So just to be clear, you did not hear that correctly, really.
You stand a better chance of getting your child into a specific school that is already full (as an oversubscribed pupil), if you meet one of the following criteria (in descending order of priority):
[ul]
[li]The child is ‘looked after’ (in the care of local authorities etc)[/li][li]The child or a family member has a medical or psychological condition that makes it essential they attend that school[/li][li]The child lives within the school’s geographic catchment area[/li][li]The child has a sibling already in the school[/li][li]The school is designated by the Secretary of State as having a religious character, and parents are members of that faith[/li][li]The parents are staff at the school[/li][/ul]
Is it really very unfair that a child from, say, a Muslim family is slightly more likely to be accepted into an already-fully-subscribed school of designated Muslim character, than the child of a member of staff, but only if almost nobody else is competing for that space?
The “oversubscribed” is a cop-out. The best schools are all over-subscribed and if they are faith schools then can then feel free to apply their religious test. That test can end up being applied to hundreds of children. How many underwent that process in your school last year?
And yes, it is really that bad. The religious affiliation of parents should play no part in school admissions policy at all, it is shameful.
The top four criteria above are perfectly reasonable, the bottom two are frankly ridiculous.
Would you accept any other state-funded service applying favouritism to one religion over another or none?
I refer people to the Fair Admissions campaign, a noble cause, it really is time this was stopped.
I can only remember a handful of cases where it was even a question, in the 7 or so years I’ve been a governor - and we are an OFSTED ‘outstanding’ school that is consistently oversubscribed.
You might as well be arguing for the abolition of religious distinctiveness in all schools, or the divorce of church and state - if that’s what you really want, then say so.
The top four precede and override the bottom two. The bottom two only come into play if the top four are not relevant.
In practice, this means that some children from religious families from out of catchment get accepted before others from out of catchment (including the children of staff).
I don’t know - would you like to come up with a realistic, relevant hypothetical?
I’m not pointing the finger at your school in particular you understand. But you must know that there are many faith schools where over-subscription is in the region of 6:1 or more and religious affiliation becomes a much more relevant factor when whittling down the applications.
No, just that if you take the states (our) money, you should not have special exemption from equality laws (as faith schools exclusively do)
Absolutely, I’m on record regarding that. We should be a secular nation with no special privilege or exemptions for any specific religion.
I understood your explanation the fist time. The problem is that religion appears on that list in the first place.
Yes, religious discrimination in practice. Surely a lottery would be much fairer?
As I said upthread, hospitals. Imagine an NHS hospital with a catholic culture that has enough money left to perform one last kidney transplant in the current financial year. Two potential patients present, equal in both ways other than one is catholic, one is an atheist. The hospital treats the catholic because they are catholic.
Would you be comfortable with that? Bear in mind that this only happens on a handful of occasions over…say…7 years.
Then the discussion of selection criteria is irrelevant. If schools had no religious distinctiveness, there would be no reason for parents to desire to send their kids there on that basis - I think you’re attacking this problem in the wrong place, given your position on the topic.
I don’t think that’s a very fair or relevant analogy. children don’t die just because they don’t get to go to a specific school outside of their catchment.
We could make it more relevant by saying that the patient has already been offered a transplant in a hospital closer to their home, but wants to pick a different hospital where the staff wear nicer hats.
Politics is the art of the possible though. A sweeping change to dis-establish the Church of England is a massive move, removing this one area of religious privilege is a means of chipping away at the larger edifice. I feel comfortable attacking discrimination where I find it.
but their life chances may be more limited.
Not even remotely the same example.
Let’s make this a non-life-threatening, but life-enhancing surgery instead. Let’s make this a choice between a poor hospital that will accept you or an excellent hospital that’s more likely to accept you as long as you are Catholic.
We are, after all, talking about getting access to the best facility based on religious adherence. The niceness of hats says nothing about how good the hospital is.
OK. Do you have any ideas on how to dismantle the church-school relationship without lowering standards?
I guess they might, but that’s a whole lot of maybe.
It’s still not really relevant. A faith school is culturally distinctive in a way that people of that faith consider a benefit. I think schools with other kinds of distinctiveness (particular focus on performing arts, for example) should be able to weight their selection criteria slightly so as to give places to those most likely to benefit from their distinctiveness.
Ideally, we’d find suitable niches for everyone that way.
That reads to me like “we want more religion in schools” and “we want more government tasks to be taken over by faith-based organisations.”
Both of those are already happening: his Education Minister ludicrously wrote a foreword to be placed in every Bible as a new set to be sent out to every school (as if schools have a dearth of Bibles, and if they do, they can’t get them for free elsewhere) and as if his minister is so important that he merits an actual part of the printed Bible.
And his “big society” idea is all about having charities, often faith-based ones, take over functions formerly provided by the govt. All run by volunteers, dependant on donations rather than guaranteed funds, not necessarily highly-skilled, not subject to as much oversight, more likely by their very nature to discriminate against people not of their faith (not as in maliciously turning away non-believers, but prioritising believers - which can end up being the same thing when you have limited resources).
