Faith Schools And Racial Segregation?

[scramble69]

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?

Titus, yes, and some who are getting in are feeling they've been coerced into changing their worshiping habits in order to get a place.

Popular culture is so busy being pleased with the tired "on your knees to avoid the fees" line, that its so far missing the "on your knees to avoid a long anxious wait for an allocated place in an unpopular school an inconvenient distance away" situation that is becoming increasingly common in some parts of London.

Icecream - the link you've given to 'Our vision for Catholic Education' is v interesting. Assuming that schools practice this, would any non-faith families want to send their DC to a faith school?

Angel, I don't know, perhaps they would and perhaps they wouldn't. At least they would have the opportunity. However people don't neatly fall into two buckets called "faith" and "non-faith". They are two ends of a scale, and very many people are somewhere in the middle, for example:

• Strong faith, but not churchgoing
• Lapsed faith, but want children to learn about their faith heritage
• Devoutly religious, but attending church X rather than church Y that has top priority.
• Not at all religious, but happy to attend church regularly to get a school place.

etc, etc ...

Only the fourth one in that list would get a place at many oversubscribed VA schools.

I find it particularly ironic that many in-demand faith schools seem to be encouraging a Pharisaical adherence to the letter of church teaching, while working completely against the spirit of Gospel teaching. IIRC Jesus had very little time for the no-work-on-the-Sabbath brigade and would rather have filled the faith schools with the sort of kids that would give the caricature PFB mum a heart attack.

I think it must be very difficult if you live in an area where it's very hard to access good schools.
We live in a rural county, and the catholic secondary school was set up to provide a catholic education for families living across 6 towns/parishes.
Having looked at the county council website, each town has a community secondary school, and in each case, places were offered to all students living in the town. In most of the schools places were also offered to out of catchment applicants too.
So, in this case I think our catholic school is not undermining anyone.
(Actually, I suspect you could make a good argument for another faith school to open, as all the others (bar one) are community schools)

Whyjustwhy, yes I can see that people in areas where there is little pressure on school places must look on with bemusement wondering what all the fuss is about. And politicians from those areas don't feel any urgency to look at the issues. However, the national drive to reduce surpluses while simultaneously try to cater for different religious groups will bite everywhere eventually.

Some rural areas are already being impacted, but in different ways to urban areas, for instance in this case a rural village that doesn't have its own community secondary school is objecting to a new faith school in the neighbourhood. I think most people would recognise that the new school isn't ideally located for the Sikh community it is intended to serve, but finding suitable accommodation closer to home has clearly proved too difficult/expensive.

Totally agree wol1968. It's repugnant that they would put a non-Catholic looked after child behind baptised Catholic in the admissions criteria, falling below the moral high ground set by the non religious schools. I'm an atheist but, what would "their" Jesus have done?

I think the law really needs to be changed so that faith schools have to offer a defined minimum percentage of places to non-faith children. In some areas you get a ridiculous situation where Christian schools have no or hardly any children of Asian origin even when they are in an area with a high Asian population. It isn't fair that children of Asian families have less school choice in that situation, and that they can't get into what might well be their nearest school. It's particularly unfair if they are in effect excluded from a school which in practice many of their primary schools peers can get into without difficulty.

Yes Icimol, I agree the logical next step for legislation would be to bring all existing faith schools in line with the new ones that have opened since 2010 under the 50:50 rules.

Particular thanks to icecreamsoup for your amazingly insightful and correct analysis of social division and racial/class segregation through selective admissions by faith schools.

No prob Scramble.

For info, there's some more very encouraging news on faith school admissions from the Church of England here.

The Fair Admissions Campaign has called on them to extend the principle to existing schools too.

I think community schools should be able to counter faith schools in their admissions. For every faith place that has baptism as its main criteria then a corresponding community place should be able to specify non-baptism. After all why should one section of the community have two choices and the other only one? I know it's not workable but it's hardly fair.

Jodie, I'd prefer community schools to maintain a moral high ground rather than stoop to that level. Two wrongs don't make a right.

