Forum Topic

Twyford Admissions Policy Change

What is the problem with people?  If you put your child's name down to attend a Church of England school and yes, the clue is in the title, then you should be 100% committed to being a practising Christian.  What is the point of being a church school if you have to take in non-believers and people of other faiths? As for selecting children whose family are actively involved in the church over those who aren't as a priority... well shock, horror!  The school is over subscribed greatly and there has to be some way of prioritising.  Where is the common sense in this.  Nothing wrong here in my eyes at all.  A non-event.

Toni Smith ● 4653d39 Comments

It's called Political Correctness ...................Since when did Common Sense ever prevail?

Rosco White ● 4652d

My lack of understanding starts before the selection process. That is, why on earth do we have state funded  church schools in the first place?

Sandra Jordan ● 4652d

Integration not segregation, all religions, all races , both sexes, no to religious apartheid.

Gary Sinclair ● 4652d

I agree with Toni.  I am not sure of the financing of Twyford but most faith schools, I believe, are partly funded by the state, partly funded by the Church, correct?  Twyford is a CHRISTIAN school, a Church of England school.  It should, therefore, offer places first to those of the same practising faith.  Try getting into St Vincent's without being a practising Catholic, with your child baptised within weeks of being born.....its not going to happen, and rightly so, because there has to be a selection process on an oversubscribed school.  Utter nonsense.

Angela White ● 4652d

The Admissions regulator have been working on this since they were founded by the previous Government. They are not keen on any kind of selection,whether religious affiliation, ability, gender, whatever. Unfortunately a number of religious foundations are vastly oversubscribed and have to find some selection criteria they will accept. Not as easy s it sounds btw. We could talk for a long time about why faith schools are so popular, even with people who claim to have no faith, but perhaps Christmas is not the best time for this discussion.

Maire Lowe ● 4651d

I am with Gary on this one, I think the present system with such a huge range of schools, divisive and bad for social cohesion.

Kim Rugg ● 4651d

Yes, Maire, not a good time to discuss this, although I will say this:  if Twyford wasn't outstanding as a school, I'm sure there wouldn't be this fuss and of course we then have to ask why it is outstanding!Merry Christmas.

Angela White ● 4651d

Oh, just to say, Maire - if the Admissions Regulator isn't keen on any kind of discrimination, where will that lead?  What about grammar schools with their 11 plus exams?  Private schools with their selection exams and interviews?  It's a can of worms and it's unrealistic to expect all schools to have no selection criteria other than distance, perhaps, or is that too discriminating on those who live outside the area?

Angela White ● 4651d

You may have noticed that the Head of OFSTED has recently begun gunning for the remaining grammars. There are none in London itself, but those in Greater London have fiercely competitive selection systems. Successful oversubscribed schools face a selection nightmare every year. First come, first served is no good (discriminates against looked after children, people moving house) Distance from school for secondary schools is no good, (might be situated in a well off area and people from poorer areas must get the same chance) favouring siblings or people with a connection to the school also no good, (possibly racist) It is still legal to for faith schools to require their pupils to be of their faith, but more and more the Adjudicator does not allow schools to require more than a token adherence to said faith. It is not easy to design a selection system which suits so many different requirements.

Maire Lowe ● 4651d

If we had just one type of primary and secondary school and all the children in a area went there regardless of they socio-economic-religious-cultural back ground, all our children would be given the same start in life. The brightest children would rise to the top rather than the most privileged. The stress of jumping through hoops or pretending a faith to get a child into a top school would not exist. Schools would be less polarized between outstanding and failing.Our chaotic school system reinforces class division as well as cultural and religious division. It is grossly unfair.

Kim Rugg ● 4651d

Kim, I am not keen on starting an argument with you but I just want to make two points. The first is that I do not 'pretend' to practice my faith and neither does anyone I know. It is rude of you to assume that we do. Second, French schools are been secular since the Revolution and it has not prevented the French from being considerable less socially cohesive than us. I'm going to leave it there because I am about to go to Church, it being Christmas and all. We can pick this up another time if you like.

