Likelihood on getting into CoE on distance?

[babycorn123]

Much as the title says...

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts. Single form entry, need to fill in SIF on application. Unfortunately what with one thing and another, we haven't managed to do the whole church attendance at least twice a month for two years thing.

School is 0.13 miles away... is it worth still applying? And if so, what do I do about the SIF, I can't exactly return it half blank!

Thanks.

Just to add, nobody has been to church twice a month for two years for the last two years because they’ve been shut. Unless they are counting watching online services as attendance?

I was thinking this too. I think if you’re a regular church goer, then online services will be enough for your minister to sign the letter. If you’ve been a regular church attender prior to covid, I can’t see you being penalised for a pandemic!

It depends on the school admissions policy. My ds1 secondary has to be weekly attendance for 7 years -main criteria. After that distance. You can live on top of the school, have 3 siblings in school and go to church for 6 years and you still won't get in. You can live 50 miles away and if you apply and have the 7 years they will take you. The only exemption are cared for children.

You need to check the order of criteria and it should be clearer.

VC schools have their admissions arrangements entirely arranged by the LA. Although it would be legal to have faith places, in general they don't

@meditrina

VC schools have their admissions arrangements entirely arranged by the LA. Although it would be legal to have faith places, in general they don't

My DDs school is VC cofe and religion is a criteria but it says any religion and although theres an SIF the headteacher says they're only checked if the school is oversubscribed and it hasn't been over subscribed at all in the last 5 years so it's pretty useless, I was going to do ours as the vicar knows me but forgot and we still got in.

As you can see, it very much depends on the school and how oversubscribed it is.

@babycorn

Well I would say more 'lapsed' Christians... I mean, I was baptised and went to church as a kid, but that's not going to cut it, is it?

So, any church attendance would have been purely to get your child onto a CofE school?

As you can see, OP, it's impossible to make any assumptions or guesses. I oversee admissions at a small rural VA CofE primary, and due to local changes I couldn't predict with any accuracy how many or what type of families will apply for next year's intake. In our case, I'd be surprised if any applied on faith grounds, since they hardly ever do, but it's a very different picture elsewhere.

We are not in this position (our DCs are older, though one briefly went to a CofE school that was based on EHCP) but during the pandemic we helped our church out by putting together mailings for members who couldn't access online services. So I imagine that's the kind of thing they would be looking for.
For secondary school entrance (more crucial in our area) children who had already been going to church before lockdown, families who contributed like we did, families that contributed to the online services (we recorded a prayer with DD).

Not necessarily. My CofE (VC)! junior school uses the LA admissions criteria. The word “faith” isn’t in it at all. No mention of faith. There are no faith places and no faith in the admissions policy. Thank God!