Government wants to allow religious schools 100% selection on grounds of religion

I agree Jingle,

Anniebach I assume you're not being facetious. FSM children don't look any different. They are children from families who receive certain qualifying state benefits like Income Support or Child Tax Credit.

This of course doesn't preclude them from being academically able or having parents who want to see them succeed academically.

It's the pc brigade that wants to homogenise all children. It hasn't worked since the early 1970s and we need to do something different if we are to compete with the rest of the world

Two of our grandchildren attend a faith school. In fact it is the only school in their village. i have no,problem with the standards in the school but I sometimes wish they were less moulded by the views of the faith.

Perhaps we could go the whole hog and have schools for atheists and humanists. Faithless schools?

trueblue, I found your - free school meals type, most offensive and your judgement that being free school meal type children doesn't exclude them from being academicaly able to be so patronising .

Anniebach I don't think trueblue is being patronising or offensive - she says that she (or he?) herself came from a deprived background so perhaps also qualified for free school meals - and was academically able!

but if you want to be offended then it is not my place to stop you

I agree Jalima, it is not your place to stop me posting my opinion on a description of some children as free school meal types .

Jalima thanks for expressing how I meant my comments to be understood. I was trying to portray facts rather than getting caught up into the emotion of identifying children with different needs.

You're right in that I probably would have been catagorised a FSM child in the 1960s, although my parents would never have wanted to claim state benefits.

I think I and many of my friends would have been described as 'deprived' too, although we never realised it at the time.
Probably the girl who was the most deprived of us went on to become Head Girl of the Grammar school.

But it is nice and kind of other people to be offended on our behalf.

I think to class children as types is wrong, some children have free school meals, some children live on council estates, some children live in caravan parks, so council estate type, caravan dweller type is acceptable ? Not for me

I went to a Catholic state primary, I'd say there was a good mix across the social spectrum, I didn't analyse that as a child but was aware of it, in retrospect I think it was a good thing, the doctor's daughter's closest friend came from a council estate (as they were referred to then).

We also had a sprinkling of Italian, Spanish, Irish as well as a couple of African children, bearing in mind this was Surrey and England wasn't as multicultural then as it is now.

The town where I lived had a number of mental hospitals (now closed) and they attracted foreign staff.

I agree with you there Anniebach. I don't feel comfortable with categorising children, racial, sexual or religious groups. Government like to do that for various reasons. I get so angry when I have to fill out local government forms that at the end my ask my gender, sexual preference etc etc.

We are all one human race at different stages of development.

thank you trueblue, I didn't mean to be aggressive , I get so upset when we hear these categories on the news daily. What does it do to the children

"Why shouldn't they be able to send their children to a religious school?" Because children are not of a particular faith - they are just children, clean and untainted. And because indoctrination in one faith, and surrounded by children from families of the same mind is a recipe for disaster and division in society. We are already struggling to prevent extremism being promulgated in schools.

It is not a fuss - the future safety of our GC depends on an integrated society not a divided one.

So, I take it you are thinking of Muslim schools? And they, of course, are all bad?

(that to lg of course)

Clean and untainted kids?! Crikey. Not the little buggers I know.

Why not just say Muslim schools, we have an Anglican and a RC school here, children of faith and no faith are welcome . Perhaps those with no faith should start a campaign for atheist schools and leave church schools to get on with teaching children

www.atheismuk.com/campaigns/religious-education/

Interesting. They want to get rid of the idea that God exists, so not all faiths.

So they would struggle with atheist schools.

For me, two of the big issues with faith schools is that they select/reject children according to something outwith the child's control, ie their parents faith, and not sledding according to what is best for the child.

Also, everyone contributes to faith schools via their taxes but not everyone is allowed to access them. That is patently unfair, to my mind.

*selected, not sledding.

Further to several previous posts I made regarding my Catholic primary, I would say it was wall to wall indoctrination and most parents were complicit with that. However, like most kids growing up in the '60s, my parents like fellow Catholic parents were a complete paradox. On the one hand we had a draconian version of our religion imposed on us, but had complete freedom to roam around when not in school and mix freely with children from other denominations, that really wasn't an issue, although the nuns at our school did warn us that we were never to venture in a church other than a Catholic one because alhough God wouldn't be there he would be fully aware of such a transgression. The disapproval of other religions by some of the non secular staff at our school, although quite nuanced was nevertheless something we did pick up on. In retrospect I regard it as quite pernicious to taint childrens' minds in such a way and think how much worse it must be to crank that up a few notches where children are taught that it's permissable to act in a violent way to "non believers" or followers of other religions.

When I was at school I felt Catholics seemed to have an historical axe to grind. I think they may well have moved on I gather from my step granddaughters who attended well known and some would regard elitist London state RC schools, that maybe these attitudes have been dispensed with and possibly the indoctrination is a much lighter version of what we had to put up with.

I sent my two children to a state CofE primary and they appeared to get the balance of how religion was taught right.

I can quite see the secularist point of view at their best faith schools often out perform others but at their worst they can be dire and they certainly shouldn't have carte blanche to shape childrens' minds in a negative way.

Izabella, I agree with you . We should be moving towards a post Christian society not feeding ideas that are probably untrue into young minds in order to make them work harder and behave better.