Would you start attending church to get your child into a C of E secondary?

[crymyeyesviolete]

If your other local options were dire?

@elliejjtiny Me neither. I was shocked.

No I wouldn't start attending another faith to get my children into a school.

We are CofE. The youngst attend a Roman Catholic church as it's the best school for her.
We have had children in CofE schools and they have been great. A lot of parents in the childrens' classes found God for a few years. Good for them.

How many is "stacks"?

'Stacks' turns out to be not very many. Stats in link below.
https://fairadmissions.org.uk/why-is-this-an-issue/number-of-schools-by-type/

No. I'd move house before doing that.

This. Prioritising children whose parents practice a particular faith is simply discriminating against the other children. It does not matter what the faith in question is nor whether the religious community own the land or contribute partially to running costs. It is in no way fair.

@crymyeyesviolete have you checked to see if the faith places at the CE school are oversubscribed? They aren't in my area, even though the non-faith places at the same school are massively oversubscribed. This suggests that parents prioritise other options, or struggle to get their child to attend church (I haven't checked, but I assume it's the child that needs to attend rather than the parent in this case).

I do know one family who got the vicar attached to our primary school to sign their child's "regular worship" form on the grounds that he did weekly assemblies in school. They didn't otherwise go to church.

@sashhProbsbly not enough Jews wanting that school so of course they take who applies locally if they are 2/3 empty! Maybe the Jewish dc are in the grammars? Interesting daily act of worship I would think.

The CofE Secondary I know well is hugely over subscribed and it has a tiny catchment of a few villages. The other faiths are in the town 4 miles away - in the crap schools.

Some religious schools are fairly light touch on religion and dc easily close their ears to it! Most sc follow the lead of parents, not schools.

I think the risk of indoctrination is higher at primary than at secondary schools.
Primary school kids will swallow everything an adult in a position of power tells them.
Secondary school kids are more likely to brush it off as unsubstantiated bull, especially when they study all the various beliefs, which are in clear contradiction with each other

My experience of having kids at CofE primaries (lack of choice for us) was the opposite. Both mine were confirmed atheists by the time they were in year 3 or 4. We were always super careful not to contradict the school and did a lot of "some people believe". But the school itself did a pretty effective job of killing off belief.

Which chimes with my experience of Presbyterian education in the 80s and 90s... the only kids who emerged from that with strong faith were those who had it heavily at home as well.

This would have been our situation had we not moved out of the area (for unrelated reasons).

We took our toddlers to the superb play group linked to the local church but had decided that no, we would suddenly start attending church to increase our chances of them getting a place at the school. It would have felt very wrong and hypocritical to us.

Yes. There's no school choice where I live - one infants school and one junior school. Both are CofE as are all the infants schools in the surrounding villages which feed into the junior school.

Until recently they were all oversubscribed (they were popular with parents from the local town) and it was absolutely compulsory to go to church in order to secure a place. Now of course rolls have absolutely crashed at infants level so anyone can get in - in fact they are already merging classes and talking of closing down some of the infants schools.

Is this a regional thing? My DC attends a C of E village school. We chose it because there are so few children in the catchment it meant that nearly all the parents who use the school have made an active choice to do so instead of using catchment schools. This means you end with an extremely invested group of parents which helps enormously.

As you might guess the school is not at all diverse although the local area is 98% white according to official stats so you could argue the school reflects that.

When we applied we didn’t have to make any comment about religion. Once our place was confirmed we were then asked. We replied we had no religious links at all and nothing further has ever been said.

DH and I have never been christened, nor has DC. None of us has even been to a church service.

The school is fantastic.

It it's anything like our village school, they will only use church attendance as a criteria if oversubscribed. It also depends on whether they are voluntary aided or voluntary controlled. Our infants school is voluntary controlled (no religious discrimination) but the junior it feeds is voluntary aided (can discriminate on religious grounds). It's no longer oversubscribed but back when it was it was pretty much compulsory to get a signature off the vicar that you were a regular attendee to guarantee a place.

Being around a different demographic completely changes experience and outcomes. Especially as a teenager when they are easily influenced by peers.

6 primaries and 8 secondaries.

Yeah, I didn't think it was really up there with thousands of Christian schools.

I’d much prefer to move house, but if that really wasn’t possible then yes.

Yes but you are probably a little late if it’s for this years application. You want to be attending every 2-3 weeks for a year.

OP, do what's best for your children.

OP, my only advice is that if there’s any money available for private tutoring, use it. Even good state schools often need complementary and supplementary tutoring outside of them.

I think people are being intentionally ignorant when they overlook the fact that Church of England primary schools are often the only primary schools in large areas, disregarding the small Church of England primary schools in rural regions that serve four or more villages at once. I know that my village's primary school, a Church of England school where I attended, had pupils coming from three other villages. It doesn't matter whether the parents are religious or not, and attending church is never necessary.

I don't like religion being funded by public money, but there are far too many things I disagree with public money going toward, so it's not worth discussing here.

@crymyeyesviolete check the school admissions policy, but for CE school admissions you may not need to tick a box to say you have a faith, but only to say you have attended church for the required period and frequency. It is perfectly ok to go to church as an atheist - many people do for weddings and funerals. Whether you enjoy it or not is another matter, but you can treat it as a cultural experience.

Faith schools can prioritise children of their faith over LAC not of their faith, but this does not apply to EHCPs. Children whose EHCPs name the school must be admitted regardless of if they are of faith. EHCP admissions are outside of the normal admission process.

There are plenty of non faith schools that do exactly the same.

the discrimination is against anyone not of that faith and not targeted against other faiths particularly.

we lived in an area with something like 50% places at faith schools.not brilliant when you’re from a multicultural family with 3 faiths. You meant to pick one just for education?

however, you may as play the system.

Then yes. My DC's education is very important to me and I have no qualms about using a state-funded resource which I am supporting with my taxes. I'd try to stay on top of what they're being taught in RE or assemblies and discuss where I disagreed, but I'd do that in a secular and/or independent school as well.

The reason for the system we have is historical. The churches set up schools, and it was only later that the government set up "board schools" to fill the gaps and to provide education for all. Changing the system entirely would be a major upheaval, not least because it would involve buying the buildings/land from the churches.

There's been at least one case where the vicar's child did not get into the church school attached to his dad's church, because the vicarage wasn't near enough the school!