Ship of Fools: Faith school or not?

Thread: Faith school or not? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Talitha (# 5085) on :

(Not sure whether this is best suited to Purg or All Saints. I'm interested in discussing the practical question of whether to send one's child to a faith school given that faith schools do exist, rather than the more abstract question of whether they ought to exist at all.)

We're starting to look at primary schools for our daughter. There is a Catholic school within very easy walking distance, and we're wondering whether to apply there or not. I get the impression that this particular school takes faith seriously and it's not just a nominal thing, and the vast majority of their pupils are from practising Catholic families. We're not Catholics, but we're quite ecumenical and we don't doubt the validity of their Christianity as some in our church would.

On the plus side, they seem really nice and welcoming, and focused on the whole child rather than just academic performance. They encourage the older children to look after the younger ones, and they talk about "gospel values". It would be nice for her to go to a school which affirms our family's faith rather than undermining it.

On the minus side (for a Christian school in general), faith schools can be divisive and it would mean she wouldn't be at school with her existing friends (although there's such a high density of primary schools round here that she might not be anyway) or make new non-Christian friends. I don't want her to grow up in a blinkered Christian ghetto. And, conversely, a secular school is the primary mission field for children and their non-working parents.

And on the minus side for a Catholic school specifically, we're not Catholics, and we don't want her to feel like a second-class citizen in her own school. She might feel left out, for example, when they're all getting confirmed and having their first Communion.

Anyone got any experience, positive or negative, of faith schools; or anyone having a similar dilemma?

Posted by Caissa (# 16710) on :

Put her in a secular school.

Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :

You might think that I, as an atheist, should not join this discussion, but a middle-of-the-road Primary education, meeting children from a wider variety of backgrounds will, in my strongly held, ex-Primary School teacher's opinion, give a much better start in life to your child. And I would add that, until I retired,I still had a belief, although a rapidly weakening one, in something 'out there'.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

error.

[ 12. July 2013, 14:17: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]

Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :

A faith school doesn't mean you won't encounter people from a variety of backgrounds. I went to a church school and, though it was sheer coincidence based on the accessibility of the school buildings, it gave me an early and hugely valuable up-close experience of physical disability - in every class perhaps 2 or 3 of my classmates were obviously disabled using either crutches or a wheelchair. The school wasn't ethnically or culturally diverse but rural Somerset wasn't, faith school or not. It was, however, an excellent inoculation against ideas that people who are less able than others, in whatever way, are somehow not trying hard enough.

Compare this with my secular secondary school that was driven by competition and an approach to life obsessed with business and money (it became, unsurprisingly, a business and enterprise specialist school).

I think the only things you need to concern yourself with are:
1) Will my child be able to learn here?
2) Will my child be happy here?
3) Will my child be helped to become a good person here?

None of these question directly depend on whether or not it is a faith school, and frankly treating your choice of school as a hunting ground for converts is more than a little worrisome.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
It would be nice for her to go to a school which affirms our family's faith rather than undermining it.

Erm. I can't speak for every primary school in the land, and not even the one I've worked in for the last 7 years.

But no primary school I know of would ever 'undermine' a child's faith.

Posted by Talitha (# 5085) on :

Thanks for the replies.

quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
I think the only things you need to concern yourself with are:
1) Will my child be able to learn here?
2) Will my child be happy here?
3) Will my child be helped to become a good person here?

Those are very helpful. And I do think the faith school happens to tick those boxes better than the other school we've looked at so far, although we're going to look at another one or two as well.

quote:
frankly treating your choice of school as a hunting ground for converts is more than a little worrisome.

I was trying to say that I think it's limiting for a Christian not to know any non-Christians, for two almost-opposite reasons: firstly that they can't learn from and get input from non-Christians, and secondly that they have no one to witness to. I don't mean the latter in any kind of aggressive, shoving-down-throat-evangelistic way, but just quietly "letting your light shine before men".

Posted by Talitha (# 5085) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Erm. I can't speak for every primary school in the land, and not even the one I've worked in for the last 7 years.

But no primary school I know of would ever 'undermine' a child's faith.

I was thinking more of classmates than the official institution.
And even on an institutional level, I was thinking of preaching an incompatible ethos rather than directly contradicting someone's stated beliefs. Like the school mentioned by Arethosemyfeet which was "driven by competition and an approach to life obsessed with business and money".

Posted by The Midge (# 2398) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Talitha:

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Erm. I can't speak for every primary school in the land, and not even the one I've worked in for the last 7 years.

