..anybody got experience of appealing AGAINST place in a faith school?

[LittlePushka]

has anybody specified on their common application form for the LEA to respect their religious views and NOT allocate a particular faith school. OR, if you were offered a place in a faith school, which is not your faith or to which you object on grounds of your own belief, does anybody have any experience of appealed aginst the offer with this as a ground?

I would be very grateful if you would post any thoughts on your experiences (as all of the other posts seem to be folk wanting to get INTO the local faith school not out of it!)

There is no process for appealing against an offer for the simple reason that you can just reject the offer. You can only appeal for a place at a school which has refused to admit your child.

If you've been offered a place at a faith school and don't want it, I would suggest that your first step is to contact the LA and ask them which schools still have places.

There is absolutely no reason why you could not appeal on this basis. I would have to say this would be a first in my experience, everybody else is falling over themselves to get into a faith school.

However you do need to be careful about what you mean by a faith school. Is it a VA school, where the school is the admission authority or is it a VC school where the admission authority is the local authority? If it is the later I am sure that the LA woud argue at appeal that it is really only the same as a community school, which still has to have collective worship everyday by law. They would also say that you could opt out of the assembly. I know this happens at a catholic primary near me, where some of the kids are not practicising catholic.

Your chances of winning? No idea in all honesty.

Thank you for your replies and for taking the time to post.

I will be offered a place at my local vc Cof E school which is not agreeable to us on faith grounds. The school is known to have a very evangelical interpretation of collective worship, amongst other things. The next closest schools to us are all oversubscribed and as we live nine miles from the next nearest one I expect to have to appeal refusals for all three.

One of my grounds will be that in allocating a C of E school, the LEA has not taken into account my request in the common application form NOT to allocate a C of E school on grounds of my beliefs and has therefore acted in a discriminatory way and contrary to the right for respect of faith, association and religious beliefs .

I wondered if anybody had experience of using this ground in the appeal process.

Have you thought about sending her to the local C of E school and excluding her from worship? We are atheists and send our children to our nearest school which is C of E because there is so many benefits to going to a local school. We do not find the religious aspect so instrusive to be honest and have found that because of our influence at home my older child questions rather than accepts what he is told.

I think you've got reasonable grounds for an appeal to your local schools. Your chance of winning depends on whether or not it is an infant class size appeal.

As IngridFletcher says, you do have the option of excluding your child from collective worship. That isn't ideal, especially if it leaves him/her feeling like the odd one out, but it is something to think about.

You can clearly appeal for another community school and you can state that the reason you do not want your local school is that it is a Church of England school.

But any appeal for the nearest community school (9 miles away) may be infant class size as PRK says and in my opinion the admission authority (LA) would not have made a mistake in not taking your wish not to have a CofE school into consideration as it is not actually an admission criteria. You will therefore not win any such appeal.

If it is not an infant class size appeal then you can clearly argue that you do not want a VC school. But when it comes to part two of the appeal, I would expect the LA to argue that as a VC school there is no difference to the community school.

You should also realise that there will be no help with transport if the local school is available.

I think that your best bet is to go to the local school and simply opt out of religous situations.

If you want to appeal I think the humanist society has a campaign about this sort of thing, they could probably advise.

You might find though that a "community school" has quite a lot of faith input anyway, our local school (the only one nearby) is a community school and the evangelical vicar takes regular assemblies and an evangelical group run an after school club. A community school in the UK isn't going to be actually secular, just a bit more so, on average, than a church school.

Thanks again for your helpful input. I have genuinely thought of excluding but it is a tiny village school - less than 40 pupils in whole school. Excluding would appear to solve the problem immediately. But, I am very wary of making DS's (who will be only one school year apart, and taught together) the "odd boys" in the school IYSWIM. The school is very closely linked to the church, right next door and the school /church thing goes hand in hand in this village. (No critisism of that per se, just not for us)

My thinking goes along the line of the LEA must take into account our right to ensure that DC education conforms with our own religious or philosophical beliefs and convictions. And exclusion from worship is, in this case, impractical and uneconomic for the school and would have a discriminatory and adverse effect on pupil.

Taking this into consideration in any appeal i would have to ask the panel not to effectivley "force" DC to be educated at this school. Appeal on distance for any of the next three closest schools(all around nine miles away) would be on the basis that refusal to admit is unreasonable - as an offer to a fourth school makes distance EVEN further away(12 miles) which is perverse in light of the admission criteria.

Appeal on class size would be of course more difficult I know.

