Catholic secondary schools -how do you get in?

[allok]

OK, my ds is only 3.5 but we're applying for schools at the moment.

I'd like the option of ds to go to a catholic secondary should he not get into grammar school. dh is catholic and I'm not a christian. DS not baptised as I strongly feel that we should do itwhen he says he's ready and he's had no tuition from his catholic side as yet. But in any case I reckon he'd be between 6-9 years old before he gets it.

I though that secondary catholic schools want baptised kids and that's all - but I'm now really worried as lots of catholic kids at ds's nursery are applying for catholic infant/junior school in preparation of getting their little ones into catholic secondary school.

I was planning to sending ds to the infant/junior opposite my house which has the best reputation in our area.

What should I be doing? Does a kid need ot have gone to a catholic junior school in order to be considered by a catholic senior school?

William Ellis is rough as a badger's arse.

z'mum is right re catholic schools and ethnic/social mixes. This seems to be true of even the most desirable catholic schools (LOS, CVMS etc).

Most catholic schools in inner london will have 50%+ non-white, more if you count eg. Spanish/italian/south american kids as non-white. At my dd1's catholic secondary school only 1 child in a class of 32 had four UK-born grandparents, and that's an upper-end of the league-tables school. I assume the picture is similar at other catholic schools.

Frogs - that's not fair. Fiona will be furious.

My heart bleeds for her.

Not.

To return to the OP.

You do not need any instruction to be baptized - you are maybe thinking of Confirmation? - so ti's not a matter of when your son "gets it".

A lot of Catholic Secondary schools require evidence of infant baptism, or very strong reasons why this did not take place in order to avoid the "baptism of convenience' syndrome.

They also require evidence of commitment to the faith by both the child and its parents - I suspect a catholic father who did not have his child baptized soon after birth would not go down well.

As wouldn't not sending said child to a Catholic primary school because there's a better school across the road!

Agree about the better ethnic/social mix at catholic schools - one of the big positives for me as we live in a fairly white middle class area. As dh and I are not from the UK originally I didn't want my dcs to stick out as the only ones with "foreign" names - my dd now has many classmates with lovely names far more exotic and unusual than hers!

zanzibarmum - Thanks for your calm and reasoned response.

Maybe you're right that more private Catholic schools would open but they would very likely be stricter about taking only Catholic children (or, more accurately, the children of real Catholic parents).

The ethnic diversity of these schools really does depend on the area - as I said, some are much better than others.

As to their values, I don't like the implication that having good values comes only with religion, that unbelievers don't have them. I also don't like the other baggage that comes with religious values.

I suspect that what most parents want is more good schools, not more religious schools. The education system is far from ideal at the moment and opening more faith schools (as this government and the Tories intend) is not the answer.

The fact that some religious schools are teaching creationism either overtly or covertly is worrying. The fact that some religious schools want to be able to say homosexuality is wrong is also worrying. As is the fact that some of them do not want to give kids full sex education. Catholic schools in Scotland were dead against girls being given the HPV vaccine because it would make them 'more promiscuous' - even though it has been shown to save lives.

You're right that Accord is made up of a mixed bunch but there is other research that comes to the same conclusions.

frogs - do you have a ds at william ellis? mine has just moved up from it into laswap and our experience has not been the badgers arse, as you so delicately put it.

Tessak - thank you for your comment. I am not saying that community schools aren't value-based communities but I am saying that perhaps parents do not perceive the strength of those values as able to challenge the dominant values in the wider celebrity, 'now' and 'me' obsessed society. Celebrity in a catholic school would be someone like St Therese which does give pupils a different perspective of what is important than Jordan provides.

You are right that better schools are needed but I don't believe the way to do that is by closing 7000 schools with a religious character.

zanzibarmum - there is no need to close the schools, just convert them to community schools. They would still get government funding but the admissions and employment policies would change, becoming the responsibility of the LEA and the legal loophole grounds they have for discrimination would go. They would not get away with religious indoctrination under the guise of the 'ethos' of the school either.

So the school would be able to hire the best teachers, not just the most religiously 'suitable' and parents would not have to lie to get their kids in. Children living in the local area would all be eligible regardless of the beliefs of their parents. So it would be fairer for everyone.

Laurascarycakes - can you PM me please?

TessaK -- the problem with your suggestion is that in almost all cases (certainly with Catholic schools) the church or some subset thereof (religious order, diocese, whatever) will actually own the school buildings and the land on which they stand.

So unless the government was prepared to buy all the schools and land from the religious authorities at their full market value (and eg. my dc's primary school may be an ugly scruffy building but it is situated on a beautiful and desirable site amid prime London real estate, so the price tag would be eye-watering) there is no way they could take over the schools, even if the political will existed.

