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?

Cappuccino is right. Not only did the churches set the schools up in the first place, they still in most cases own the land and the buildings. So as I said lower down the thread, even if you could elect a govt with the political will to abolish religious schools, it would be unfeasible in practical terms.

A few nominally CoE schools might be happy to join a secular state system, but the RC schools would never simply hand the real estate over to the govt, and why should they? In practice a few might join the private sector (mainly those owned by religious orders), a few might carry on as semi-autonomous voluntary setups run by parents on a shoestring, but the vast majority would simply close. And the the govt would be left with X million children to find school places for.

Which would solve what, precisely?

I have to say that I probably go to church more now that my DD attends a Catholic school but I didn't pretend to be a catholic or suddenly start pretending to get her into the school. It's just that now she is at the school I realise that I need to go to church a lot more. Actually I need to go every Saturday night or sunday morning but...... well I'm selfish and lazy and I just don't! I actually find it really hard work as DD never sits quietly and always acts up at some stage. Sat pm is too late and past their bedtime and Sun am is right as DD2 has her morning 2 hour sleep and if I take her she starts acting up too. Excuses, excuses! I actually like going to church once I'm there, just a bit stressful with my girls at the moment.

what a terrible post, sorry!

Custy - the report BK links doesn't give evidence for God being on your side...but who knows, mysterious ways, and all that?

Custy - although when I was religious, as a child, I used to be scared to do something wrong because I thought God would see and tell Mum....

true - me too

but itsnot children we are talking about - with good parenting skills small childen are able to grow into good people.

when they are teenagers however its truly not religeon thats the deciding factor - its society sex drugs and the devils music

pass the bong son - i taught you to share !

I'm not saying I have the solutions for a transition - the will has to be there first, and it's patently not, because the god-botherers shout longer and louder than everyone else.

I just don't get the mentality that says "anyone can be a Christian". No, they CAN'T. There is this small thing called Not Believing In Fictional Deities which kind of gets in the way.

I don't have the exact quote to hand, but Martin Amis says somewhere that the opposite of religion is not atheism or humanism or secularism or any kind of -ism, it's simply "indepdendence of thought". I've always liked that.

The trouble is that whilst the faith schools control their admissions by discriminating on the basis of faith the affect on the 'choice' of schools available is significantly skewed. In our area the problem is that the only co-ed school is the CofE school. The LEA is not going to provide an alternative whilst it (and or Gov)foots the bill for 80% of the funding. The result is that if parents of children of both sexes want their children to go to the same school , they can only achieve this by going to church.Not at all fair. I would add that I have no personal axe to grind as I only have one dd and would have no problem with her attending a girls school but plenty of my friends are facing this issue.

this is always the way with these threads

I have respect for other people's belief or lack thereof

but sooner or later someone weighs in to infer that Christians are brainwashed madpeople

so 'independence of thought' is the opposite of Christianity, eh?

I don't call atheism 'fictional' or 'misguided' but go on, you go ahead and have your pop if it makes you feel better

and I don't see why 'godbotherers' can't hang on to the schools they set up, just because you find them disproportionately offensive

and it is traditionally the way with these threads that the athiests tend to shout the loudest

VB - So lets imagine that in your area there are two publically-funded state schools.

School A has good results, attentive pupils, a good atmosphere and great facilities.

School B scrapes along at the bottom of the league tables, has issues with bullying and violence, unmotivated staff and run-down facilities.

In order for a child to attend School A the parents need to be card-carrying members of the Conservative party (or the Labour party, or any other party -- pick something that you aren't).

Would you really be perfectly happy with this situation and wave your children off to school B without the slightest lingering feeling that the situation was in any way unfair?

it is traditionally the way with these threads that the athiests tend to shout the loudest

Well, as the churchgoers are in the quids-in position of being able to choose which state school they go to (slightly-religious or fairly-religious), while the atheists are in the position of not being able to choose and having to send their children to the slightly-religious school, is that really surprising? It's not even as though atheist parents could set up their own atheist school, because that's illegal (quite apart from being divisive).

[For the record, I don't think that Christians are brainwashed madpeople. My brother is a priest and my mother very active in the church, and most (not all) practising Christians I've met have been lovely people].

Lemonaid

Let's also imagine the following scenario: There are several publicly-funded schools in your area which have league-table topping results and loads of art/music etc. One or two of them have distinctly below-average numbers of problem families.

