Going to church to get DS into school?

[ChocOrange05]

I am not a Catholic, I was confirmed CoE but as a young teenager (because my friends were). I am not a religious person, I guess I would consider myself an Agnostic.

Anyway, DS is 17mo and I have been thinking about the whole schools debate and one of the best in our area is a Catholic school.

Is it wrong for me to consider going to church and getting DS baptised, just to get into a good school?

Has anyone else done this? What were your experiences?

TIA!

Could I just say that there seems a lot of confusion over exactly who pays for catholic or CofE aided school education.

The bottom line is that every catholic and CofE aided school gets funded using the same funding structure as any other school in the Local Authority. There is no difference.

Where there is a difference is in capital funding, where faith schools have to contribute 10% of the funding. That is the money that is asked for by the school or the church and, usually, ends up going to the diocese who lump all the contributions together and then use it for financing the capital funding requirements within the diocese.

Those schools that talk about the need for extra funding because they do not get the same level of general funding are simply not being honest with their parents. If they and any other school for that matter, want extra money then they can ask their parents to donate it but please lets at least be honest about it!

The money thing is a complete red herring. First, first Catholics pay taxes. Second, 30 per cent of kids in Catholic schools are non-Catholic. Third, if Catholic kids were in community schools there's a 10 per cent capital budget cost to LAs.

It is the different philosophy of education that is the difference between schools run by LEAs and by the church, the latter mainly protecting a different ethos (though this is under attack) which drives different educational outcomes inc but not limited to academic results.

When both main parties are talking about having different providers of education - not just the LEA - wouldn't it be bizzare to kick out a provider of education services (the various dioceses) who mostly do a good job.

IMO Faith schools are often the best schools in an area because they operate as part of a much wider community, and the community provides a set of behaviours that then get adopted by the children as they grow up and it is this re-validation of certain behaviours that results in the schools operating in perhaps a more effective way in terms of providing a stable environment for the children. Thus leading to a good educaitonal experience.

And the problem that I have with non-religious people going through the motions is that they seem to want their children to benefit from the outcomes but not necessarily for the parents to actually contribute to all the extra-curricular stuff that is needed to really be part of the community bit (generally they intend to drop the pretence once their child gets in).

Where we live half the locals do not believe in God, but still troop to church every Sunday, because it is the right thing to do for the area. And it is done willingly and not for any schooling reasons and that is fine - I live in the sticks in an area where many families have lived here for generations and people feel that the community spirit drops if we stop going to church. For me church is about what you put in just as much as what you take out (even more so for catholic communities) and that is the bit that I think people don't always take into account in these discussions - if you want to benefit from a religious school then you should be makign a commitment not necc to 'God', but to a way of life that involves being active and supportive in a community for a long period of time. Anything else is hypocritical

chocorange you say you would send DS to any school regardless of faith - but really?

Would you want your child to learn, not that some people believe this and others believe that (they will get that at any school and rightly so) but "this is what you must believe, this is what we all believe" - if thatwere Judaisim and you were not Jewish (substitute relevant faith)???

I agree with others, there are often threads on MN from parents who are not Catholic, or who pay it lip service, whose DC are at Catholic schools and are annoyed by how much prayer etc there is, how their DC are coming home telling them about Jesus and Hell and Damnation etc.

The money thing is not a red herring. Religious people are not subject to any extra taxes and yet they get extra school choices that exclude the non-religious.

When there are state schools that can exclude you for being religious, THEN it will be a red herring.

It is really very unchristian to be in favour of a system just because it suits you when it is manifestly unfair.

If Catholics (or people of any other faith) want to have their own special schools that nobody else can go to, then they should pay for all of the cost of that.

Clary what I mean is, yes I would send my DS to a school of any faith, as long as that school was able to teach their beliefs without making them sound like the only way IYSWIM. In reality I see, from responses here, that this is not how it works.

OP, as the product of a Catholic education myself and firmly aetheist as a result, the answer seems simple. Find a "good" non church school (by visiting all the ones in your area and not being swayed by Ofstead reports and Sats results) and get your DCs educated without exposing them to the religious doctrine that you don't believe in.

yes chocorange, I see you said that in the earlier post, sorry.

