11 Plus Exams Forum

Did anyone applied to Catholic school and childs baptism delayed. Need help with letter and how to approach such a situation.Do they actually take it into account ?

One of mine goes to a Catholic senior school. I should certainly hope that they won't take it into consideration. Your child has been Baptised and that should be enough. The two Catholic schools in my area are more concerned with how often your child attends Mass. Good luck with your application.

No, I'm afraid that is incorrect - I know of a highly oversubscribed catholic secondary and catholic children have to be baptised by 6 months old!!!

I would advise consulting your parish priest and/or the priest who baptised your child. Schools do sometimes set limits on when a child is baptised because it is often a good indication of whether the family are 'true Catholics' (often a very different thing from 'practising Catholics.') Up until very recently (with the abolition of limbo) a truly Catholic family would find it virtually impossible to leave a baby unbaptised because of the risk of infant mortality. Your priest will know what your reasons were for delated baptism and should be willing to help.

Hi Inga

Probably best to send in the application with a letter attached, outlining the problems as you did above:

ie 1) appreciate baptism delayed beyond normal period of time
2) unable to travel owing to immighration restrictions
3) baptism took place at first available opportunity.


Mind you, I remember trying to help a friend of a friend whose child was at the lycee francais in london- all the kids were preparing for first communion - trouble was it became apaprent that the kid had never actually been baptised .... lived in France some of the time and clearly the school assumed she was baptised catholic. Anyway we roped in a friendly irish headteacher we knew and she invited us round that evening as her brother (a priest) was visiting . Great. priest turned out to be somewhat radical liberal and felt that by that age the child should be left until older to decide what she wanted to do herself - fine but didn't solve the problem.
Evening went on, the booze flowed, the phrase of the night was "ders dat bl**dy word religion again", we all staggered home - the priest and I headed off on the tube - I ended up going the wrong way down the Bakerloo line - only time I have ever got lost on it
Hope you have more success than we did that evening.

Sorry no help to offer but I have friends who needed to show they had a Catholic wedding when they were making school applications for their child. They had a civil marriage as the husband was not Catholic. Their priest managed to do some magic paperwork with the Vatican which resulted in it being a Catholic marriage in retrospect. Perhaps the baptism can be backdated by a similar method.

Well I stand corrected. I am a Catholic, all my children went to Catholic Primary School and one is at a heavily oversubscribed Catholic Senior School. I have never heard anything like this before. The Catholic schools in our area are very heavily oversubscribed but concentrate on how often the children go to Mass as they regard this as a true sign of their faith, rather than when your child was Baptised. You learn something new every day. Hopefully your Parish Priest will be able to help you. Their support often goes a long way to helping in such matters. Good luck!

I think the trouble is that you have 1000 'Catholics' applying for 200 places, they need to have something to apply as a criteria!

After all, I know of a case where the child was baptised just prior to appllying to the school, having attended the church for a while - where do you draw the line?

Fran17 wrote: I have never heard anything like this before.

This is from Vaughan Memorial Admissions and I think The Oratory and most oversubscribed London Catholic School have something similar

First
Boys, baptised within 6 calendar months of birth or legal adoption,
(or, in the case of unbaptised converts, at the time of reception into the Catholic Church)
AND who have made First Holy Communion.
Second
Other Catholic boys from fully practising Catholic families who have not been baptised
within 6 calendar months of birth or legal adoption

Inga wrote:Do they actually take it into account ?

I think it all depends on how the admission rules (and any definitions) are worded.

The point about admission rules is that they ought to be clear and objective, so that there is no uncertainty about how places will be allocated. If anyone who is unsuccessful then wants to put forward a special case not covered by the rules, it can be considered later on at an appeal.