Faith Schools And Racial Segregation?

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Why in this day and age are we still allowed to segregate kids according to faith and race?
In my town in East London Walthamstow in our catchment area there are two Roman Catholic primary schools and one Church of England which draws 95% of the white kids and a few black kids. In my son's school there are 900 kids Bangladeshi/Polish/Bulgarian/Lithuanian etc. and 5 of them are white English kids!
Of mixed parentage myself I find it frustrating that my kid can't mix with other English kids,can't be socialised in English culture,music football etc.
I'm absolutely for the benefits of schooling children about the cultures of the world and the joys of living in an international city but shouldn't local authorities ensure that this segregation situation doesn't happen as it clearly is?

Garden, another relevant section of the code is para 14 which says "Parents should be able to look at a set of arrangements and understand easily how places for that school will be allocated".

For that reason they should put their SEN statement upfront, rather than in the notes.

Two schools have "statements with school named in section 4" as first criteria with "looked after" as second criteria. The third school, an academy doesn't appear to mention statements but I haven't got time to read the whole thing in detail. It's first criteria is "looked after". They also have ability tests with only a certain amount of places available for each ability band.

Am not sure why but my son's Catholic school is very well mixed. There are lots of different cultures and races. I would say that 50% of the school population is not white.

However at secondary level this changes. Many of the non white pupils go out of area for secondary education. ..the belief among their parents is that the local secondary schools are no good. The local Catholic secondary is less diverse as a result although still has more diversity than many. About 5% of pupils there are Muslim.

JakeBullet, yes, there are variations, due to different demographics.

Have you checked your school on the map on the Fair Admissions Campaign website? It allows you to compare individual schools with their local area average for socio-economic stats. I'm on my mobile so difficult to do the link right now, but I think its a top menu item on the site so you should be able to find it quickly.

Trouble is though I wanted my DC to be educated in an environment where our family values would be underpinned. I wanted a school to support our views on marriage for example. Unfortunately at the non cofe school we visited the head said that she wouldn't tell a child that using drugs was wrong because in many cases that was a criticism of their parents and also that the school's sex education policy would never include the words stable loving relationships AND marriage under her watch.

That's why our DC were sent to the local cofe school. I dont' think this is an issue about church schools and segregation per se, it's about raising the bar across the educational landscape so that all schools support the right messages for the long term success and happiness of the children. In my opinion if children aren't taught right from wrong at home then the schools need to be strong about this.

Windymill, yes, it's hard when cultures are so varied. Segregating people makes them feel 'safe', so is very attractive to many families. It's just not good for society as a whole. That's why it's the polician's job to take a helicopter view, and a moral lead, rather than simply doing what is popular with influential sub-groups. Policians tend to be short-termist about these things, but if all those unelected Bishops in the House of Lords started putting the greater good ahead of protecting their own communities, maybe it could lead to positive change :)

Certainly improving quality across all our schools is the key to getting people to accept changes to current admissions structures.

It's a bit chicken and egg though.

But who is the arbiter of right and wrong, NearTheWindyMill? I don't want my children (product of an unmarried but very stable relationship) to be told that sex outside marriage is wrong. People argue that I wouldn't have to send them to a school that taught those views, but we all know the extent to which parental choice is an illusion.

Shouldn't state schools, where they touch on ethical and moral issues, do their best to reflect the majority view of the population they serve? And, despite David Cameron's suggestions to the contrary, most people in the UK aren't Christian.

I don't think I said I expected my children to be told sex outside marriage was wrong. I expected them to be told it was best it took place in a stable loving relationship or marriage. I can't see why anyone should have a problem with that because it covers both bases and acknowledges both bases.

Personally, for us a church school reflected our values at home which I did not think would be supported in the local secular primary schools. It may be that where we live the heads of those schools were rather more "right on" in outlook than I was comfortable with. Interestingly local Asian (Muslim) families prefer the local church schools too because they feel the moral values there are closer to their own. A percentage of places are now "open". I think this wrong to be honest - if practicing Christians want a church education for their child I don't think they should be denied a place in favour of a non practicing Christian.