School transport provision is not an issue for us, we are able to take DS's ourselves to wherever they will need to go.

As prh already said, you do not appeal to not take up a place (there is no such thing as an appeal AGAINST a school in these circumstances). You reject the offer then appeal FOR the schools you want.

You certainly won't be "forced" to educate your son at a faith school if you don't want it. Your LEA can allocate you any non-faith school within their district (regardless if whether you wantthat school or not) and they have fulfilled their statutory obligation.

In my area you would never be allocated a faith school if it wasn't on your list of preferences - if you don't get one if your "choices" you get allocated the nearest non-faith school that does have places. Are you sure you would be allocated the C of E school if you don't put it on your form?

Is it worth finding out if other families at the school have asked their dcs not to take part in the optional RE bits? I went to a faith school where it was the only school in the town and there were several families of different or no religion and their dcs just went to the library during RE (RE not compulsory there/then)

You can decline the place.

You can then appeal against the schools you want your DC to go.

But if you are further away etc that the people they took it might be quite hard.

I'm not clear why the LEA must take into account that your DC education conforms etc... eg if I was a CofE school but don't met the criteria as I haven't been to church enough I will not get a place.

Thanks again for the responses. I know I wont be appealling against faith school as such, though in appealling against a decision not to allocate one of my choices I will need to state why the local school is unsuitable

The LEA are required by law to take into account religious beliefs.

DecorHate,..no I am not sure they would allocate the faith school really, its just that they have said that it is my normal area school and if I do not put it on my form and they cannot offer any of my choices I will be allocated the nearest school with places in accordance with admission critera, which effectively would be back to local C of E school as it is not oversubscribed. (Sort of a catch 22) However, its a really good point and I will specifically check whether the nearest school includes faith schools or not.

"The LEA are required by law to take into account religious beliefs."

As far as I am aware that statement is wrong. There are suggestions that admitting a child from a non-Christian family to a church school may be a form of religious discrimination and/or against the Human Rights Act but there is no case law. At least one appeal has been won on grounds of religion or belief citing human rights legislation but that doesn't carry any legal weight.

I'm willing to be corrected if I am wrong but there I certainly can't see anything in the School Admissions Code requiring the LA to take account of religious beliefs. I can, on the other hand, see provisions preventing faith schools from discriminating against children of other faiths or no faith.

Sorry - "but there I" should be "but I" - must proofread before posting...

there is a section in the admission code that relates to LA taking account of parent's "religious or philosophical convictions", but on the basis that it it doesn't cost too much to do so, still better than nothing

Appendix 1
"Human Rights Act 1998

1. The Human Rights Act 1998 confers a right

of access to education. This right does not extend to securing a place at a particular school.Admission authorities, however, do need to consider parents? reasons for expressing a preference when they make decisions about the allocation of school places, to take account of the rights of parents under the Act, though this may not necessarily result in the allocation of a place. These might include, for example, the parents? rights to ensure that their child?s education conforms to their own religious or philosophical convictions (so far as is compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and the avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure)."

Do you know the reason why your child was turned down for your preference school(s)?

Did you name the local Cof E school as one of your choices?

How would you feel if you were allocated a poorly performing non-faith school instead of your local CofE one? This could happen if other people better meet the admissions criteria at the good non-faith schools.

Might be worth thinking again about going to the local CofE & withdrawing from collective worship. My son has always attended CofE schools (state & independent) with children of other faiths and no faith, although I aknowledge it would be difficult if you disagreed with the faith / teachings.

Pushka, the BHA should be able to help you. There's a relevant FAQ here 'My child has been allocated to a Church (or other "faith") school, and as a humanist, I don't want my child to have a Christian education - what can I do?
'

Hope that helps.

You really are a great bunch - thank you again for your ideas and comments - and of course,Grimma, for the link.

lady lapsang,..it is almost certain that virtually every other child will better meet the admissions criteria! We live in a super sparse rural area. the irony is that we will probably be out of the running on the basis that we live too far away and could be offered an alternative five miles further away...which if it was a c of E school will be a double whammy.

Just a small point, but there is a difference between actively choosing to abstain from religion and simply not following a religion. I would have thought that you would have a very slim chance in appealing on the grounds that you don't follow a religion, as opposed to appealing on the grounds that you actively abstain from religion, IYSWIM. So you need to be clear about why you don't want the CofE school.

thanks lou, I see your point. I am happy that there are specific good and valid reasons why a C of E school is not agreeable to us.