Would you/have you started going to church to get child into a good church school?!

[Bomper]

My ds should pass his 11+, but I am not 100% confident he will. The comprehensive schools in my area are pretty awful, except one, which is a C of E school. Lots of parents have now started to go to church in order to be able to apply, and I am being urged to do the same. Most of me thinks - 'this is my childs future, I will do whatever it takes', but a small part feels guilty. WWYD?

haha - that report only looks at discrepancies in the top 200 schools all of which faith or otherwise had big discrepancies between fsm at the school v the local population. all that tells us is that middle class people know how to play the system to get their children into the top schools, faith or no faith.

for rc schools as a whole fsm rates are in line with the school propulation.

"We need to be brutal on failing schools. The bottom 1% of schools each year should be closed and the teachers sacked."

I agree in principle here I have exceptionally high standards of my own and have little time for those who don't share them.

It does depend what statistics you use, we may be in the bottom 1% or nea r it due to the type of kids we teach, but on value added we are top of the town. It is hard enough to attract quality tecahers to a school like mine and I worry thatyour proposal would make it harder.

I never said we were in the top twenty education systems.

Highest perfromiong schools of all tyopes have lower FSM than the national average.

Of course they do as they select on economic (catcehment) grounds. faith schools do this too, they select on faith and catchemnt ie Christians in their area.

Haha I'm no longer sure what you object to?

Do you object to good schools?

Do you objcet to all selection?

Or only faith selection but not economic, or academic selection?

Dc and twinset both right, if your anti selction , to be consistent you'd need to do away with privet, grammar, catchemnt, and allow governement to decide who went where.

Although actually this would still be selection, just governement selction, so we're back to 'out the hat' the only fair way if you're totally against any selection and equal access to all.

I will have to go soon, despite being a lazy incapable thick superstitious teacher who teaches in a shit school that should be closed down I am due to go in to school on my day off to plan my lessons and mark my books!

Actually, I'm firstly against faith schools, even if they were poor performing.

Secondly, I am against back-door selection.

Thirdly I am against people being smug about their high-performing school, suggesting it is down to faith, good teaching, whatever, when actually, it is down to the absence of dysfunctional pupils (Not that I am suggesting anyone here was acting that way)

That's all.

It's a hard one to answer:

All good schools will be over subscribed.

So who gets in??

In some it's if your of that faith.

With most it's if you can afford to live in that area.

Both exlude many who would like to be included.

A choice has to be made.

Objecting witout any answers if pretty futile.

Smiley - as that was me Haha was quoting - the requirement to have a £250K mortgage for certain catchments is NOT an inbuilt, deliberate barrier. It's one which has arisen because of economic factors, estate agent greed, interest rates, etc. There are still ways round it - people rent in the catchment, use grandparents' addresses and so on. And a small change in the ctachment can result in big effects on the house prices as we have seen in the Brighton/Hove situation, so it's not an immutable barrier.

It's NOT as if the school sat down, said "How can we keep out the riff-raff?" and built this is as a selection criterion from the off.

That's why it's different from faith schools.

When you say "build your own cohesiveness" what do you mean? I shouldn't be forced to do that. The schoo, should be a welcoming community for all.

Goodness no.

Because:

A) I don't believe in dishonesty. If you want to go to Church for Faith reasns go; if you want because of what it can get you- . I just think- you know, Christianity and lying or deceiving- anyway

B) Mine go to a Christian school due to catchment, not so much Church with a Capital C, but a Capital everything else as well! And do they learn to be good Christians? well it depends on what you think of as Good Christian. If like me you think of a Christian as someone who is prepared to try and live to the standards Jesus gave them (albeit modernised a bit if you want-as in being gay / unmarried OK, imo, lying hurting etc not- its all about the love- Galatians 'For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment: you shall love your neighbour as yourself? ) then this school doesn't get it one bit. yes they pray 5 times a day; they also lie.

C) On a more practical level, I think the boys are missing out on the diversity of a non- faith school. I want them to mix with people from all cultures and faiths, and grow up in acceptance and love.

Ah well if your against faith schools for reasons other than lack of access and choice for all, then a whole new debate starts.

The main objections on this thread were about lack of equal access for all taxpayers.

