children there due to the heavy handed way they teach religion and science. This obviously varies from school to school but you need to check carefully how schools teach.

My DD goes to a non-connected school and even this school has the duty of including a daily act of worship into each day. The infant section did it a lot more, it was part of the daily assembly while the junior one is less heavy. RE is taught as a subject but covers all major religions, they normally do it in connection with festivals or events like Ramadan for Islam, Hannukah for Judaism, Diwaili for Hinduism etc. So check how this is covered in any RC school.

Before you go any further you need to read the admission rules and check how many non-RC children are admitted per year. If you don't have a chance look for a good school, religion can be taught via the church, Sunday school etc as well.

My local Catholic schools, both junior and senior, only admit non Catholics if they are undersubscribed, which is never. There is no % that must be allowed, as if there was, it would mean Catholics not getting a place, which defeats the object of the school.