And now he’s saying God is on his side in all this. Most PMs don’t have the gall to claim that.
They perform better than the rest because they are allowed to use religious selection as a plausibly deniable means of social and class selection. That then becomes self-sustaining as they cream off the “better” kids, improve their rating, become more over-subscribed and thus can apply their religious discrimination over an ever greater number of children.
Is that an opinion, or can you support this assertion with evidence?
I ask because I know this isn’t true for the high-performing, OFSTED-outstanding school where I am a governor. In fact, we have a higher than average intake of pupils that have been given the cold shoulder from other local (non-faith) schools, which definitely ARE doing that.
I didn’t say I wanted to dismantle the relationship. Faiths groups can continue to set-up and run schools should they wish. However, if they want to continue having state funding then we must remove the exemption they have from the equalities legislation.
They can run the schools, be open and honest about their philosophy and leave it to the parents to consider if they want to apply. But they should not be allowed to choose pupils based on parental religion.
And what is this about lowering standards? Is there something inherent in a faith that creates a better school?
But surely if going to a good school does not increase a child’s life chances then there is nothing to worry about if standards do drop.
It is perfectly relevant, no state service should be conditional on religion. The hospital example sounds just so totally ludicrous doesn’t it? That should ring some alarm bells for you.
You’ll have to work quite hard to make a case for that that. Are those benefits impossible to provide in a school of no designated faith?
In school, the state should remain neutral on the matter of religious affiliation. What better opportunity is there for the state to mandate integration than in schools? A blanket policy of open access for children regardless of social standing or faith should be required.
If you want to have state-funded schools that specialise in certain academic areas that is fine. You want to test out children and find out what academic areas will suit them best and allocate accordingly? again fine. I’m not bothered about different, I’m not even bothered about a state-school having a religious ethos (as long as they don’t override the national curriculum), I just find it incomprehensible that any school that I help fund can legally discriminate against mine, or any other children on the grounds of my religion or lack of.
Straight question…are you conflicted at all by using religion as a selection criteria for school places? Are you truly comfortable with it?
Opinion, it is unlikely that any school will admit to openly using religion as a means social selection. they are far more subtle than that. Here are some case studies though, plus further links to other information and reports. A quick google will turn up myriad articles from across the political spectrum that deal with just this issue. My wife was previously a school governor and is currently a primary teacher and I get some information straight from the horses mouth. I suspect that you are exposed to the same sort of discussions.
But you wouldn’t take your sample of one as being representative of the whole would you? Your school may be very even-handed and I applaud you for that but do you accept that sharp practices regarding religious selection do occur elsewhere?
Of course not. It is, however, the significant portion of my experinence on this topic. This statement was intended to put my request for citation into context. It is the reason why evidence would be required to convince me whreas hearsay may not.
Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve only seen it the other way around - where we are the soft touch for ‘difficult to place’ children that other schools nearby would rather not accommodate (not just from an academic standards point of view - such children often place a greater demand on teaching resources, but are not ‘statemented’, so no additional funding comes with them)
Mangetout, I think we’ve derailed long and hard on this one and maybe gone as far as we can. I suspect we are both clear on where each other stands on this issue even if we aren’t in full agreement.
One final thing though, lest I leave you with the wrong impression. As wrong as I think it is (and as much as I’d like to get rid of it) I don’t see religious selection as the biggest problem within the state education system. Many other things need fixing first.
I’m happy to shake your hand and leave it there if you are.
I did notice I have not responded to a couple of your direct questions above - if you wish, I will come back and address them, but I don’t want to seem to be fighting for the last word, so only if you want me to.
Answering any outstanding questions won’t fundamentally change where we’ve got to so I reckon we can park this until we find opportunity to re-hash it at a later date and in another thread. (let’s face it…it is *bound *to come up again sometime)
Anyhow, as a governor it’s exactly that time of year when admissions applications are being appealed so you are going to need all your spare time to deal with them!
Note to Americans: Cameron may call himself evangelical, but he is a member of the Church of England (Episcopalian in a US context), a mainline Christian faith. Just FTR.
What’s the benefit? I didn’t know there was a market for this stuff in the UK. Is there a market of this stuff in the UK? Or is this just a coded attack on Muslims? Or is it British nationalism at work? Real question: this American doesn’t understand what his game is.
This is nominally a Protestant country with an establishment of religion. In practice, it is much more secular than some countries with a constitutional separation between Church and State. Most of us don’t care much about whatever religious views our politicians may hold, as long as they don’t come bothering us with them.
This week the Liberal Democrats seem to have had a need to pick a fight with their coalition partner over something - anything - gun control - disestablishment - neither of them things that are on the radar at present. Most of us are indifferent to religion, and the practise of religion, though we kinda like the Church of England to be continue to be there for us not to go to.
