Fr Dan O’Connor of the Catholic Primary Schools Managers association rejected any suggestion that Catholic schools were acting in an exclusionary fashion by requiring parents to produce baptismal certificates.He was responding to a story in the Irish Mail on Sunday which suggested that Catholic schools were refusing admission to children purely on the grounds of religion.
The story said that, where schools were oversubscribed, new instructions by the Archdiocese of Dublin required primary school boards of management to give priority to Catholics, and required parents to provide baptismal certificates to boards of management.
The story also implied that one member of a primary school board of management in Swords was asked to resign because of a failure to implement the new policy.
However, speaking to ciNews, Fr O’Connor said that there had been no change in policy.
He said that schools were acting in accord with the Education Act of 1998, which required all primary school boards of management to draw up clear enrolment policies.
Such schools are largely parish-based.
Schools, both Church of Ireland and Catholic, had to submit these policies to their patrons, typically the local bishop, he said. Catholic primary schools are required to give first place to Catholic children living in the parish, and then to those whose siblings are already in the school.
After that, the school can take a child if it does not have adequate opportunities for schooling in his or her own area. After that, if there are still places free, the school must give a place to any child who applies, Fr O’Connor said.
Each school was required to verify that each student met the enrolment criteria, so each parent had to supply a baptismal certificate, to verify age and religion and a utility bill, to attest to the child’s residence.
Parents whose children were not accepted for enrolment by a school board could require the school to verify that each child already in the school met the enrolment requirements laid down by the policy, he added.
Jane McCarthy from Educate Together said that the rule was also being used by Church of Ireland schools who are "demanding evidence of membership of the C of I before admitting new students."
The Irish Mail on Sunday story claimed that the policy was leading to racial segregation, since in some areas Africans were being turned away.
Fr O’Connor rejected this contention, however. Catholic primary schools were now catering to the huge number of Polish and Latvian immigrants in the country, and also to the many Muslims who had arrived in the country, he said.
“In some of our schools, we have 60 per cent Catholic, 40 per cent Muslim,” he said.
“Last year, the Minister for Education commended Catholic primary schools for the way they had thrown open their doors and embraced the new Irish,” he added.
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