I do find the assumption that those of faith, and faith schools have a monopoly on moral values a little odd. You can have strong moral values without believing in a God and in my experience teachers, both friends and as teachers of my daughters do have strong moral values, it is part of what attracted them to a caring profession with responsibility for the development of future citizens in the first place. Equally those who do have faith can act in ways the morality of which is doubtful from other perspectives, and I count excluding children from schools on the basis of their parents religion amongst those.

What teachers of faith and no faith will tell you is that teaching in a faith school is no different to teaching in a community school. Both are communities that have to operate within a strong framework of values that are in any case determined by society via government, and particularly that dictates a curriculum that does have to help children understand the different perspectives on moral issues. The whole point around recent controversies about the governance of faith schools is that they were failing to operate within that framework.

Perhaps from your perspective Nearthe the Head was not going to teach your children your beliefs on sex and marriage, but actually this is what the government requires her to teach, and a failure to do so would be highlighted at any OFSTED inspection "within the context of talking about relationships, children should be taught about the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children. The Government recognises that there are strong and mutually supportive relationships outside marriage. Therefore, children should learn the significance of marriage and stable relationships as key building blocks of community and society. Teaching in this area needs to be sensitive so as not to stigmatise children on the basis of their home circumstances." www.parliament.uk/Templates/BriefingPapers/Pages/BPPdfDownload.aspx?bp-id=SN06103

The irony is that parents who do not have faith can find themselves with no alternative but a place at a faith school that is undersubscribed under the faith criteria on the basis that they will teach the full curriculum and yet your argument is that a community school does not?

I would also turn on your head your argument that a practising Christian should not be turned away from a faith school in favour of a non practising Christian, I don't think a child should be turned away from a local school and their family subjected to a long and difficult journey to a more distant school that serves another community, as happens in my community, just on the basis that their parents were not willing or able to go and sit in a pew each Sunday, or even, as in the case of the Catholic Schools, though practising Catholics were just not quite able to prove they were Catholic enough, according to a long and complicated list of requirements that stretches to cleaning the church and it's silver.

I think any school not placing "looked after" children at the top of their admissions criteria (our local catholic secondary) is morally very dubious and is not setting the kind of example I would want to be my children to be exposed to. I think it's disgraceful.

well my sons go to Wimbledon College and i would have to argue your point that they are predominantly white! No way, yes over half of it is white but you have very large minorities of black and other races such as asian, latino. Though this is a secondary school in south west london

Thamum50, here are some of the stats for Wimbledon College versus the Local Authority average, from the latest school census data:

White British: 44% (versus 35%)
Irish Ethnic: 4% (versus 1%)
Other white: 15% (versus 11%)
African: 11% (versus 11%)
Carribean: 2% (versus 7%)
Pakistani: 1% (versus 6%)

EAL: 18% (versus 33%)
FSM: 7% (versus 13%)

You're correct that there are lots of ethnic groups represented. However, some are under-represented, and others are over-represented compared to the local area. There are obvious reasons for that - some countries are more Catholic than others.

The Fair Admissions Campaign tends to focus on the socio-economic stats, rather than the ethnicity stats. Wimbledon College doesn't do very well on their exclusivity heat map.

thatmum50 According to the Fair Admissions Campaign's map fairadmissions.org.uk/map/ Wimbledon College is in the worst 30% of schools for representing the local community in terms of Free School meals with 7.8% of pupils in receipt of Free School meals compared to 10% in the local community. It is in the 10% least inclusive for pupils with an additional language with 18.8% of pupils having an additional language compared to 28.4% in the local community which rather backs up the OPs point .......

that map is all nice and yellow round here. good

Well all I can say is that I did a school run for 10 years to the school just along the road from Wimbledon College which happens also to be a church foundation school. The intake of Wimbledon College looked more badly behaved as every year passed and my ds was adamant that they were thugs and ill behaved. Very very sad considering his godfathers both went to a very different Wimbledon College which used to be on a par with the Oratory just a few generations ago. But, hey, let's all join the race to the bottom where standards don't count in the name in the equality shall we.