Maire Lowe ● 4651d

Kim, I take it you assume all parents of those who want to get their children into a faith school are "pretending" a faith, as  you claim.....what about those who really want their children to be educated in an environment of faith?  To discriminate against those parents is unfair.Your argument about "one type of primary and secondary" also fails, in my opinion, as no two schools are the same, even disregarding the grammars and the faith schools.  What goes into making each school unique is the Head, the staffing, the pupils, the parents, the environment and local community.  We are always going to have differences in schools and therefore differences in the success and preferences by parents for a school.  The only way your argument would work is to do away with Ofsted bandings altogether and never publishing exam results, for a start.

Angela White ● 4651d

I'm with you Kim. I accept that there are many genuine applicants but personally have many friends who have pretended to practice in order to get a place in faith schools. Many faith schools do well not because having a faith makes a child brighter or teachers better but because they also select by ability.  I saw a report last year that said faith schools take less children on free school meals than other schools - further selection/discrimination?

Sandra Jordan ● 4651d

I am with Kim and Sandra on this, how on earth are we ever going to break down barriers and build understanding between communities/people if we segregate our children at the very moment their minds are open and free from stupid adult discriminatory attitudes. I went to a comprehensive in Hackney where boys from all backgrounds were selected and this did me no harm. Im 100% opposed to the state enabling schools to select on any basis, we need to focus on improving the education of all, that is true meritocracy, providing an equal opportunity to all.

Gary Sinclair ● 4651d

Sandra, do faith schools admit by ability?  This is news to me!  Does Twyford?    I know every faith school has a different admissions criteria in case of oversubscription, but to  my knowledge selecting by ability for faith schools doesn't happen unless they are private schools and grammar schools.  They may "select" by the ability of the parents to demonstrate they follow the faith, yes, and are committed to that, yes.  Can you name some of those schools that select by ability?I do agree that there is a section of parents who attend church in order to get into the faith schools.  Why would that be if faith schools select by ability?  Also, I've read reports that faith schools favour the middle class.  I racked my brains to work this one out.  How could this be?  Well, unless some faith schools are built in middle class areas, the only other evidence I found was the claim that 'middle class women are more likely to be at home not working, so have more time to dedicate to cleaning the church'.  Outrageous claim!  I must definitely be working class then.  No faith school would deliberately select pupils who WEREN'T claiming free school meals.  It is true that there are fewer pupils on free school meals at faith schools than full state funded schools but I believe that is not the responsibility of the faith school itself.  Perhaps we should be asking a more general question as to why those on lower incomes might not engage with faith?Final question, why on earth would someone want to send their child to a faith school, when the school heavily engages with the faith on a daily basis for the child, when they do not believe?  I wouldn't want that for my child.  I would not send my child to a Jewish school or Islamic school, no matter who outstanding, because I do not believe in those faiths and it is hypocritical and unfair to expect my child to pray to their God or in their way 5 days per week.End of sermon, of course!  ;-)

Angela White ● 4651d

Maire and Angela. I am sorry if you got the impression that I think everyone fakes a faith. I don't believe I made that generalisation.This is not my belief, I have many friends who have always practised their faith and not because of schools.It is one such friend who has told me that she can't help noticing new members of the congregation when their children reach the age when they need to start thinking about getting into a church school. I am not religious but will always defends someone's right to their beliefs. I also feel that every child in our community whatever their creed deserves an equal opportunity.

Kim Rugg ● 4650d

Hi Kim.  No, I can see you didn't mean that and I totally get your observations about sudden appearance of parents when they need to think about education for their child.  It bugs me but I risk being "I am more holy as I "believe" and therefore worthy than you in getting a faith school place" in that thinking, so don't usually express it!

Angela White ● 4650d

Interesting survey by the Sutton Trust out this week found nearly one third of professional parents admitted moving house to increase their children's chances of getting into a good school. 10% of professionals also admitting attending church services that they had previously not attended to get their children into a church school (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25415231). And no doubt some parents pay for extra tuition to help their children pass grammar school entry exams.