Why skidoodly? Catholics pay taxes as well. You know what, if others like the look of the schools let them do something about it. Why do you think it's always the Catholic schools that are fought over? The difference in the Catholic schools is exactly that and the school with an influx of non catholic children will be like any other. Then what was good about the school, whatever it is, is gone. So no one is happy. Good idea that. I'm getting just a bit sick of the bleating on here about this. Do something about it. Get involved with your local school instead of just sitting back and whitering on about the unfairness of it all. Even on MN there are plenty of tax payers who are happy with faith schools so there you go. To be blunt, deal with it.

Don't do it. You'll never stick it. And if you do, you'll have to sit on your hands and bite your lip for the next 16 years when your child comes home from school with stories of Christ on the Cross and Jesus Dying For Your Sins.

Wouldnt you rather pay for a private tutor ?

The faith schools aren't markedly better round here, except by virtue of their location - lots in nice rural villages where all the schools are 'good'. So the only reason for playing the pew game is to be sure of getting into the one you can walk to.

Dunno how to deal with that.

Our nearest school (with an excellent reputation) is Jewish. No, I did not consider contacting the Beth Din re conversion, nor putting my child's name down for that school (even though we could have got a place there). We are Catholics and I put down only Catholic schools and the nearest one we got was 3 parishes away (5 miles).

If we were CE, then I would have sent my child to the local CE school (much nearer and also excellent!)

We chose our school based on the ethos and atmosphere that I thought was best for my child, not league table results.

you would have to be prepared to convert to catholic to get your child baptised catholic. as other people have said you would have to continue going to mass practising your faith and bear in mind that a lot of oversubscribed catholic primary and secondary school give priority to earliest dates of baptism and as many catholics have babies baptised -ie not toddlers think you would be down in order of over subscription criteria. If you are successful then you would have to be prepared to support your child and school in teachings of the roman catholic faith sacraments of reconciliation and first holy communion then when older confirmation. it is as you can see a commitment and way of life not something you do just to get your child into a good school.another route you could consider is to start to go back to your church lots of catholic schools do accept other faiths although obviously higher priority given to catholics but in my DD school there are a few practising CE children

With the introduction of league tables and ofsted reports it quickly became clear that faith school were outperforming our community schools in the majority of areas. Hence the sudden interest from parent's with no religous faith. This is an understandable reaction as we all strive for the very best for our children and looking at a league table who wouldn't want their child in the best performing school if at all possible.

What our Government, education system and ourselves the parent's should be doing is asking 'Why are these schools consistantly outperforming our community schools in all areas? Simply by saying these schools shouldn't exist as they are unfair is not the answer. The truth is without the high standards these schools achieve our education system would be seen as a complete failure and our Government knows this. The sooner we address the problems our society is facing in this country the better, as this is where I believe the startling differences between the majority of faith and community schools have been born. Obviously there will always be exceptions and I am aware there are many hundreds of excellent community schools in the UK but sadly not enough.

My simple observations are as follows:

1. Faith schools do not select on ability so we cannot say they are cherry picking to get the brightest children and up their exam results.

1. Faith schools are open to children of all economic backgrounds so we cannot say the children attending are all privileged with tutors and extra curriculum activities at their fingertips. Faith schools have a similar % of low income families with hardship difficulties as community schools. Catholic schools do request a donation each year to the school governers fund from each family but there will be many families unable to contribute at certain times.

1. Faith schools also share the same challenges caring for children with SN and increasingly pupils with English as a second language so again we cannot say they have an advantage over community schools.

1. The Head Teachers and teaching staff are of an equal standard in faith and community schools with their incentives and remuneration on an equal parr.

