should I send my atheist kid to a C of E school?

[TrixieHeliotrope]

Where I live, there are no schools within 16 miles that are not C of E (Church of England), so it would be natural to send him to one, but the trouble is he's a hardcore atheist (someone who doesn't believe in any religion), so he might not like it there. Should I send him to a C of E school?

@Justajot Thanks for your advice, I'll see about their praying policies.

A well run school, effective teaching, happy achieving kids and local friends is the most important thing.

I went to church and Sunday school with family (Methodist), church parade with Brownies, (CoE), did school assembly every morning with hymns, bible reading and prayer (wasn’t even a faith school!) and I am an atheist.

It is not necessary to insulate ourselves from others beliefs in order to know our own minds.

Humanism UK have quite a lot of information about faith schools from a non-faith perspective. For example humanism.org.uk/education/parents/collective-worship-and-school-assemblies-your-rights/

Our school is C of E but other than an Easter service and Carol service at Christmas (cancelled this year) you wouldn't know it.

@Justajot RE is very unlikely to be different from a non-faith school. All schools choose papers from the same range of exam boards. While there are some more scriptural papers favoured by Roman Catholic schools, the vast majority of schools make broadly the same options eg Christian Ethics and Islam as a world religion or Buddhism as a world religion at GCSE and Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at A Level. Even the scriptural papers are interesting to atheists because they involve literary criticism of the gospels and the archaeology of Qumran, including thinking about question like "Could John the Baptist have been an Essene?" All the papers are designed to be academic not confessional.

@Genevieva the RE curriculum may be different at KS3. It depends on whether the school follows the diocese curriculum or the locally agreed curriculum.

At KS4 our local faith school requires all students to do a full RE GCSE. Our local non-faith school doesn't.

I never suggested that any RE content wasn't interesting to atheists.

@Justajot at KS3 there are diocesan suggestions, but there is also a requirement to expose children to world faiths and sometimes there is a local faith consultation groups, so if an Anglican school is in an area with a large Sikh minority they will make sure this is reflected in the syllabus. When I was younger I sat through one of these and listened to elderly members of the Sikh and Jewish communities arguing over whether we should dedicate more time to their respective religions and even accusing each other of not being a world religion. It was quite amusing when my Head of Department pointed out that actually we were all there for positive community engagement, not for oneupmanship and that ultimately we (the teachers) would decide how much time we dedicated to different topics. Similarly, the diocese do not get to dictate anything. I have worked alongside RE teachers from a variety of different faith backgrounds, including in Anglican schools (some Roman Catholic schools require you to be a practicing Catholic but Anglican schools don't) but I wold say the vast majority of my colleagues teaching RE have been atheists who teach in a way that means their students would have no idea whether they have any faith or not.