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?

Celia 2 I agree. We have been going to our local RC church for 15 years. During this time the pews have filled to groaning point with families with rising 3 years olds as our previously averagely performing Catholic primary climbed the league tables.

Bog standard economics this. We saw the same thing under socialism in Europe.
Prices and markets are "emergent", they occur regardless of what people do about it, the variable is whether you get good markets and prices or not.

Schools are free at the point of supply, but vary in quality. So how do you ration places, if not auctioning by price ?
Socialism solved this for food and consumer goods by queues and political connections.
Ironically of course socialist countries had very much better education systems than us, which is why they lasted so long.

A market for school places has "emerged". We have queueing of course, and the parallel between membership of the Communist party and faking religion is really very clear. House prices are subtitutes for paying for education, and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of (at least attempted) corruption.

Although critical of Christians, they are not responisble for the tragic state of the majority of British schools, like any rational player in a broken market they simply seek to maximise what they can get out of it.

This thing still going?

I am catholic but never wanted ot get DS baptised as i wanted him to make his own, informed decision when he was old enough to do so.

but as it emerged that he would have significant special needs i had him baptised so that he would stand a better chance of getting into our catholic school.
it had a fantastic record with SN and i felt it would have been more understanding of DS's problems than a state school which needs to keep the figures in the league table.

It turned out that he went to a state school with extended school status as this was what was best for him.

I know that what i did would be frowned upon by many but at the end of the day my childs upbringing is my top priority.
And as he has a statement i could have named the school anyway and whether baptised or not he would have got in.

We still attend church regularly (not as often as i would like as he finds it difficult)

I wouldn't.

In fact, shortly before dd1 was due to start primary school, we moved to a different area because I didn't want her to go the local school where we had been living previously. My next door neighbours had started going to church in order that their children could go to the local church school.

I am atheist/humanist though - if I were Christian I may have felt differently.

Celia2 - well, nothing, one would hope. They would both simply be state schools which accepted all children from families of all faiths and none.

Isn't that the big difference - faith,grammar and independent schools have parents actively applying for places and other schools the places are just allocated so parents aren't fussed

celia - I obviously can't say for certain what would happen in the case of any individual school. In general, though, I think the parents of faith-school children worry too much that standards would drop suddenly if their school became non-faith-orientated. As I've said before, I feel the key factors in maintaining a good school's quality are parental interest and active involvement, strong leadership and bright, motivated children. There is no reason to suppose any of these things would disappear overnight if the faith ethos were not there. You only need to look at the performance of excellent non-faith schools in towns and cities across the country.

confused - I think what you say is partly true, but far from the full picture. While it's true that there is a lot of competition for those types of schools you mention, there is similarly for well-performing comprehensives. It's a little dismissive of parets like me to say that people sending their children into this system are "not fussed". Yes, probably vast swathes of the country find the whole "choice" thing irrelevant - if you live on an estate with one sink school, and you have no transport and aren't "in the know" about how to appeal, then you'll just send your children to that school. But at the top end of the league table, the battles are fierce.

in our area where there is a choice for many there are still quite a few families who would like the choice but are ineligible by faith, cost or exam but unfortunately in that state school are surrounded by many families who are not concerned.

A teacher friend of ours says she sees only about half the parents at open evening at the community yet for her own children the open evening is packed

I have been a christian all my life. I attend church most weeks and am involved as much as my time will allow. What really anoys me is when people say "oh, when your child gets the c of e school, will you give up going to church".

How dare they.

There are 3 schools in the catchment area 2 of them are BAD.
My eldest is in year 6 and about 18 months ago I decided to go to the local Catholic church purely for educational gain. I have never been baptised neither had my children, but we went every week and it become more than just doing it for eduational gain, I actually liked it.
I got the children baptised this year and the eldest took his first communion. On paper I'm not a catholic but I feel as though I am. We went to visit the catholic secondary school and 18 months ago it was first choice, now it hasnt even gone on the list. It was regimental, there was none of the childrens work on the walls, the children didnt look happy.
The single sex school in the catchment area has gone down as number one, but we have still been attending church reguarly because as far as I'm concerned my children are catholics now and I have to nurture that.

A friend had dinner with a group of friends recently, including David & Sam Cameron. They had to leave early because they were running Sunday school the next day. When someone pointed out that they weren't previously churchgoers they admitted it was to get their daughter in to the local faith school - true!

I wouldn't. I feel my children's belief in my integrity and honesty is going to be more important for them in life than any material benefits that they can derive from having attended the "right" school.
As it so happens, I am a Christian, but not the right type to get kids into the local religious school, as some of my friends urged me to do at the time.
I would just hate it if I had to go on living a lie, and my daughter watched me and knew I was lying.
When I go to church I go there to pray, not to be seen and counted. My children do not share my faith, but they respect me.

Thread has 666 posts!!!

Neither would I, and I agree with Cory. However there can be another way..
I don't drive, all our neighbours kids all walked happilyto our neighbourhood (CofE) school and spoke very highly of it. Even though we were not churchgoers and probably never will be I wanted my kids to go there.
So after numerous letters asking for a place (in spite of not meeting the religious criteria) to no avail, I telephoned the vicar of the church attached to the school, and invited him to tea one morning. He came round and we had a lovely chat. I explained my catholic/muslim/jewish but above all Atheist background and said how much I love singing hymns (true, we are v. musical!) but couldn't be a hypocrite by going to church without really believing.The whole truth basically. The next day, the school called and offered us a place. Coincidence? I'll never know!

Well, David Cameron has said openly that he doesn't see why people shouldn't do all they can to get their children into faith schools which is very brave and honest of him. I don't quite understand why they aren't sending their children to private school as they can clearly afford it and it's not really against Conservative policy is it? Although I'm very pleased they're sticking with the state sector. Sends out a nice message.
I read the OP and then skipped to the last page as too long but I imagine she was talking about Tunbridge Wells...