A quick question regarding admission to Catholic secondaries

[confusedperson]

Can a child get into Catholic secondary if he attended public (non Catholic) primary?
I understand that child has to take communion but that surely can be done directly through the church, without attending Catholic primary?

The question arises as our local public primary is, in many senses, better than Catholic.. and we are due to make a choice for a primary school...

We have two local catholic secondary schools.

One gives priority to regular RC church attenders irrespective of the primary school they attend.

The other gives priority to regular RC church attenders who attend the local catholic primary schools, and after this to other RC regular church attenders.

Check out the requirements of your local schools.

Check, DD2s RC friend changed to the Catholic primary because it made it easier to get into the oversubscribed RC secondary.

You need to look at the secondary school's admissions criteria. Does it specify feeder RC primary schools? Or worship in particular parishes? Then you can fit your choices to those most likely to put you on the path to the secondary school. (But bear in mind that admissions criteria can change, so nothing is guaranteed).

Thanks! I just checked my local RC secondary school, and it does not mention primary education. It does mention the level of religious commitment, though, like baptism within 12 first months old, regular mass attendance and first communion. I also noticed that quite a number of admitted children were of other faiths, so maybe we do have a chance if decide to go with non-catholic primary.
Thank you for diverting me to the right track of thinking.

"It does mention the level of religious commitment, though, like baptism within 12 first months old"

Ah they don't want Polish kids then - polish baptism usually takes place later than in the UK.

Pick the best primary for your child, things can change before they get to secondary.

sashh: it's a school in the UK so of course it references British practice!

But the effect is not generally exclusive: RC schools are slightly more diverse than the population, and this is usually explained in terms of willingness to accept recent arrivals to UK.

Age of baptism is but one piece of evidence. How important it is will depend on how the criteria are worded and what other evidence is considered.

sashh; the situation about baptism is to discourage parents baptising their children in year 6 just to get into the RC catholic secondary school! In fact RC schools have an excellent track record of accepting children who have recently arrived in the UK, especially Polish children due to their commitment to the RC faith

An RC school also has a percentage of its admission numbers that are from different faiths, each school will publish its own criteria

Op - are your DC catholic?

Im my area the catholic secondary schools have criteria of feeder primary schools first, then baptised catholics at other schools who live in the parish of the feeder primary schools (IYSWIM). But in our area there is no church attendance register as I have heard about on MN on other threads re catholic schools. Also in my local catholic secondary there are 20% non catholics so don't suppose its a big issue here.