Vlod Barchuk ● 4650d

Hi Vlod.  Good to see you posting.  Yes, I would definitely move house to get my child into a good school, who wouldn't if they could (not always possible, especially with work considerations let alone money)?  I know of families who've paid huge amounts to have extra tuition for their 10 year old in order to pass the 11 plus or entry examns for schools.  Huge pressures for the child - and they didn't get in!

Angela White ● 4650d

Any school, of whatever type, that has more applicants than places is selective and we'll never get away from that fact whilst there is such a wide variation in the standards of schools. The last government forced church schools to abandon the practice of interviewing parents applying for places for their children, supposedly in the interests of fairness. The result of that in the Church school where I worked was to see a sharp decline in the number of pupils entitled to free school meals, but a sharp increase in the number of pupils with statements of special educational needs!

Frank Dacey ● 4650d

Perhaps we should be asking a more general question as to why those on lower incomes might not engage with faith? Lol!

Sandra Jordan ● 4650d

Explain, please Sandra?

Angela White ● 4650d

I have to say, I am with Kim and a few others here as a teacher with considerable experience and as a humanist. If you do have a religion you believe in, great for you on a personal level, and I will always respect your belief - but for me any form of religion is just another way of securing conflict and wars in the future - as it has been in the past all along.While I do support the free school movement to an extent, I cannot understand why any government would allow new faith schools to spring up (and unfortunately that is what many of them are) when the existing ones already cause segregation between (in some cases, so-called) believers of a faith and others - may they be true believers, believers of another faith or non-believers. In any case, the schools with religious affiliation usually teach a particular curriculum to GCSE, with successful candidates having to study THAT RE syllabus to pass (and with the students having to listen to endless religious messages in assembly). Wrong - in my view, there should be one general RE syllabus for all in this day and age, where everybody learns about the different religions and respect for each other, but where it is also pointed out that you do not have to believe, regardless what your parents say and where, certainly, no single religion is pushed.One thing I have come to object to strongly, for example, is homophobia apparently promoted by some Catholic schools (not necessarily one in particular, and not necessarily local one(s)) - some 16-year-olds have views that make those who tried to defend the 'virtue of this nation' in the 1950s seem like progressive thinkers...Religion at home - absolutely fine. - but we do not need it in the public sphere. I applaud any policy that waters down the infuence of one particular religion on a school/its pupils and prepares the kids to become true members of a more secular, cohesive society. Standards can be upheld/they might slip/go up - nothing to do with religion as such but rather with a dedicated head and a dedicated team of teachers and parents.

Urs Esser ● 4650d

It would be illegal to 'promote homophobia', that's why 'Catholic schools' don't do it. If 16 year olds have certain 'old-fashioned views' it's because they're 16 and not particularly mature in their thinking. If church schools did try to promote homophobia then they are remarkably unsuccessful given the tolerant attitude to homosexuality that now prevails. In fact,the general emptiness of our churches would suggest that a better criticism of church schools would be that they simply don't fulfil their primary function.

Frank Dacey ● 4650d

Most Religious schools are hardly going to be positive about homosexual relationships or even neutral about them, but then that is a whole different subject. Anyway I thought the humanist teacher on here made her points very effectively. As a tax payer I don't want my money going to religious schools, in this pluralistic society of ours we need "social glue" to bind us all together, and education is the bedrock of that. Why do you think secular Turkey is feeling tense/uneasy at the moment, because religion is trying to assert itself over the State, to coin a phrase, no! no! no! There are selection processees and selection processes, inoome, class, gender, religious belief, all have no place-selection processes can be made fairer you know.

