Faith schools.

[Floppit]

In our area the 'faith schools' (CofE and RC) do much better in terms of results than the rest but I'm sure I wouldn't pick them out. I am curious why they do better though - any ideas?

Do religious kids really behave better? Ofsted's comments on school behaviour made it seem so.

I'm curious more than anything, my munchkin is only 16 mths so I'm not actually trying to choose yet.

[Croydon Bob]

I am curious why they do better though - any ideas?

More of your taxes are being spent per-pupil than on an ordinary comprehensive. Same with Academy schools. They are doing better because we are paying more and they have more teachers and more books and better classrooms that don't leak, etc. It is a con that uses public money to try to create the impression that private works better; and it is a multi-layer system where children don't all have the same opportunity.

That would be my guess...

[chaggle]

More of your taxes are being spent per-pupil than on an ordinary comprehensive. Same with Academy schools. They are doing better because we are paying more and they have more teachers and more books and better classrooms that don't leak, etc. It is a con that uses public money to try to create the impression that private works better; and it is a multi-layer system where children don't all have the same opportunity.

That would be my guess...

Are faith schools and academies "private"?


create the impression that private works better

That would seem a strange thing for a Labour government to do. If so it just confirms my feeling that the two main parties have become indistinguishable.

[Trinoc]

That would seem a strange thing for a Labour government to do.
When was the last time we had a Labour government?

[Pebble]

I wonder if the greater efficacy of peer pressure to deal with individual staff memebers and the ability to find excuses for shedding dead wood, provides an inherent advantage for 'faith' schools.

There is probably also an advantage in the parental selection process. In order to get little johnny one either has to be a conformist or be prepared to pretend to conform. The former probably selects for 'conformist' children (easier to control) the latter for those prepared to go the extra mile to achieve.

On this basis I suspect there are inherent population advantages, and that the fruitbats that run the schools are incapable in general of completely negating these benefits.

[Croydon Bob]

Are faith schools and academies "private"?

They have (small amounts of) private investment and I doubt that many people realise that they get extra public money to create the impression of private investment = more efficient. They are promoted as running with less "red tape" and having less interference from "the nanny state".


That would seem a strange thing for a Labour government to do. If so it just confirms my feeling that the two main parties have become indistinguishable.

"New Labour" have been just as pro-privatisation as the previous Tory regime. The only reason they've abandoned privatising the Post Office is because no company was stupid enough to get involved. They've had to take a second private rail service back into public ownership but, just like the previous one, they're going to hand it back into the private sector so that the tax payer can cough up more money for a less efficient service all over again. They've got away with a piecemeal privatisation of the NHS through "contracting out" that Thatcher dreamt of but couldn't achieve due to public-backed opposition from Labour.

[Tony Williams]

I think it's mostly a self-fulfilling prophecy. Small church schools are perceived to have more cachet, so middle-class parents do whatever it takes to get their kids in, so the schools become dominated by middle class kids. And, wonders to behold, such kids produce better results than the normally disfunctional shower who fill up the other schools which the middle classes have decamped from.

It really doesn't matter what governments try to do, nothing will stop aspirational parents from trying to work the system to get their kids into schools popular with other aspirational parents. Except for those authorities who have decided to allocate places purely by lottery. Boy, does that cause howls of protest! ;D

[Floppit]

I love the lottery idea! But then I was one of the dysfunctional shower in an inner city school and I had a bloody great time! It got totally spoiled by my parents aspirations and a posh school I hated.

I must admit after years of working in children's rights I got more and more concerned by the way 'choice' is used, especially how it links with blame and allows for inequality to thrive. I remember a disturbed 16 yr old moved into a flat in 'Smack City' with her LD boyfriend - with predictable resaults. Of course those results were her fault, her choice, her fault. Now working at the other end of the age range 'choice' is coming and guess what? One side of the playing field is busy being neatly trimmed, fertilised, and rolled while the other is becoming a rock dump; then people will 'choose' and, as it was their choice, baddabing no blame.

Like everyone I think I love the idea of choice, but I've become more than a little distrustful of it's use.

[Croydon Bob]

Like everyone I think I love the idea of choice, but I've become more than a little distrustful of it's use.

I've never understood this obsession with "choice" that politicians pretend to offer us. New Labour are very proud of the increased choice in the NHS. How does it help anyone?

I can choose to have my operation in any hospital in England or Wales. A mountain of extra red-tape and bureaucracy when, like most people, I want it in the local hospital. If I didn't want treatment in my local hospital it would either be because the hospital was crap, in which case they should spend the money on improving it, not on extra administration to give me "choice"; or I might have an irrational dislike of it, in which case I'll end up in a hospital that's just as good/bad and what was the point of spending the extra money on that?

Money that could have been spent improving services, getting me fixed sooner, has been wasted on offering a worthless choice that I didn't ask for and does nothing to improve my condition.

But all you hear is "improved choice", "we've given patients choice". Meaningless and useless choice.

