Admission to Catholic school

[Evuliux]

I just wonder if anyone could advice with re to admission to Catholic school. The main criteria is 'baptised children', however, my little girls is getting baptised in May. We are catholic family, attend parish church(which is linked to the school) regularly, church priest has signed the forms required with re to attendance etc. However, when I took the supplementary forms in I've been told that unfortunately we will be at the bottom of consideration list simply because my little one hasnt been baptised yet. Surely, it would be more important that she would start school in September as baptised child and us attending church regulary and having a date set with the priest etc would be enough of an indication to meet the criteria. Has anyone by any chance had similar experience or have any advice? Many thanks!

Did we ever find out where in the world the OP is from where late baptism is standard?

Our Catholic school is about 30-40% Catholic.
Everyone who had applied as first choice in the last 8 years has got in, except 5 years ago when there was a bumper year, they still managed to get all the catholics and siblings in, just.

The whole country does not look like London and the South East.

Lots of Eastern Europeans locally do baptism of toddlers and then first communion round 8-9. Definite suspicions that the "baptism by 6 months/1 year" policies were brought in to stop the Catholic schools being majority E. European and South American, but I don't know when the South Americans tend to baptise. I do know some Polish parents torn between being expected to go for Catholic schools but not wanting their child in a 80% Polish school given they want their kids to be fluent in English ASAP.

The expectation to baptise infants is as old as the hills and nowt to do with "policy". More to do with getting babies into heaven if they die in infancy.

I thought the purgatory business had been done away with?

Done away with??

I’m Polish and traditionally polish children get baptised by 6 months, defintely not as toddlers
Maybe parents living over here wait a but longer so that they can travel back to the home country to baptise there but it’s not a common practice to wait for baptism.

Yes, Drink, I didn't understand the reference to having to choose a Catholic school or one which was 80% Polish either
Our local schools have a large proportion of Polish children, they all fulfilled the baptism criteria and they're all fluent in English...

You're right, the purgatory nonsense has been "done away with " however, the "get 'em young" idea persists.

I agree that all the Poles I know in school speak English in school. I'm friends with one Polish person and while they go in and out of speaking Polish with their kids at home, they only have English TV and none of their kids can write Polish - spoken only.

Yes, i think the old men with no children finally realised that telling grieving mothers that that their dead newborn babies were going to spend eternity in limbo was kind of inhumane and may have led to suicides so that those same mothers could spend eternity in purgatory with them.

I have never heard of Eastern European Catholics baptizing at 4.

We regularly have Eastern European babies at our church to be baptised. They are around the same age as the rest of them - often before 6 months, usually before 1st birthday.

Ours only requires baptism and they dont check church attendance at all - as I said, the priest wasnt really involved with the school.(just liked to dictate who he would baptise) Even at the family mass there was only ever about 15 families (200+ in the school) and RC friends would admit that they never went apart from school masses that they were expected to turn up at.
It is ALL based on baptism certificates

I doubt that was the reason, raised!

And still no sign of the op

Everyone is aware of the mockery in finding religion at admissions time. So I think some praise is due for op and her innovative idea to instead find a culture that routinely baptises at 4.