Religious rift over plans to reform school admissions policies

A recommendation by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) that equality laws be changed to prevent children being given preferential access to schools based on their religion has met with a mixed response.

The commission published its observations on legislation before the Dáil this week which is aimed at introducing greater fairness and transparency in school admissions.

The IHREC said the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill 2016 would, if enacted, make “a significant contribution to more fully achieving the stated aims of the legislation governing schools in relation to equality and the inclusion of all children”.

It said, however, the Government legislation contained provisions on religion that “give rise to concerns from an equality and human rights perspective”.

The Bill makes no change to the underlying substantive law on how a school may select students for admission. It would however require a school to provide in its admissions policy that unless it received more applicants than it had places, all applicants would be admitted.

The commission recommended that the Equal Status Act be amended to give effect to the principle that no child would be given preferential access to a publicly-funded school based on their religion.

Its proposals, and the legislation itself, have met with a mixed response from children’s rights organisations and Opposition parties.

Children and family rights organisation Equate said families were being impacted by the “slow pace of change in the area of religious discrimination” in schools and the Bill offered the “best opportunity in a generation” to effect the necessary changes.

The organisation said it had legal advice from three top constitutional lawyers which indicated there was no constitutional impediment to amending the relevant Act.

Children’s charity Barnardos welcomed the introduction of an explicit ban on registration fees, but said it was disappointing that the Bill was “side-stepping the need to amend the law so that schools can no longer discriminate in their admissions policy on the basis of a child’s religion or non-religion”.

In contrast, the Iona Institute said the IHREC recommendations were “an attack on the rights and ethos of faith schools of all types”.

The institute, which describes itself as “a Christian advocacy group and research body”, said that one IHREC recommendation in relation to the legislation “would take away the right of faith schools to accommodate children of their community first”, while another would “dictate how religion is taught in faith schools”.

It said that one of the primary reasons for such schools was “to serve the faith community that established them”.

It said one of the IHREC’s recommendations, which it claimed used wording favoured by Atheist Ireland, aimed to have “denominational schools teach their faith in a way that distances the children from it.

“This is also a violation of the right of religious parents to see their children taught their faith as a living faith that is objectively true.”

Educate Together, which promotes promotes access to education based on “inclusive, intercultural values”, noted the Bill’s provision that all schools publish policies on arrangements for students who did not wish to attend religious instruction.

But it contended that when children of minorities simply opted out of faith formation classes within school hours, this led to exclusion.

Educate Together chief executive Paul Rowe said: “In a system in which over 96 per cent of schools are religious-run, ‘Catholic first’ enrolment policies force many parents to compromise their own values in order for their children to access the local school,” he said.

Green Party deputy leader and education spokeswoman Catherine Martin welcomed the Bill but said the provisions should be extended to include measures to tackle discrimination on the basis of religion in the schools admissions process.

Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the party broadly welcomed the Bill but that a few issues of concern with respect to admissions were not addressed, particularly in relation to the needs of those with special educational requirements.