But no primary school I know of would ever 'undermine' a child's faith.
I was thinking more of classmates than the official institution.
And even on an institutional level, I was thinking of preaching an incompatible ethos rather than directly contradicting someone's stated beliefs. Like the school mentioned by Arethosemyfeet which was "driven by competition and an approach to life obsessed with business and money".

Classmates? Don't count on them to reinforce faith. Trust me on this: I spent my entire school life in CofE faith school and class mates varied from little monsters to angels and fundamentalists to atheists. Behaviour didn't relate to how godly the child (or the child's parents were). We even had (so it was rumoured and looking back on it from an adult perspective subsequent events tally up) a teacher sex scandal.

We sent out own children to a regular county school and the broadness of the catchment worked well. There seems about the same proportion of little monsters as I remember.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Probably one thing a Roman Catholic school will instill in your child is discipline. Most do have very high expectations.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

It depends on the specifics of the school, and the board, and their philosophy of education. Also, if you're prepared to add in the things they will leave out. It if is an RC school, the things they leave out here are sexual education other than "don't", and some of the teacher examples have been pretty hardline and troubling. The Roman Catholic schools here have been pretty definite that they are evangelizing in the sense of wanting to create good Roman Catholics, even as they indicate they welcome all faiths and cultures.

I actually think that in the Canadian context, it would be better to defund religious schools entirely and have only a single school board (by constitution we have public schools and separate (RC) schools out west). I don't get what RC math would look like, would never want religion in science class etc. If people want it, it shouldn't be funded out of tax monies.

Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
...If people want it, it shouldn't be funded out of tax monies.

Because those who do want it don't pay taxes, eh?

Talitha, I think Arethosemyfeet's questions are the only ones we asked with our three children. We started, as Catholics, with the presumption that they would go to Catholic schools but had no qualms about moving our daughter out of a Catholic School when we couldn't answer these questions in the affirmative.

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

We're very grateful that our kids go to a Catholic school in what seems to be an increasingly hostile secular environment.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

It's the separation of church and state thing re taxation. It is also about collective responsibility in society for children. I worry about indoctrination.

I also think it is objectionable that RC schools would be taxed funded, but other groups are not. Though this is changing, and we're seeing fundamentalists or faith groups in that direction becoming affiliate schools within school boards. It is unreasonable to have science education truncated because they have religious beleifs that restrict them: for example, in practice, we have seen that they just don't get into those parts of the science curriculum that they dislike.

Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on :

I, too, am worried about indoctrination. The secular humanist indoctrination that two of my children experienced in one state school had to be experienced to be believed.

Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on :

No prophet, I wanted to add - but got distracted - that in a pluralist democracy it seems objectionable to me too that one religious group should have access to funding for schools and others excluded.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Talitha:
I was thinking more of classmates than the official institution.
And even on an institutional level, I was thinking of preaching an incompatible ethos rather than directly contradicting someone's stated beliefs. Like the school mentioned by Arethosemyfeet which was "driven by competition and an approach to life obsessed with business and money".

Firstly, you do realise that a majority, if not a very great majority of your child's classmates won't have even one practicing Christian parent at home, whichever school you send them to, unless you pick a Free School set up and populated by, Christians.

Secondly, you do realise that a majority, if not a very great majority of your child's teachers, won't be practicing Catholics, or even Christians of any stripe.

Thirdly, you do realise that Christians do teach in regular county primary schools too. And Christians send their children to them.

Posted by Talitha (# 5085) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Firstly, you do realise that a majority, if not a very great majority of your child's classmates won't have even one practicing Christian parent at home, whichever school you send them to, unless you pick a Free School set up and populated by, Christians.

Secondly, you do realise that a majority, if not a very great majority of your child's teachers, won't be practicing Catholics, or even Christians of any stripe.

Not sure about this. It depends on the particular school, which is why I emphasised that this school is the practising kind, not the nominal kind. Their admissions bumf says they're set up to educate the children of Catholics and the pupils are about 90% from practising Catholic families. To meet the top level of the admissions criteria you have to regularly attend a Catholic church and be baptised Catholic. As regular attenders of a church in a different denomination, we rank higher in the admissions criteria than non-Christians but still below Catholics, and the school is quite popular, so there's a chance our non-Catholicism will debar us and make my deliberations moot.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Trisagion:
No prophet, I wanted to add - but got distracted - that in a pluralist democracy it seems objectionable to me too that one religious group should have access to funding for schools and others excluded.