Wouldn't it be better if standards were raised to the highest instead and across the board. I understand this situation is similar vis a vis Wimbledon College's sister school. We sent dd initially to one of the leading SW London church secondaries and had to move her after two years because of quite disgraceful standards and expectations relating to behaviour - and the head said there had to be a differentiated behaviour policy to take account of the deprived backgrounds some of the children came from.

Lowest common denominator dilutes for everyone.

And the radius of about 1/2 mile round Wimbledon College must comprise one of the highest densitys of properties worth more than a million pounds in the country. So I'm not quite sure how the map is consistent with the local environment to be perfectly honest. It's just the majority of the local environment has enough money to chose to send their boys elsewhere.

Having said that Wimbledon College is still an excellent school if fee paying isn't an option.

not all rich people are white

No they aren't talkin ds's and dd's very closest friends comprise young people who aren't white. They do, however, have parents who have a deep commitment to the education of their children and very high standards. The most badly behaved children at dd's cofe secondary were white and should, in my opinion, have been permanently excluded.

"not all rich people are white"

Clearly not. Did anyone say they were?

The Fair Admissions Campaign focus on socio-economic stats for their own sake, not because they say anything about race.

The OP raised an issue about racial segregation, which is partly true, but it's a secondary effect, rather than a primary one. The real segregation is along:
a) religious lines (obviously)
b) socio-economic lines (because the 'hoops' that need to be jumped through to get into many faith schools act as a socio-economic filter)

"It's just the majority of the local environment has enough money to chose to send their boys elsewhere."

To be clear, the LA averages I quoted above were for the other Merton state secondaries, not the local residential population.

The OP raised an issue about racial segregation, which is partly true, but it's a secondary effect, rather than a primary one. The real segregation is along:
a) religious lines (obviously)
b) socio-economic lines (because the 'hoops' that need to be jumped through to get into many faith schools act as a socio-economic filter)

But it isn't. For decades RC schools have taken children who have been baptised RC. As soon as we got mass migration from countries with a lot of RCs the criteria changed to 'baptised before 6 months'.

This means that a child whose parents had them baptised as a small baby (normally white British/Irish) but who has not attended mass since will take priority over the Polish speaking child who has attended mass twice a week since birth but was baptised at 1 year.

In fact some policies would prioritise a Jewish or Muslim child over the Polish speaker.

Sashh, yes, as faith schools become more and more oversubscribed they make their criteria more stringent, and that has the effect of excluding some groups more than others.

In some areas the "baptised ... small baby (normally white British/Irish) ... who has not attended mass since" still couldn't guarantee a place, because they would be well behind the "baptised small baby who has attended mass weekly, and additionally on Holy Days of Obligation, and whose parents are actively involved in church activities".

I am from a non British country and my child was baptised at 1.5 year old out of the custom in my country and despite of attending the mass every week all along my child does not qualify for the baptism (i.e. < 6 months) criteria for most of SE/SW London catholic secondary schools.

At the same time I know many British parents who baptised in early days and "rediscovered" their faith once their child turned 3.

I am angry about the situation but there is nothing I can do.
I don't expect to win an appeal on the basis of "country custom" so we will likely to have to move out of London to get secondary faith education. Thankfully we can afford this.

jacket, do you mind me asking which country you're from, and whether selection by faith is allowed in state schools in your home country?

Most other OECD countries don't allow selection by faith. Apart from the UK, there's only Ireland, Estonia and Israel. The UK has had to invoke specific exemptions from the Equality Act in order to allow it.