Gary Sinclair ● 4650d

Kim,thank you for your note. I'm think I over reacted and I do apologise. The recent news from the Middle East on the fate of Christians in the Middle East makes for distressing reading. Some of their families are living in East Acton and I have recently been talking to them. Good luck to the Governors and Head of Twyford School as they attempt to preserve their values in the face of determined secularity. There are ten application for every place at Twyford and the school is so well regarded that it has set up a second school in Greenford. None of that would make any difference to some people I expect, but it suggests that they are doing something right. Merry Christmas to all.

Maire Lowe ● 4649d

If anyone was considering an alternative - can I recommend Acton High?My daughter is in her first year and - although it is early days - all the signs so far are very good.She has really enjoyed her first term, has made loads of friends, has a packed extra-curricular schedule of trampolining, drama, trips - and has homework that is so challenging that it has left her dad scratching his head. (That last bit, probably says more about me than her)And all for free and with no entrance conditions attached.

Richard Grange ● 4649d

It may be unfair to pick on Gary’s post but there is really a lot of nonsense being written about faith schools on this thread, (I’m a former RC comprehensive pupil for what relevance it has). “As a tax payer I don't want my money going to religious schools,”There are plenty of taxpayers who do want their money to go to faith schools - they’re the parents who send their children to faith schools. The amount of taxpayers’ money spent on faith schools reflects the number of parents/taxpayers who want their children to attend them. Why should they be denied that choice just because you don’t want it?“in this pluralistic society of ours we need "social glue" to bind us all together, and education is the bedrock of that.”Sorry to say this but this is just social engineering mumbo jumbo; there is not a scrap of evidence that using schools as a ‘social glue’ has any positive effects on society, nor that faith schools undermine it. Evidence, not assertion, please.“Why do you think secular Turkey is feeling tense/uneasy at the moment, because religion is trying to assert itself over the State,”If religion is asserting itself over a secular state, then that suggests education systems aren’t the ‘bedrock’ of ‘social glue’.“income, class, gender, religious belief, all have no place-selection processes can be made fairer you know.” Not sure what you have against single sex schools, but that leaves you with selection by academic ability or by lottery (as in Brighton). Or how about cutting out state social engineering and deciding the types of schools we have by what delivers the best educational results?

Vlod Barchuk ● 4649d

As a tax payer I don't want my taxes going to state schools which I won't be using, as a non-smoker I don't want my taxes being used to treat smoking-related diseases on the NHS, as a tax-payer.......I could go on and on about the foolishness of the 'I don't use it therefore I don't want to pay for it' argument.Gary, your views on school admissions policy are admirable but naïve. As I pointed out in my first post, attempts to make admissions criteria fairer have often had the opposite effect. It would be better to devote our efforts to bring all schools up to a high standard and in that sense it was heartening to read the post about Acton High School

Frank Dacey ● 4649d

Reading Gary's posts all together I took his comment about taxes as not wanting to pay taxes to support a system that is often discriminatory rather than simply not wanting to support faith schools. I agree that it is difficult to get a system that is fair to all but it may appear that similar groups benefit more often than not whenever there is inequality.

Sandra Jordan ● 4649d

"What is the problem with people? "Perhaps we naively expect a school run by the Church but funded by the public not to try and break the rules to introduce backdoor selection? Not sure this defence holds any water given the seriousness of the breach of the code and the apparent acceptance of this conclusion by the school."  What is the point of being a church school if you have to take in non-believers and people of other faiths"What's the point of me paying taxes to fund a school my children are barred from attending because I happen not to believe in God?  The whole concept of religious selection is abominable.

Thomas Barry ● 4645d

totally agree

Gary Sinclair ● 4645d

“What's the point of me paying taxes to fund a school my children are barred from attending because I happen not to believe in God?  The whole concept of religious selection is abominable.”Your children are not barred from attending any faith school. Faith schools give preference to children whose parents share their faith, so children from other faiths are only excluded if demand for places in faith schools exceeds supply, which is currently the case for many faith schools.  There are people who pay their taxes who want their children to go to a faith school – why should they be denied having their taxes spent on schools with the ethos they prefer just because you don’t like them?  Why not accept that taxpayers have different views on the preferred ethos for schools and let the mix of schools reflect those differences?