My suggestion was sort of tongue in cheek but it was in the name of equality. I believe everyone should have the same right of access to the state schooling in their area.

Jodie, yes, but the best way to do that is for people to encourage faith schools to open up their admissions. It's happening, but slowly, and with many hurdles along the way.

Given that many C of E schools were set up to educate children who would have received no education at all, they used to welcome ALL local children. This was especially true in the rural areas. To find now that so many have become religiously selective instead of sticking to their very laudable origins, I find deeply offensive and an abuse of power and Government money. Many appear to have lost sight of why they were established and the welcoming nature of the church to ALL people. Increasingly faith schools only welcome their own. They need to be reformed.

In my area the Diocese actively encouraged Voluntary Controlled schools to become Voluntary Aided. The Aided schools set their own admissions policy and often favour Church goers leaving local children having to travel much further to school. It is not what our established church should be doing. It is elitist and morally wrong.

There's some good news from Camden related to this discussion ... www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2014/jul/religious-schools-urged-open-places-pupils-without-faith

Interesting, icecreamsoup. I don't think it is right that the Catholic schools get a pass on this while, the CofE schools are pressured, though.

From what I understand atheist (not secular) schools are illegal. If we are not prepared to ban faith schools then we should at least allow equality. I wish some prominent personality would attempt to open an atheist school and challenge this.

50-75% of admissions could be reserved for children not baptized or practicing any faith and they or their parents not attending any place of worship. Weekend classes could be held where the organizer decides who is 'atheist' enough to be selected and help with the compulsory deconversion of parents. An entrance exam would help determine which children believe most in 'scientific' principles and not the supernatural. The LEA would be required to pay for the transporting of any children going to the school. A superior morality ethics and ethos would be taught.

I would put my life savings into a bet that these schools would be over subscribed and outstanding. Parents would no longer have to pretend to be religious and many religious parents would convert.

But it ain't going to happen because the powerful 'established' religions have to much to lose when children are given freedom of thought.

agree, JJ it's not going to happen.

Weird
I live where you live.
I spend a lot of time visiting primary schools.
Never seen one with only five white/uk kids in it.

I would be astounded if I went into a school in Walthamstow with so few white, working class kids in it.

Its a diverse area alright but one that has always had a core of non transient, multi generational families who have neither the resources or the wish to leave.

So not so much of the 'white flight' as you might see in more prosperous areas. The immigrant population tends to change though.

I think I probably know what school you are talking about. There are a few big primaries in E17 and I know all of them. I think your maths are a bit off.

In fact

the more I think about your op the more puzzled I am.

You are not describing the Walthamstow that I live in, work and where my five kids have gone to school for the last 12 years.

When I say work, I mean work IN early years education. So that means working with primary schools all over the borough.

As well as having personal experience of 4 primaries and two secondaries, one nursery and one pre-school.

Odd isn't it?

I just don't think new faith schools should be allowed - although I also agree there should be a cap on faith admissions at 100 year-old CE primary schools, because there's no community school alternative.

The problem is that schools aren't secular enough, with this requirement for to have a daily act of collective worship that is 'broadly Christian'.

Bizarrely the head-in-sand answer of many politicians us to open up new Muslim, Sikh, Hindu schools which then sets off a whole raft of new problems - the control by conservative religious governors in Birmingham, Tower Hamlets, Bradford and probably Blackburn too. Schools converting to academies have been taken over by some of these religious trusts - like the one in this article which actually used to be a community secondary. That's the second community secondary (out of three in that area) to close down or change religious ethos in two years (another closed down two years ago so that the girls' Muslim voluntary aided school could expand). To say it has accelerated white flight is an understatement, but there are some problems too for the Muslim community because not all of them want to be herded into faith schools run by other mosques either.

Roversreturn there is pressure from the National Governors Association over collective worship. See here: accordcoalition.org.uk/2014/06/29/national-governors-association-calls-for-abolition-of-collective-worship/.