Priest rejects school places plea
A priest today told how he had been approached by non-Catholic parents hoping to have their children baptised to get them into a better Black Country school.A priest today told how he had been approached by non-Catholic parents hoping to have their children baptised to get them into a better Black Country school. The Express & Star revealed on Saturday the number of "late" baptisms of children aged between one and 13 had risen to nearly a third of the Church's total entry - with families hoping to land a place in prestigious Catholic schools named as one of the reasons. Father David Lloyd, from St Peter & The English Martyrs Church in Dudley, today said he had turned parents away. "One woman told me she wasn't a Catholic but she'd been on the internet and knew all about it," he said. "She was open about the fact she wanted to get her daughter into a Catholic school. But the thing is, a baptism isn't like an inoculation - it is the beginning of a journey. "I had to say sorry and that I couldn't help them." Read the full story in the Express & Star
A priest today told how he had been approached by non-Catholic parents hoping to have their children baptised to get them into a better Black Country school.
The Express & Star revealed on Saturday the number of "late" baptisms of children aged between one and 13 had risen to nearly a third of the Church's total entry - with families hoping to land a place in prestigious Catholic schools named as one of the reasons. Father David Lloyd, from St Peter & The English Martyrs Church in Dudley, today said he had turned parents away.
"One woman told me she wasn't a Catholic but she'd been on the internet and knew all about it," he said. "She was open about the fact she wanted to get her daughter into a Catholic school. But the thing is, a baptism isn't like an inoculation - it is the beginning of a journey.
"I had to say sorry and that I couldn't help them."Dudley, the Black Country region which came out top in last week's school league tables, is home to Bishop Milner Catholic School, which was rated second in the borough for both GCSEs and A-levels.
Tony Spencer, from the Pastoral Research Centre Trust, said: "We are now in a situation where, because of the 1959 Education Act, by the time we reached the 1970s Catholic schools were no longer impoverished and were becoming very good.
"Because of that the demand for places has increased from all sections of the community."
A spokesman from St Michael's RC Church, in Coalway Road, Penn, Wolverhampton, said the average age of people getting baptised is getting higher.
Deirdre Finucane, headteacher of Wolverhampton's St Edmund's Catholic School, which was in the city's top 10 for both GCSEs and A-levels last week, said attitudes had become more relaxed over the years.
"We do offer priority to baptised Catholic children but also accept children from other faiths," she said.
Benetia Mounsey, headteacher at St Austin's Roman Catholic Primary, in Stafford, said: "We do give priority to Catholic children but we are not an exclusively Catholic school."
By Elizabeth Joyce