As zmum says, if an authoritarian govt did try to force that through, the churches would withdraw their schools from the state system and probably run them as quasi-independent schools on a shoestring budget with lots of volunteers, probably subsidised by charging fees to people who wanted that kind of education but weren't members of the church.

how ridiculous!! no school or organization should be allowed to discriminate in this way against ANY children!! surely they are all equal and therefore should all be given the same opportunities in their education. i fail to understand what kind of religion thinks that this type of discrimination against innocent children is ok. and what on earth can be considered wrong with allowing the child to decide when slightly older whether they want to be baptised or not? most catholic schools right now are jam packed with non catholic children who have probably never been inside a church in their lives before or after their 'baptism', because this is what this prejudice has caused. therefore the catholic schools are jam packed full of people with no morals and lots of lies and prejudice! how can this be right?

Bit of a jump there in your post to catholic schools being full of people with no morals!!!!

back to the OP's question - how to get in depends on the school.
if oversubscribed then you need to:

• be baptised as a baby. not at 6 or 7.
• attend mass regularly, the priest needs to know you and sign the form accordingly

if very popular, (eg LOS) then you also need to be active in the church

• e.g. in the choir, a reader, eucharistic minister, the children need to be altar servers.

also if you are not a practising catholic WHY would you want your dc to attend? families in these schools DO actually go to church regularly, prayers are said morning, lunch, end of day, assemblies, masses in school etc. your dc is going to feel quite left out about it if this is alien to him.

why shouldn't you want your child to attend if this is the highest achieving school, whether you are a 'practising' catholic or not?? contrary to your belief, non catholic people would like a good education for their children aswell and are obviously plumping for the best local schools. a crime in your view? or prejudice against decent people wanting the best for their children?? catholic or not!!!!

djjc, perhaps being a high achieving school is linked to the mission statement and the active practice of Catholic beliefs.

A small point re Catholic schools and special needs: a quick trawl through the figures for pupils with statements of special educational needs in my local primaries shows that in the 3 community schools 15.6%, 17.5% and 23.6% of pupils have statements of SEN, whereas for the two Catholic schools the figures are 6.3% and 2.2%.

So where I live, the Catholic schools certainly seem to be keeping the kids with SENs out somehow or other. I would guess this is fairly typical for any schools that are oversubscribed, and which are allowed to use their own criteria to select pupils for admission.

It is utterly wrong.

well zephririne, the catholic primary my children goes to has the biggest SEN unit in the borough. the school is well known for its fantastic work with SEN.

djjc - agreed, but why is it the catholic schools do so well? my mum would say that any family that manages to get up and out to attend mass on a sunday morning has a focus and determination that filters through to other areas of their life. i used to think it was bullshit but more and more i think she has a point. anyway, i know that is contentious . But i overheard at ballet class the other day some mum bitching and moaning about the religious content of the assemblies of the local CofE school she battled to get her children into. the school where the priest takes a register at church so he knows who "deserves" the places . Her "very bright" children apparently are very bored in the assembly and don't know all the prayers.

amidaiwish, that's great that your school does that, especially if if it doesn't discriminate against non-Catholic children with SENs.

I think there is definitely something in your idea about why church schools do well. By giving priority to the children of regular churchgoers, oversubscribed church schools have immediately filtered out a large proportion of those children who come from very difficult or chaotic backgrounds. So what about these children? Do they not deserve an equal chance to go to any of their local schools? And what effect do you think this filtering has on the neighbouring non-church school that then has to cope with a disproportionate number of children from chaotic homes. Do you not see this as divisive and unfair?

"oversubscribed church schools have immediately filtered out a large proportion of those children who come from very difficult or chaotic backgrounds"

maybe... but it isn't about wealth (i know you haven't said it is, but that is a common preconceived idea) but committed parents i guess.

and yes i do agree on the impact on the other schools, but what is the difference between that and the private schools?

All selective schools, including private, have an impact on the rest. But at least the private schools are funded by the parents who choose to send their children there, not by the rest of us.

fair enough, i do actually agree with you.

but, the church owns the schools and the land they sit on. and the church/parents do fund a %. they haven't just come along and "taken" state schools and then not let anyone else in.

I know that amidaiwish, but the state does provide the vast majority of the funding.

I actually have no issue with faith schools themselves - it's just the admissions policies I have a (very big) problem with.

and with regards to the filtering, surely catchment areas are more hugely divisive than anything else?
where we live (SWLondon) there are no chaotic neighbourhoods. all the (primary) schools are good.
in some ways the church schools have a better mix (of wealth anyway) because it isn't about those who can afford the houses on the right streets to get in, there is another way, via the priest signing the form.

hmm. I am also in SW London. Catchment areas do cause division of course, but around here this is not in any way alleviated by the faith schools - they just add an extra layer of division. I live right behind an RC school and the difference in intake between the children that go there and the children that go to the nearest community school is quite stark (this is from free school meal stats etc not just from observation).

'ere we go again....

Catholic schools educate around 30% of non-Catholics so you could argue the church and its members who pay 10% of captial costs are funding a large number of pupils who would otherwise be educated in the community school sector.

ZephirineDrouhin you support Catholic schools but not their admission policies - what precisely are you talking about. You seem to be generalising based perhaps on the school near you in SW London. Hard cases make bad educational policy and practice don't you think.