Source: Telegraph >> Read full article and comment
Places in church schools can be hard to come by, and parents may get pushy.
A dozen couples take their seats around a low table in a children’s dining hall smelling faintly of cabbage. Pristine A4 jotters are produced from bags; pens uncapped. I haven’t thought to bring a notepad, nor to drag along my husband who’s looking after the children. We’re just discussing Sunday School, after all. But then I’ve been going to our local church for little more than a year. I am an innocent in the Great Competition.
To get my three-year-old daughter Lydia into the “good” Church of England primary school opposite our house we must attend church. The school stipulates: “At least twice a month, for at least one year before March 31 in the year in which the admission takes place.” When I worked out what that meant, I marked it in my diary with some resentment: “Start church”. It’s not that I’m anti-religion: I know all the hymns and I want my children to grow up in this cultural context. It’s the three-line whip I hate. That, and the hypocrisy: having to pretend that one’s attendance has nothing at all to do with the school, and everything to do with God.
“Faith school cheating” it’s been called: middle-class, pushy parents playing the system, “stealing” school places from the more deserving. Even Labour MP David Miliband, a self-confessed atheist, has been under fire for nobbling his son a place at an oversubscribed C of E school some distance from his house in north London. Mrs Miliband attends the church, so that’s OK then. With competition for faith primary schools at an all-time high, driven by recession, increased immigration and a baby boom, the atmosphere in Sunday School has become distinctly un-Christian. At St Botolph’s, it’s dog eat dog… Continue reading
