Ok, first of all, this thread is not an attack on any religion. I’m not here to debate the rights/wrongs/truth or facts about anyone’s beliefs. I’m merely asking for advice especially from people who have been in this situation before.
My husband and I moved from a large town so we could raise our daughter in the countryside/village atmosphere. Part of the allure was the small village type schools which we are lucky enough to be surrounded by two good/outstanding rated ones.
Our daughter started in September and when we went to visit, the head showed us round and we asked him how our atheist beliefs fit in with the C of E teachings and philosophies.
We are aware that every school must follow the national curriculum but we essentially wanted to know how religious it would be there on a day to day basis.
The head advised us that even though it’s a small school only about five families are practicing christians and they have a small prayer corner in each classroom because they have too and anything else is essentially, tick boxing. A child/family could be as religious or non religious as they wanted without it being thrown down our necks.
In the past few months I’m starting to get a different insight into it though.
They have assemblies where parents can go and it’s very religious. One of the teachers is a devout Jehovah’s Witness yet she presumably (given the age group she looks after,) teaches science and yesterday my daughter came out with ash on her forehead.
Now look, before anyone says “it’s a c of e I don’t know what you expected” please remember I never went to this type of school. This is my only child so I have no experience of this sort of thing and the school wasn’t quite sold to us in this way.
I’m just wondering if anyone else is an atheist and sends their kid to a Christian school and how they deal with these sorts of things?
Thank you xx