The discussion on here at least didn't seem to be

'we're so religious and moral and that's why our schools are so good.'

If you've many objectionable Christians like that Haha I can understand you're aversion

maybe I am just very lucky I live in an area that is wealthy but quietly well to do and quite smug and the state primaries and our "successful secondary"relect that. Ten minutes aways is a council estate and lots of renatl accomodation, mostof the kids come to the secondary that I teach at and the two low achieving primaries. Then there is my dd church primary which takes kids from the slighly smug houses and the council estate. Admittadly we don;t have any black kids but we are not a particularly diverse town, I think in my comprehensive where there is no selection there are two black kids. My dd mixes with a huge variety of kids from very wealthy families to families from the estate and more average families like ourselves. All that joins us togther is that we are activley religious ( there are pupils from other faith communities) or supportive of a religious school.

Oh and the points below- having a 'dysfunctional ) sorry SN son, I would agree that these schools are simply not set up to cope with them, mainly because their intake criteria virtually eliminates them. Our catchment, as it were, can be walked through in under 5 minutes- everyone else applies (we're in catchment). As a rule therfore, they can easily reject applications forom SN / demanding kids as very few children are actually within catchment. They get to screen most. As the nursery prospectus said, @in the event thata child with sn be admitted to Nursrery'- as in, its bloody unlikely!

my dd is at a church school and mixes with people of other faiths and cultures.

I would be happy to loose my supposed catholic school and have a multi faith school where she can mix on an even wider basis but the respectfor faith is still there. IN fact if such a school opened I would send dd there.

my post below shoud have read not wealthy but quietly well to do.

And actually Haha iI know a few myself

UQD, no the schools do not state it in their admission policy, but it remains an undeniable fact, and therefore no better.

To say the exclusion of lower income families it deosn't matter because no one explicitly states in a policy, yet we all know it to be a reality seems a luducrous and unsustainable position.

Let's deal with the reality of the situation and not policy statements.

Yes some can rent, some (illegaly) use grandparents addresses, to others these are choices they don'thave. So again we're back to chiocs for some to access the good schools that aren't availaable to all.

General apology for all spelling, grammar and general incomprehension in my posts.

DS2 is ill and demding...and that is my excuse.

Yes, TandP- if thats chool existed I would be first in the queue.

I wanted my Kids to go to a faith school where they can learn what I believe (sort of ), but not at the expense of everything else- and this school has no-one from other Faiths. Black kids yes, but they are the children of the Minister. I want more variance than that for them. DS1 announced he's a Buddhist recently- and had his Buddhism book he took in removed from him.

Lets set one up then!

I like to think that if the 18% of secondary pupils who are bussed out to a faith school remained in their local area, there would be more decent secondaries.

But perhaps I am being a delusional in exercising that thought.

But then the same people who complain now would be complaining that the wealthier areas had the better schools.

Peachy - in the context of this thread, 'dysfunctional' has been used to mean families where there is serious anti-social disorder, (crime, neglect, bad parenting etc) children whose parents do not support their education or the school they go to.

It specifically has not meant SN or SEN...not since the link BK posted demonstrates that the top performing cathollic schools, for e.g, have the same ratios of SEN children as other schools.

Blu, I was rather referring to the attitude of my kids school, fwiw, thats how they see dysfunctional.

Ours choo, is one of the top eprformngs chools in our County, and it has 400 pupils, 1 with a statement. That's WAy below national averages.

Anyway withr eagrsd to the OP I guess my main point is no I wouldn't attend Church to get my children into a school, as I would be settinga abd morale xample if christianity is my afith, and if it isn't and I purely want them to attend a good school then there are many versions of good- such as ones that enable experience of wide varieties of experiences with toehr groups of people. Poor, Muslim, Gypsy, whatever.

Ok Yes.

Wow Bou- you deserve a Phd in Peachy message translation LOL

maybe the answer is the governement should encourage the setting up of more 'united interest' type schools. Such as your Humanist school, multi faith school, vegatarian, organic, single sex primaries, steiner based...whatever, if positively united they should presumably do well.

Copy the positive model rather than abolishing it because not everyone is so successful. Work out what they're doing right and emulate it.

UQD could evn have his Sheffield Wednesday school if he could find enough takers.

I'd decline to draw up the admission policies though