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?

The problems in Birmingham related predominantly to community schools, not academies or free schools.

The school in Lancashire being taken over by a religious trust will remain a non-faith school. A school converting to academy status is not allowed to become a faith school (or stop being a faith school) as part of the conversion process.

The allegations concerning the Blackburn schools are worrying but I note that the article says there is no suggestion the programme is highlighting actual teaching practises. I agree with Jack Straw that it is sensible to reserve judgement until the Dispatches programme is broadcast.

Oasis Academy schools are not "faith" schools in their admission criteria
BUT
Oasis are overtly evangelical in their outlook and approach to education.
Might be why several of their schools have hundreds of empty places.

Phr no, I read the Birmingham schools were mostly academies run by the Park View trust. But I agree that in some cases councils have ignored infiltration by governors with a specific agenda. And pressing for a 'determination' so that assemblies don't have to be Christian in a largely Muslim community might seem reasonable until it ends up being the imposition of a Muslim assembly on the school which rules out any other religion. It's two wrongs/restrictions not making a right.

The council in Blackburn is not without criticism of course, along with the national Labour government. There were four community schools in Blackburn. Under BSF they turned one into an academy, rebuilt two at great expense, but the third had to close. Now despite that sacrifice, one of the two remaining community schools has opted out of council control to be governed by a Muslim trust, and the other is in special measures - what a disaster that policy was.

Parents and governors of the school told to close to make way for Tauheedul Girls were unhappy, and it tried to convert to academy status, but Jack Straw wrote to the DfE supporting closure. He tries to tread a very fine line in Blackburn because there was a furore over remarks he made over constituents wearing face veils in his MP surgeries. Since then he has ducked and dived, supporting the expansions of the CofE and Muslim schools with extraordinarily restrictive admissions criteria (stipulating number of church attendances per week) despite Blackburn being the subject of the Cantle report on community segregation.

I read the Birmingham schools were mostly academies run by the Park View trust

Read the article to which you link. Only 3 of the 21 schools involved in the "Trojan horse" allegations are run by the Park View Trust. Another 5 are academies. The remaining 13 are all community schools. It is true that 4 of the 5 that received full inspections were academies and of these 3 are run by the Park View Trust. Of the 5 that were rated inadequate 3 were academies, 2 run by the Park View Trust. And many of the schools rated requires improvement or better also received criticisms around safeguarding, leadership and management. As TalkinPeace said on another thread, Birmingham has long been regarded as a basket case.

They aren't all academies yet. But it's possible for maintained schools to get taken over by people with vested interests if the local authority is weakened and/or fearful of interfering.

When this thread started back in April, there was a lot of discussion about the London Oratory's admissions code. The School's Adjudicator has published its ruling today and found it breaches the Admissions Code in a total of 105 different ways! That has got to be some sort of record. See here.

This might be of interest to some people. The Equality and Human Rights commission have issued a call for people's views on how their religion or belief affects their access to public services, or their employment experiences. See www.equalityhumanrights.com/about-us/our-work/key-projects/religion-or-belief-tell-us-about-your-experiences.