Success stories in getting into catholic secondary school with delayed baptism? (London school madness)

[littlecrystal]

That is really the question. We are located somewhere in between of John Fisher, St. Joseph?s and Bishop Thomas Grant. Based on Good Schools Guide website we would stand a fair chance to get into all of them IF DS was baptized ?on time?. Now, I am not sure as DS was baptized at 17 months. We can try and explain our reasons, but it will not be anything straightforward ? basically we had a very difficult life at the time including eviction from our home (due to fault of landlords, not ours), my depression (only diagnosed around baptism time but dragged since the difficult birth of DS), no friends and family around for support, immigration issues for DH, poor DH?s health (only diagnosed after the baptism so no clear evidence before the baptism) etc. I am so stressed that the admissions will not accept any of the reasons and we will fall under the late baptism category and will lose our chance to go into a catholic secondary. Should we even bother applying?

Thank you!

Our son was baptized at 14 months. The reason was that my father had a stroke when I was 7 months pregnant, and we could not get our heads around arranging a baptism when we were busy trying to support mum, and make alterations to her house to get a wheelchair user home. Also my dad was in a very bad way, stayed in rehabilitation for 6 months, nearly died, needed blood transfusions, came home and had to be tube fed directly into tummy, etc. It just was not on our minds at all. I wrote a lengthy explanation to all the schools, he was offered places at none, even though our priest stated there were compassionate reasons to offer my son a place.

I hear depression is the only acceptable reason, so if you can document the depression (it has to be documented) you could be in with a chance.

QuintessentialOHara sorry to hear about your experience. It sounds really harsh.

A "chance" sounds not good enough to me. I am afraid I really cannot avoid moving home due to this reason :(

I am not far from BTG, St Joseph or La Retraite.

Where, traditionally, do the leavers from your son's primary go? Is it a feeder school (you can ask the PSHE teacher or head)?

To be totally honest, they seem to want model people, with straight foreword lives. Not people who have gone through a lot of shit, unless of course they have managed to put a baptism ahead of all problems and adversity and get on with it. At the end of the day, what good is a Faith school if there is no compassion and no empathy? Maybe at the end of the day it is not so much about the school choosing to reject my son, but the school giving us a chance to see that this is not the school for us!

This is completely off-topic (maybe I should start a new thread) but is part of the problem that people in this country see baptism as an "event" and something which needs to be arranged in advance, with a party, new clothes etc while faith school admissions criteria treat baptism as a religious sacrament and one which can be done, if you wish, without a lot of fuss? I understand why people want to make a celebration of the occasion but I am not British and in my home country lots of the reasons for delaying baptism here (moving, illness etc) are reasons why people would actually hurry to get the baptism organised. So if i was a hard-nosed admissions authority I might take the line that you could have marked the occasion with a party at any time but the important bit was getting to the church one Sunday and having the ceremony carried out without any major fuss?

The one thing you shouldn't say, from what I have heard, is that you delayed the baptism because the child was ill. The argument would be that this should have made you baptise earlier rather than later- your priest could have baptised your child at home or in the hospital.

Sorry- massive Xpost.

Yes, annh, that's the point I was making too; a child with serious health issues would usually be baptised before they'd even left the hospital, the fact that frends and family would consequently miss out on a "celebration", which as you say could have happened anyway independently of the christening, wouldn't be an issue.

Yes, I think there are definitely two viewpoints on baptism nowadays, one which is religious and one which is much more secular. The idea of it being a big celebration is surely relatively recent, isn't it? I know when I was born (yes, back in the dark ages according to my children) it wasn't usual for even the mother to attend the ceremony because it happened so quickly. I was born on a Monday and baptised the following Sunday as part of the normal church service! Mum was at home recovering. When ds2 was born, my dad was very ill and we scrambled to get over to my home country for the baptism as neither of my parents could ever have travelled. DS2 was baptised at 10 weeks, the downsides were that the catering wasn't great, it was a small occasion and I hadn't lost the baby weight so struggled to find something flattering to wear. The upside is that my dad couldn't make it out of bed but participated by radio link to the church, we have some precious photos of him with ds2 on the day, and when he died 2 months later he had at least had an opportunity to meet his grandchild in a ceremony which was important to him.

Now I think I might have completely derailed this thread , as you were, everyone!

It could be a cultural thing. I am from Norway and DH from Poland, we live in London, and both sets of families were putting pressure on for marking the occasion.

Probably, Quint. But you can see why delaying the baptism for 17 months because you were essentially too busy to organise a party doesn't really wash as an excuse, can't you?

Flogginmolly, you have twisted what I said totally on its head, and trivialized my fathers stroke.
Aside from that, we did not actually have a party.
Just the ceremony. But family wanted to be present. So we needed to fly in family from Poland and London, to Norway, so that my parents could be present, as they could not fly anywhere. It was an important religious occasion where our son was "written into the big book of God" We did have a small blessing performed with our parish priest when our son was a few months old, because we knew the baptism would be delayed. This was just us and the priest.

One of my BFs is a governor at a very VERY oversubscribed Catholic school in London. They use the Vatican II cut off of baptism by 6 months, because 'nothing should be more important than baptising your baby'.

I was a bit , but I guess they have to use something to draw the first line.

Kingscote, I agree. I understand that the biggest measure of your devoutness is that you follow canon law, and this is the best way of weeding out those who turn to Faith the year before their child starts school.

It does however eliminate those who may just be disadvantaged, or have grown up in a culture where late baptisms are ok. I am brought up Lutheran and there are no hard and fast rules. DHs (Polish RC) mum said it was custom to wait.

It probably did sound like that, Quint, and I apologise. I was just trying to point out that there are very few reasons to wait for the big extravaganza when it can be done with very little fuss at all, the extravaganza being quite separate.

The op cited "no friends and family around for support" as one of her reasons, and I was mainly responding to this, but if I was offensive I'm sorry.

Thats OK floggin.

But I do think that you should go ahead and apply, because there could be other aspects of the application where you come up trumps, like how often you go to mass, how well known you are to your priest. Citing PND as reason for delayed baptism, and alluding to doctors who can substantiate this will help massively. I did not have PND, so our reason for a delayed baptism was not an approved one.

We are in the lucky position that we can go to the independent sector, so we will do that, and we are happy with DS's school.

Flogging, I actually had in mind that I had a very difficult birth and a difficult baby and no one to support, which contributed to my depression. As well as the fact that I was new in the area and struggled to find one catholic friend to be DS's godparent. I know you can just ask any member of the church community but having a baptism with no family and strange godparents definitely wasn't my idea. In the end we had a small celebration for 6 adults including us.

For what it's worth, I asked the London Oratory how many boys they have admitted in recent years with a less than perfect baptism score (4/4).

No boy had been admitted with a less than perfect score, i.e. baptised after 6 months, that they could remember.

I assume that means lots of people have appealed on compassionate grounds and asked their parish to intervene but have failed.

As has been said, you need to check the admissions criteria of each school, to see what they say about baptismal dates. Some schools set earlier and stricter deadlines than others.

If they do specify 6 months, I think it's better to get in first with an explanation of the reasons for the delay. If you don't present the extenuating information and are refused a place, your only option after that is to appeal, which will always be an uphill struggle because by that stage the school will be full.