That is the constitutional fact. Part of acts to create some of the provinces of Canada. It's another of those sorry crystallization of facts from another era into things that seem unchangeable even if they're unworkable or ill-advised today. Many countries have this trouble about something. This one recognizes the the trouble the British wanted to avoid with the French who were RC as far as I know, though we have a very small population of French speakers in the west. More Cree, German, Ukrainian, and perhaps Spanish and Chinese. When in doubt we blame Ontario (and Quebec right after them)

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Talitha:
Not sure about this. It depends on the particular school, which is why I emphasised that this school is the practising kind, not the nominal kind. Their admissions bumf says they're set up to educate the children of Catholics and the pupils are about 90% from practising Catholic families. To meet the top level of the admissions criteria you have to regularly attend a Catholic church and be baptised Catholic.

I appreciate that you play by the rules, and expect them to do so too.

But parents with 3 and 4 year-olds will turn up at the local Catholic shack, having last darkened the door for the baptism, and before that, their wedding, just to get the letter from the priest. Once that's done, they'll turn up for first communion.

Yes, I might be entirely wrong and your local RC primary may be staffed by practicing Catholics for practicing Catholics, but our local (very good) Catholic primary works pretty much as I've described, and teachers in other RC schools I've met describe things in similar terms.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Talitha:
And on the minus side for a Catholic school specifically, we're not Catholics, and we don't want her to feel like a second-class citizen in her own school. She might feel left out, for example, when they're all getting confirmed and having their first Communion.

This would concern me. I went to secular schools, but up to the age of about nine it was in a heavily Italian town, and most of my classmates were R.C. They assumed everyone was R.C., and I was often chided for heading straight home on Wednesdays, when they all headed off to Catechism. I definitely felt like an outsider.

Posted by Zacchaeus (# 14454) on :

In my experience church schools vary tremendously. The RC schools I have known have been very concerned with keeping their denomination alive and distinct, but have accepted non RC as long as you were prepared to go along with their ways and yes non RC children were excluded from the church side of things.

Though most church schools I have known both RC and CofE have a very pastoral heart with the pupils and their care for them, and deal with and treat well, children who have faith and those who don’t. The exception was one RC secondary school which was very old style hard line on ‘RC values’ and morality.

CofE schools vary depending on whether they are Controlled or voluntary aided. (I always get them confused as to which is which) but one is basically the same as a local authority school and has no religious criteria for entrance, though some can be run by Christians with Christian values paramount. The other does have church criteria, but even with those, I have come across some where they are the only church in a village and indistinguishable from LA schools.

Each school is as individual as each child and you must judge the one that best fits your child

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Voluntary controlled schools are maintained by the local authority and follow its Agreed Syllabus for RE.

Vol. Aided schools were built by the church and follow the diocesan RE syllabus.

However, the boundaries are increasingly becoming blurred.

Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :

The questions up thread are what you need to ask. All I would add is go and see the school, ask about its ethos and values (schools put a lot of time and effort into thinking about these), try and get a feel for what it's like. Three other things: if you're old enough to have a primary age child, then primary schooling has changed a lot since you were in it; local 'knowledge' is often out of date - make sure people who tell you about the school actually currently have children in it; and unless they are actively falling out with their child's school, parents tend to have a bias towards the school they have chosen, and will give reasons why it is better and another worse. (This is just a specific example of a general human tendency.)

I am governor of a very good Voluntary Aided Church primary school, and my children go/have gone to a very good community primary school. (We are very lucky in my area!)

Posted by Talitha (# 5085) on :

quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
The questions up thread are what you need to ask. All I would add is go and see the school, ask about its ethos and values (schools put a lot of time and effort into thinking about these), try and get a feel for what it's like.

We've already done that, and liked it. My concern is whether we apply for this school which we like, or whether we should be cautious either because it's a faith school in general or because it's a Catholic school specifically - whether that should be a red flag in spite of the positive impression it's made on us.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Talitha:
We've already done that, and liked it.

Doesn't that answer the question?

quote:
My concern is whether we apply for this school which we like, or whether we should be cautious either because it's a faith school in general or because it's a Catholic school specifically - whether that should be a red flag in spite of the positive impression it's made on us.

You haven't got a Rev Ian Paisley approach to its being a Catholic school. If you had, it would not have occurred to you to consider the school in the first place.

If you like the school, like its ethos, feel it appears to take teaching seriously and do it well, and can imagine your child being happy there, that IMHO takes priority every time over abstract arguments about the sort of educational or community policies you might feel you ought to agonise over.

Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on :

This isn't really addressing the pinciples involved in your question, Talitha, which other people have done, but just a word of local experience. There is a shortage of primary school places in Cambridge, and the school you are thinking about may well be oversubscribed (you can find out whether this is the case on the education section of the country council website). If it is, then the admissions criteria will be applied very strictly. So, in practice, I would think it's a good idea to go and visit your catchment school and any others near you, because you may well be allocated to your second choice -- or even to another school that you didn't nominate.

Posted by Poppy (# 2000) on :

If you are in area with oversubscribed schools you need to be very strategic about school admissions and read the LA booklet very carefully. This will tell you who got in on which criteria last year. This will give you an indication of whether you stand any chance with the RC school. A friend of mine is chair of governors of a very over subscribed RC school. One of the criteria they use is whether the child was baptised under 6 months old. Over 6 months and you can (mostly) forget applying for that school.

When my children were little I did the usual school visiting and talked to headteacher, teachers and children. I also spoke to friends and friends of friends who were supply teachers which gives a great insight into what really goes on. In the end I went with the school where the children were kind to each other. It happened to be C of E and it wasn't perfect but it was local and that meant a lot in the years of school runs that could be done on foot rather than in the car.

In an oversubscribed area there can be an illusion of choice which isn't really there. You need to get researching and planning your visits for the autumn term.

[ 14. July 2013, 20:27: Message edited by: Poppy ]

Posted by Talitha (# 5085) on :

The school is indeed oversubscribed and so i our catchment school - as I said upthread, we might not get into it anyway and my deliberations might be moot.

I am definitely visiting a couple of other schools as well, and would do for comparison anyway, oversubscribed or not. Never mind the autumn term, we've been visiting them this term.

I asked the Catholic school whether its oversubscribed-ness meant we had no chance and shouldn't bother applying, but they reckoned it was still worth it and that there was a reasonable chance admissions would get down to our tier.

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

Visiting the school during a school day is very helpful, do ask them lots of questions about how they will promote a happy secure environment for your child. Other parents' views are very useful but also very subjective. I have a Catholic friend whose children attend the Catholic school in Cambridge and she is clearly very happy with it but I have another Catholic friend who felt it was too 'rough' for her daughters - I suspect she meant too urban as she lives in Trumpington. Parents' tastes do differ as do their children's. Incidently, Catholics from all over the city will be applying for places so the competition will be great. Have you asked them exactly how many non-Catholics got in last year? That might give you a better idea of your chances, especially if it is close to where you live (equal ranking is usually decided by distance).
When my eldest went to high school we visited two schools, the catchment one and the one in the next village (undersubscribed but actually easier to get to by bus). It was immediately clear which would suit my serious geeky child, there were children very much like him at the village school open evening. However, a different child/parent might be better at the other school.
My youngest does not go to a faith school either, he goes to our village school which is lovely, very focused on personal development and inclusivity and has a low key approach to SATS. He is being developed as an individual and certainly not having his/our beliefs undermined.

Posted by Talitha (# 5085) on :

At the risk of identifying the school - although I don't think it matters because I've said only positive things about it - they just had an extension and will have a significantly larger intake next year, so they've said that previous years' admissions data aren't directly relevant and aren't a good predictor of whether we'd get in.

Posted by Erroneous Monk (# 10858) on :

I'm a practising RC with one, soon to be two, children at the local Catholic primary. We live in an inner city area where the Catholic primary draws from a very wide ethnic background and, even while prioritising Catholic applicants, also takes children from other faith backgrounds.

So I feel very lucky because I would have wanted my children to go to the Catholic primary anyway, but it also happens to be, as I see it, one of the most inclusive and loving school environments in the neighbourhood. I have absolutely no doubt that my children's Bangladeshi Muslim influences are valued and respected as much as their Catholic practice.

If you and your child like the school, if you feel comfortable, if you connect with the head and other teaching staff, I wouldn't think about it too hard, but go with your gut.

Posted by Merchant Trader (# 9007) on :

The more general question might be
a) should church schools serve the local community?
b) should church schools be used to give church members' children an education in an environment with a christian ethos?
c) should church schools be any different to state schools?

My answer to (c) is yes or else why bother (otherwise let the state get on with it). But still debating the balance between (a) and (b).

But when it came to my children, as a Christian and as a member of the Cof E, I wanted them at least to be in a church school at primary age.

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

Hi Talitha

We were in exactly your position but in inner-city Manchester, both our girls are now in the local RC primary (age 8 and nearly 6), and the school is fantastic - one of the best things about our family life together. Based on my experience, go for it, and I can give you loads more anecdote by PM if you fancy it.

If my kids end up going RC, I'll be deeply grateful. Our church will be dead in 10 years.

Mark

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