Vlod Barchuk ● 4645d

The Twyford admissions policy has been tested against the Schools Admissions Code and was found to have breached the Code.Twyford claim to have 30 places for children of other faiths or no faiths, however, when oversubscribed, the criteria used to prioritise these places was religious based - requiring references from religious leaders, attendance.  This automatically excludes those of no faith.  When I applied for an open place 4 years ago, the school contacted me to say that I had signed the form but not completed it.  I informed them that when applying with no faith it wasn't possible to complete anything other than basic information.Paragraph 1.9 of the Code says, “It is for schools to formulate their admission arrangements but they must not:e) give priority to children on the basis of any practical or financial support parents may give to the school or any associated organisation, including any religious authority’ However, children are prioritised because their parents are on the church cleaning rota!The school had a number of breaches.  Read the report.

Sandra Jordan ● 4645d

Interesting experience Sandra, and totally unfair. I dont want any of my tax payers money going to schools promoting medieval suspicious hocus pocus rubbish, period. But hey this a democracy and the law of the land says otherwise and I respect it. So if the school broke national guidance/policy on admissions I too expect the people crying in the name of God to put up just like I have too.

Gary Sinclair ● 4645d

Your kind of bigotry Gary is probably one of the reasons people are so keen to send their children to a school in which their faith and tradition will be respected.I've read the report and what immediately becomes apparent is that Twyford School has been deliberately targeted. The points of the complaint that were upheld are largely technical and seem to have been drawn up by lawyers presumably acting for the Fair Admissions Campaign. The inspector seems to have had no choice to rule the school in breach but the report also makes it very clear that there is no 'smoking gun' here. It states that the school gives priority admission to looked after children and the social and ethnic mix of the school is inline with its catchment area. From my own observation based on children I see in uniform in the area it possibly has a larger proportion of Afro-Caribbean families than the local population.Quite why Twyford in particular has attracted the ire of the Fair Admission Campaign, who describe their entry procedures as 'extreme' is hard to say but it seems likely to me that the academic success of the school has made it essential that the campaign 'prove' that the school is cheating by engaging in selection. The breaches of the rules that have been identified are so trifling that any disinterested person reading the report would immediately conclude there couldn't possibly be any backdoor selection at Twyford.It is deeply depressing to see that the debate around education in the country mainly seems to about changing our best performing state schools which are predominantly of the faith variety. The decline in social mobility which we have seen in the last couple of decades has coincided with the need of many to see any success in the state sector as cheating and only been achieved by closet selection. I can't really comment on the situation nationally but faith schools in this part of London seem to predominantly cater for first and second generation immigrant communities and their relative academic success is probably a lot to do with the fact that immigrants generally tend to do better.As an agnostic native born taxpayer who wouldn't have even bothered to apply for my children to go Twyford I can still see the huge value it gives to me. If there was no Twyford and therefore no decent state education available to many families on lower incomes they would move out of the area increasing economic polarisation. My taxes are reduced because the Anglican Church part funds the maintenance of the school and has provided the land on which it is built. The net saving to the tax-payer of this nationally is billions. That this saving comes with the added benefit of a significant number of children getting a good education is an added bonus.The tragedy of this is that we live in a society in which the domination of the public school educated in politics and the media is greater than it has been since the thirties. The current elite must be pinching themselves with disbelief that as the old school tie makes a comeback those making the most noise about education are ignoring this and insisting that all state schools should be equally rubbish.

Andy Jones ● 4645d

What are you actually saying? Garbled and unclear. What i'm a bigot because I have a different view point ? Maybe youd like an inquisition , talk about good old fashioned religious intolerance lol

Gary Sinclair ● 4644d

Gary, the points that I made would be clear to anyone who could follow an argument beyond the most basic degree of complexity.You are a bigot because you meet the dictionary definition. Look it up. You might want to look up agnostic while you are at it.

Andy Jones ● 4644d

Lol, zzzzzzzz

Gary Sinclair ● 4644d