From what I can see, the only difference between our faith and community schools is the Faith/Religious aspect. I can only speak of the Christian/Catholic ethos that many mock and regard as being from the dark ages. Here the family is regarded in the highest esteem with the role of Mother and Father of equal importance to raising well balanced children who go on to have successful fulfilling lives. We as Christians try to live by a moral code and instill that in our children. We are not saints and life is not always a bed of roses but there is a framework to strive to live by. I am in no way trying to preach to anyone but just from my experiences it seems our society is losing this moral framework - children having children, children living in one parent homes, generation after generation living on full time benefits with no role models within the family to aspire to. I am fully aware that there will be many successful and happy families who have no religous faith but I think we have to get real and see that that the way also of children are being raised in this country will and does have an impact of the performance of our schools. You can send a child to the best school in the country and throw all the money in world at him or her but without a strong supportive family to nurture and guide them along the way they are sadly almost destined to fail.

Sorry for rambling

and to answer the op question, No I wouldn't think it would be a good idea to enrol your child in a faith school if you did not agree with it's principal teachings. It would seem quite pointless and very confusing for your child in the long run.

No need to say "these schools shouldn't exist". It is perfectly possible for them to exist while using same admissions criteria as their Community School neighbours. A school does not have to have 100% RC pupils to have an RC ethos. Independent, voluntary controlled and undersubscribed voluntary aided RC schools all take non-Catholic pupils and seem to survive.

Regarding the relative performance of RC and community schools, in my area the two Voluntary Aided RC schools do indeed outperform the community schools. They also have far lower numbers of pupils with SENs, smaller class sizes, far fewer pupils entering the school with little or no English (particularly after the foundation stage), and fewer numbers of pupils eligible for free school meals. It's really not rocket science to see why they apparently do so well.

Coll

You're quite right that the best thing for a child is a strong family. But for those who don't have that - shouldn't the church schools be opening their arms to such unfortunate children, rather than discriminating against them because of the shortcomings of the parents?

Having recently been through secondary admissions and so perusing admissions criteria, I was quite shocked to see that in our LEA, while community, VC and VA CofE schools all gave first priority to 'looked after children' and second to children with special medical or social need whose needs could only be met by that school - the catholic VA schools all give first priority to baptised catholic looked-after children, with other looked after children not till number 5 or later(after all Catholic children) and no mention at all of medical or social need.

You are nuts (but understand why you would want to get your DC into a good school)

But probably you are too late anyway

Our education system is deeply flawed. Can you imagine trying to explain this to a visiting Belgian?

'Here in the UK we have to start professing a long-held belief in superstitious nonsense in order to get a halfway decent education.'

Madness

I wouldn't do it myself. It would mean my child would be practicing something I don't believe in myself and would be at odds with what we beleive in and do at home. From talking to friends round here who attend the over subscribed catholic schools you need to have your child baptised within the first few months of life and attend church for 3/4 sundays per month and be involved in church for at least 2 years before you even apply to schools. Both schools I refer to have a very heavy emphasis on catholicism rather than the C of e school I went to where we said the Lords prayer once a day and attended the church across the road a couple of times a year. The schools also lead into local catholic secondary schools which have equally strict admission criteria which means you could be trying to keep up this pretence for years unless you opted out of catholic schools at secondary level. I can understand you looking at the results and wanting your child to go the one with the best results or best ofsted but there really is more tO schools than that. The school I picked for DD wasn't the best in terms of results (but not bad either) and had a good ofsted compared to another local school which had an outstanding but I had a really good feeling about it. I also think you need to look at the reason why the catholic school may be performing well. I am not saying it will be the case with everyone but for the most part I think it will be middle class parents who are prepared to jump thorough church-shaped hoops to get their DCs into school. Its well known that children from middle class families tend to do better than children from working class families in terms of school. You also have a fair bit of time. I have seen a school round here go from failing to outstanding within a few years so things do change very quickly if your other local schools aren't very good.

'I am not saying it will be the case with everyone but for the most part I think it will be middle class parents who are prepared to jump thorough church-shaped hoops to get their DCs into school. Its well known that children from middle class families tend to do better than children from working class families in terms of school.'

