Faith Schools

[AngelEyes46]

On looking through previous threads, there seems to be a lot of controversy about faith schools, practicing the catholic faith, using the system to get into a over subscribed school. What are people's thoughts?

GTheNome - that's what I was trying to say earlier on in this post. Children that go to a non-faith primary school often feed into an outstanding secondary. In my area, secondary RC/CofE schools do not take from a feeder as the admissions is assessed by the families commitment to the faith. Meaning if you would like your child to attend a non-faith school (and maintain faith commitment outside the school), your child is lower priority than many others. Interesting reading from the Guardian though - and it's true that my childrens' schools are low in FSM etc. but not sure why this is!

Re. Faith schools and social class - there are faith schools and faith schools. We have 5 Catholic schools in our borough, 2 at least of which are undersubscribed and have many non-Catholic pupils. Social class is the same mix as neighbouring secular schools - 20% FSM. Middle class Catholics do not consider these as 'good' schools and do not send their kids.

We also have a Catholic school that is one of the best state schools in the country and gets great results. This is the school that is difficult to get into. As soon as you have to actually make an effort to get into a school, its social class is boosted and in this case FSM is only 2%.

If a faith school is willing to admit non-members of its faith, you can bet it's not a very good school.

starlady
surreal the way the system works now
I'm not EU - never have been, never will be, never been asked questions like that, not even been asked to prove my ILR

As soon as you have to actually make an effort to get into a school, its social class is boosted

Ain't that the truth. As soon as you have to jump through some hoop, that's what happens. I've heard it said that the supposed improved quality of faith schools isn't anything to do with their 'ethos', its the the hoop-jumping - if the criterion for priority of admission was by how many balls the parents could juggle then you'd see the same sort of results. Its selection by parental determination.