VERSION|0.5.1|NAME|Stonyground|DATE|1362772390|CONTENT|Sectarian schools are a terrible idea. As has already mentioned above, they are given the right to discriminate, they then abuse this right, in order to cream off the more able students and exclude any disruptive little oiks. This of course means that they become successful and oversubscribed. This in turn leads our hard of thinking politicians to imagine that people actually prefer religious schools. At least when we had secondary schools and grammar schools the discrimination was open and honest.

In my area, all of the primary schools are CofE. I was happy to allow my sprog to attend a CofE school, it was a good school and, because the subject of religion was on the agenda, I could discuss my atheism with my daughter and allow her to make up her own mind.

Non of the local secondary schools are religious, the trend in our area is toward specialist colleges which I provisionally see as quite a good idea. The schools follow the national curriculum but have a bias towards a particular area of study. Little Stony attends a Technology College, we also have colleges dedicated to languages, performing arts, sport etc.

We also now have Sixth Form Colleges which also seem to be very good as well as being like a half way house between school and university.

So, in conclusion, sectarian schools bad, but the school system, as I am experiencing it, not at all bad.|EMAIL|elizabeth@iww1967.wanadoo.co.uk|IP-ADDRESS|95.150.29.96|MODERATIONFLAG|