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

[crymyeyesviolete]

If your other local options were dire?

It's disingenuous and mistaken to describe that the church's contribution to church schools is so low. The church contributes the capital cost of the building, generally millions of pounds worth, without which the school's budget would be overwhelmed with PFI payments for the buildings. It varies from school to school how much the church contributes to building maintenance etc, but the "running costs" of a school go far beyond the teachers' salary bill, which is what the state pays.

Children from church families do not get two bites of the cherry, each child gets 1 education. The higher performance of many church schools is because the additional effort needed to go there means that there's a higher proportion on average of children who are brought up with the right kind of attitude to benefit from their education. Absolutely nothing prevents a currently non-church family from doing what it takes to qualify under the church criteria but they are not faith criteria - faith cannot be objectively observed or measured. If the education offered by the faith school is the one you want then all it takes is the right real physical actions to meet those criteria. The beliefs in your mind are not assessed. If a faith-filled education isn't right for your child but they are bright and interested in education, it won't matter in the long run whether they are part of the 53% with good GCSEs from the faith school or part of the 48% with good GCSEs from the non-faith school. Each child in a cohort of 240 students represents less than half a percent of those performance stats and each child's experiences and chances are not greatly affected by what everyone else in their yeargroup achieved.

"The church contributes the capital cost of the building, generally millions of pounds worth, without which the school's budget would be overwhelmed with PFI payments for the buildings. It varies from school to school how much the church contributes to building maintenance etc, but the "running costs" of a school go far beyond the teachers' salary bill, which is what the state pays."

@FenceBooksCycle It's certainly true that if church schools became non-faith then the Government would need to compensate the Church because they own the buildings.

However most non-church schools don't make "PFI payments", only a relatively small number that had capital work done under PFI initiatives in the past. The Government owns or leases most school buildings.

The Government pays 100% of the running costs and most of the Capital Maintenance costs of faith schools. Some faith schools are "voluntary aided" which means they contribute 10% to Capital Maintenance. However, many of them are now converting to academy status so they no longer need to make that contribution. There are also "Voluntary Controlled" faith schools that never did have to contribute the 10%.

Btw, I worked it out once about 10 years ago, based on some published data that, nationally, the 10% contribution amounted to about £30 per child per year which neatly correlated with what my kids' VA primary requested from parents as an annual 'voluntary' contribution.

"The Government owns or leases most school buildings."

By which I mean local government or national government, depending on the school type.

@FenceBooksCycle Not all faith schools have great results at all! Plenty get into RI or inadequate. Plus parents who take dc to school get the places - the better off parents. Faith selects on money and finding faith. Hardly fair to all and essentially exclusive.

100%

You also only have to attend church - you don't have to actually participate or believe. You can sit on the back pew and read the paper if you want to.

DH is Jewish and we are both atheists.

DD did go to a CofE school for a while. I crossed out everything in the contract that said I would support anything to do with faith. Didn't go as far as withdrawing her from anything religious, but I would have done if we were allocated a faith school against our preferences.

I found it pretty revolting that we were ineligible for 5/6 of our nearest primaries on faith grounds, yet are expected to fund them.

@FenceBooksCycle Your comment on FPI is flawed, as @stoopy already explained.

Children from church families do not get two bites of the cherry, each child gets 1 education.

Wrong. Religious families have more cherries to choose from, even if all the cherries are funded by everyone's taxes. Even when certain cherries (schools) are supposedly open to non-religious families, the religious ones still have more chances.

Absolutely nothing prevents a currently non-church family from doing what it takes to qualify under the church criteria but they are not faith criteria

Wrong again. Many faith schools require baptism. Maybe all Catholic ones do but few CofE do, of that I'm not sure.

Ah, and let's not forget that, before a fight in court, the criteria were much worse. The London Oratory used to request baptism certificates from child and parents, and used to rank families on their contributions to the church - ridiculed as the flower arranging criterion, it meant prioritising those who donated money to the Church. It took a legal battle, but that was ruled discriminatory and illegal. Let the children come to me. But only the rich ones, the plebs can ##@@ off.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow I found it pretty revolting that we were ineligible for 5/6 of our nearest primaries on faith grounds, yet are expected to fund them.

Exactly! We would never accept this with any other kind of state-funded service. Can you imagine hospitals discriminating based on faith??

Absolutely nothing prevents a currently non-church family from doing what it takes to qualify under the church criteria but they are not faith criteria

Apart from the fact that it discriminates against children who come from families with social problems or those whose jobs make church attendance difficult.

If your mother is a single parent holding down 3 jobs and struggling to manage life in general, how easy is it to tick all the boxes required?

Yet the system makes it very easy for someone like me who despises all religious equally to trot along on a Sunday morning for the requisite number of years and hold my nose for a desirable school place. We all know in-demand church schools do better due to selection by the back door rather than any kind of moral virtue.

Yeah sure why not. It’s all bollocks anyway, so if you gain a decent education for your child out of it, why not. That’s of course assuming that it is a decent education. Is there no other school they can go to? Remember at this one the kids will have enforced religious activities.

@FenceBooksCycle

Children from church families do not get two bites of the cherry

They often do, just as children from families who can afford private do. If the local indie options are better than the local state options, those who can afford it can take that choice, those who cannot, can not. If the local faith options are better than the local non-faith options, those who qualify on faith grounds can take that option, those who don't, often can not. The difference is that I'm not paying for wealthier children to have more options than mine, whereas I am paying for faith children to have more options.

Absolutely nothing prevents a currently non-church family from doing what it takes to qualify under the church criteria but they are not faith criteria

As has already been noted, around London many oversubscribed faith schools, both RC and CofE, don't make it past the "Baptised Catholic children..." and "Baptised children..." categories. I don't know if it's still the case, but some RC schools use to prioritize early baptism as well, e.g., before 6 months or before 2 years old.

@AbsentosaurusRex At some, the religious activities are fairly minimal. Most dc just join in without belief.

Our area is like this - decent (if super strict) CofE option or a parade of terrible alternatives. Personally we are relocating rather than doing the church attendance thing, but I appreciate that we’re in a privileged position to have this option. Failing that, pragmatically, I probably would, and judging by how oversubscribed the school is (against a backdrop of falling rolls) and the high turnover of congregants at our local church, cynical church attendance is very much the done thing here.

I’d do many things to ensure the best for my child. That’s an easy one to do. Have your child’s back as no-one else will.