There is also a part-publicly funded faith school which has less stellar results, and less in the way of art etc because they spend loads of time doing RE. It has approximately 30% of kids on FSM, and more than its share of kids with poor English and learning/social problems. It also has lots of families who you know from Mass and whose children your child is friendly with. The facilities aren't fantastic, but it has a very friendly nurturing atmosphere because everybody knows each other and has a shared value system that goes some way towards bridging the differences in the social and ethnic mix of the kids.

We chose school B, for all the reasons I stated above. The picture that all the anti-church people paint of crazed ambitious middle-class parents lying to get their kids into pushy little exam factories is so far from my reality.

Who said "watch this kick off?" They were right, weren't they?...

If faith schools did not exist, it would not be necessary to invent them. I don't quite know how one un-invents them, in the same way that I don't know how one un-invents nuclear weapons, but it doesn't mean either is desirable.

And yes, I do think God is fictional.

So sue me.

Personally I'm not suggesting that there are crazed ambitious middle-class parents lying to get their kids into pushy little exam factories -- I mean, probably in some areas there are, but I don't have any experience of that so I'm not going to sound off about it.

I went to a Catholic school rather like the one you describe (well, it was like that when I went to it although the lovely nurturing atmosphere had dissipated by the time my siblings got there), and my mother teaches at another very similar. I think I have a fairly realistic view of church schools.

I call your attention, though, to the word "chose" in your post. You could look at the two state schools in your area, think "ooh, that one has children that DS is friendly with, a lovely nurturing atmosphere, etc., etc." (yes, some of the etc., etc. is religious-based, but not all of it by any means) and choose to send him to it. I have three state schools in my area and get to think "OK, he can't go to that one, can't go to that one, so I guess it'll be that one then". There is no element at all of being able to think about friends, nurturing, family, environment or any of that, or try to make the decision that is right for DS (well, there is to an extent, because we are probably going to go private which is not something I ever thought I'd do).

Blimey. This has moved on.

I'm actually slightly uncomfortable with the idea of state faith schools. I don't choose to send my child to one, although I am a practising Catholic and my dh is a practising Anglican. I am just annoyed by the rather pat reasons given for these schools being so desirable. I do firmly believe that the family culture plays a role. And I think the way the schools are run works with that culture to make them successful.

And I also think it is possible to have a debate on this subject without the patronising and dismissive tone UQD. I appreciate that this is a subject you feel strongly about, but I reckon your choice of language is deliberately provocative.

unquietdad you complained before that no-one got your point

you have studiously ignored mine

if faith schools did not exist... a lot of schools would not exist at all

There wouldn't be half the hospitals if they hadn't been set up by the church.

The church provided a healthcare system because there wasn't an adequate one historically.

It's not just like it has popped up and started throwing its weight about in the health system.

Scientologists/fairy-worshippers/crystal-healing-believer/ followers of Thor/ worshippers of Apollos have set up no free national health system that I have heard of.

So we'll have a national health system where Christians get a choice of publically-funded hospital, while non-Christians get no choice and have to attend their designated not-quite-as-religious-as-the-others hospital (although they'll still get a "broadly Christian" hospital because it's illegal to have anything else) then.

I didn't ignore it, cappuccino, I addressed it obliquely by saying I didn't have the answers and that you can't un-invent faith schools.
How the schools were set up is not the point - where they go from here is. If the "faith" element is not essential to their ethos, their performance, their "special" nature, then why have it? And if it is, then what does it do? And why can't that be done without "faith"?

I'm just trying to make people see how ALIEN the idea of a faith school seems to people who don't see the world in those terms. lemonaid's Labour/Tory comparison is a good one, but even so there are people from all sides of the political divide who can argue, then have a pint and be friends. This is more fundamental - something which, for me, has no more substance than Jack And The Benstalk is being used to decide school admissions criteria for our children, and that, to me, is shocking. That's all.

oh yes, that works lemonaid

it would also work with off-licences and off-shore shipping too

dearie me

? cappuccino?
I don't get that at all, sorry. Off-licences?

I don't see why there can't be faith schools which reflect my faith as there are others

to me the sense of community and the ethos of Christianity are central to my life and thus to my child's education

why can't non-Christians accept that this is actually something very important to a lot of people and how they bring up their children?

you know, unlike Jack and the Beanstalk

the point was that, well, I didn't see lemonaid's point at all

we're talking about education. the education of our children in school and in faith

not healthcare

Or:

"I don't see why there can't be football schools which reflect my team as there are others.

to me the sense of community and the ethos of Sheffield Wednesday are central to my life and thus to my child's education

why can't non-Wednesdayites accept that this is actually something very important to a lot of people and how they bring up their children?

you know, unlike Jack and the Beanstalk?"

oh bog off