Our local Catholic school has 25% EAL and a significant proportion of working class families. Where do you think Polish plumbers, Filippino careworkers and Irish brickies send their children? Not that we're into stereotyping on mumsnet.

I don't think it's hypocritical because often people do it because there's no alternative school which is GOOD.

The system forces people to be hypocritical.

That said, if there is a good school which is non religious and it just happens to be a bit bigger, a bit further away, a bit less villagey, then I would go for that, because believe me when they start coming home from school and asking you questions about jesus and so on, it's a bit hard for a mother who's not sure she believes to answer them, don't know how I'd stomach those awkward questions if I was 100% certain i didn't believe.

Irish brickies usually bring up their families in Ireland and go back and forth. I know of people who did this. they can send their children to french/violin/ballet lessons in Ireland and nobody will wrinkle up their nose and wonder, who would have thought? It's quite unusual for 'an irish brickie' to have a young family in london. Over here, 'Daddy working away for the good of his family" would be seen as a family-orientated sacrifice. My cousin who is a quantity surveyor worked on a building site when he was about 24, for the experience. He let everybody pigeon-hole him because it was part of the experience he wanted. He also earned more money in one summer than his two suited brothers were earning at the time. Not now though I bet.

Zepherine, I do not see the point of a RC VC school if the majority of pupils are not being raised in a catholic home, which is what would happen if they were forced to apply the same criteria as community schools. I believe the main reason they are apparantly more successful is because of the family faith and home life and church guidance. Without this they are exactly the same as a community school. With regard to your second point, is it not the 'value added' column in the league tables that takes into account all these factors. Going by these figures the faith schools still appear further up the table than most community schools. So no it's not rocket science that faith does play a big part in the success of these schools.

Grimma, yes in an ideal world the catholic church should be opening up it's arms to unfortunate children and it is doing this all over the world by the work of it's missions creating and providing education and health for thousands of children who would otherwise have nothing. In this country if the catholic church tried to do this with children born of non catholics, they would demonised as trying to brainwash and indoctrinate. The same applies to your point re 'looked after' children and why they are placed so low down on the criteria for your local RC school. I believe this is because our laws in this country state that looked after children must be raised in accordance to their birth families religion/heritage. Therefore the school/local authority would be breaking the law by teaching the child along the catholic ethos. The local authority would not allow this to happen. It is different with many COE schools as they are often (due to falling numbers of church goers) just COE in name only and are run in exactly the same way as a standard community school so this issue would not apply.

Goblinchild, workinng class children are no disadvantage to a school. Nor are the children of Polish bricklayers or Filipino careworkers. But if you only admit to a school the children of parents who are organised enough to get the whole family to church every Sunday, make themselves known to the priest and sign the register, you have found a very efficient way of excluding a large number of children from chaotic or disconnected families, who then all become the responsibility of the neighbouring community schools.

(Btw 25% EAL would be a very low figure indeed where I live, so we obviously have experience of quite different situations.)

coll - I myself went to an RC school where around 50% of pupils were non-Catholic. It was still a thoroughly Catholic school with mass twice a week etc. The church prides itself on being "the only organisation that exists for the benefit of its non-members", but I'm afraid the situation with VA schools admissions makes this look like a big stack of bullshit.

There seems to be a long held myth in this country that children in catholic schools come mainly from middle class well to do families. Whilst there probably are some very rich parishes in some places of the uk, the majority will be made up of a diverse mix of people from many different nationalities. Many of these parish's came about between the 1920's to 1950's to serve the growing Irish communities who settled here. These church's were built (literally) and paid for by their community and were formed in very working class areas. After the church's were built so came the schools. These catholic schools today are made up a large proportion of working class families of many different nationalities. My daughter's school has 39 different languages spoken and her classmates heritage made up of Irish, English, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Sri Lankan, Indian, Nigerian, Scottish, Latvian, Brazilian, West Indian, Fillopino - the list goes on. I can assure you not all families in catholic schools are middle class. The one common denominator most of our families have is their faith and their belief. And yes, there are alot of Irish 'brickies' still here! They may now run their own companies but they are still here supporting their parish!