[Trinoc]

But all you hear is "improved choice", "we've given patients choice". Meaningless and useless choice.
Up to a point I agree ... but when I try to get my gut rechecked next year I want to go back to the specialist hospital where I had the original surgery done privately in 2007, not get sent to one of the great, local, monolithic conveyor belt MRSA factories that probably have a financial arrangement with my GP. One of those places did its best to kill me in 2002 (in at least 3 different ways), so I'm not going back there.

[Tessa K]

One in three state-funded schools is a faith school (and state funded means paid for by the tax payer). Some of them perform worse than community schools, some better. The better ones cherry-pick pupils, preferring the children of middle-class parents or religious working class with the right 'ethic'. They are much less likely to accept problem kids or those from disadvantaged backgrounds, as is shown by the fact that overall, faith schools give fewer free school meals than community schools.

This is why middle-class parents lie about their beliefs, go to church, get the kiddies baptized, etc.

The vast majority of faith schools are Christian but other religions are now demanding their slice of the tax-payers pie and the Government is falling for it, despite some good studies showing that faith schools are really bad for social cohesion.

And let's not forget that there is no such thing as a Christian child (or Jewish, Muslim etc), just the child of Christian parents.

Yes, I work for the National Secular Society...

[Pebble]

One in three state-funded schools is a faith school (and state funded means paid for by the tax payer). Some of them perform worse than community schools, some better. The better ones cherry-pick pupils, preferring the children of middle-class parents or religious working class with the right 'ethic'. They are much less likely to accept problem kids or those from disadvantaged backgrounds, as is shown by the fact that overall, faith schools give fewer free school meals than community schools.

This is why middle-class parents lie about their beliefs, go to church, get the kiddies baptized, etc.

The vast majority of faith schools are Christian but other religions are now demanding their slice of the tax-payers pie and the Government is falling for it, despite some good studies showing that faith schools are really bad for social cohesion.

And let's not forget that there is no such thing as a Christian child (or Jewish, Muslim etc), just the child of Christian parents.

Yes, I work for the National Secular Society...

Welcome on board.

[Tessa K]

Thanks. I used to post on the old forum a lot but had problems getting this one to accept my log-in, for some reason. I'm back now, though. Some may wish I was not. :smiley:

[Croydon Bob]

I'm back now, though. Some may wish I was not. :smiley:

Absolutely. I've been secretly campaigning for years to keep you off this forum. :-X

[Matt]

One in three state-funded schools is a faith school (and state funded means paid for by the tax payer). Some of them perform worse than community schools, some better. The better ones cherry-pick pupils, preferring the children of middle-class parents or religious working class with the right 'ethic'. They are much less likely to accept problem kids or those from disadvantaged backgrounds, as is shown by the fact that overall, faith schools give fewer free school meals than community schools.

This is why middle-class parents lie about their beliefs, go to church, get the kiddies baptized, etc.

The vast majority of faith schools are Christian but other religions are now demanding their slice of the tax-payers pie and the Government is falling for it, despite some good studies showing that faith schools are really bad for social cohesion.

And let's not forget that there is no such thing as a Christian child (or Jewish, Muslim etc), just the child of Christian parents.

Yes, I work for the National Secular Society...

Thing is though those christian parents and muslim parents are taxpayers too. To give the church it's due it's been involved in education for a lot longer than the state has.

If this thrid of schools were had their state funding dropped and were funded instead by the church (in other words the religious parents) then these parents would see it as rather unfair that they had to pay for their own child's education and also subsidise secular schools. Most likly thye get opt out vouchers towards private education and we'd be right back to square one.

Just playing angels' advocate >:D

[brianp]

I taught maths in an RC Secondary Modern School back in the 1960s. Discipline and relations with parents were good, the parish priest used his influence in a most constructive way, the educational standard was excellent and, apart from brief prayers at the start and end of each session and a weekly visit to church, religion was restricted to RE lessons. I was a Methodist who had passed through the state system and I'd always looked on the 'faith schools' with suspicion - but that 'faith school' at least was first class in every way.

[Tony Williams]

I was a Methodist who had passed through the state system and I'd always looked on the 'faith schools' with suspicion - but that 'faith school' at least was first class in every way.
Was it first class in ensuring that the pupils mixed with children of other religions and cultures?

[bindeweede]

Was it first class in ensuring that the pupils mixed with children of other religions and cultures?

Children have a life outside schools.

[bindeweede]

Children have a life outside schools.

I didn't get that quite right - but the message is there.

[Tony Williams]

Children have a life outside schools.
Yes, but do they spend that life mixing with children of different backgrounds?

Northern Ireland is a case in point. There are Catholic communities with Catholic schools, and protestant communities with protestant schools, and never the twain do meet - with a few rare exceptions. That is not good for social cohesion, it merely reinforces existing social divides.

The Catholic/protestant divide is nothing like as marked in England, of course - although it does exist to some degree in Liverpool (or at least it used to) and in Scotland you get the Rangers v Celtic issue in Glasgow. However, some urban communities in England are beginning to head the same way, with Muslim children living in Muslim communities and attending Muslim schools. IMO this is an bad idea.

It's increasingly impractical to differentiate between religions and say that some can have their faith schools but others can't. So the only long-term answer to this dilemma, I believe, is to have no faith schools at all.