The Catholic church has defended a decision to complain about its best comprehensive to the schools adjudicator, Alan Parker, over a points-based admissions policy that penalised the less devout.In December Parker ordered the voluntary aided Cardinal Vaughan Memorial school, in west London, to change its entry criteria after upholding objections from the Catholic Education Service (CES) and the diocese of Westminster.
It followed a lengthy and public struggle between the governors, who accused English and Welsh bishops of wanting to dilute the Catholic ethos of the school, and the church, which claimed the religious practice test was excluding Catholic children and distorting the social and ethnic demographic of the intake.
Paul Barber, of the CES, said it was with "great regret" that the church had turned to an outside body for intervention.
"It was a last resort as far as we were concerned," Barber said. "We are disappointed it went to the schools adjudicator. But it was a fairly fundamental point that the admissions code recognised that a bishop was the religious authority in a diocese. It is the church who defines who is Catholic, not the individual school."
The church and its bishops opposed the oversubscription criteria – a points-based test of religious practice.
There are six applicants for every place at the school, known as the Vaughan. Around 95% of sixth-formers achieve grades A-C at A-level and a similar proportion attain five or more GCSES at grade A*-C.
Boys had to prove that they and one of their parents attended weekly Sunday mass for at least three years, that they had been baptised within a year of their birth, had made their first confession and first holy communion before their ninth birthday, and that they had attended a Catholic school for the whole of their statutory education or that their parents had made formal provision for their Catholic education outside school.
Where there were still too many boys and not enough places parents had to give examples of "regular unpaid commitment" in their parish or a Catholic organisation.
Barber said: "It was the church's mission that was being harmed by the arrangements being put forward. All our schools serve all of the Catholic community. If one school doesn't do that in a fair way, it makes it more difficult for other schools to do that."
He added: "I don't believe there was any intention of the school governors to have any form of discrimination in its admission, but there was a danger that might be the case, of skewing the intake."
In his 26-page report, Parker said the effect of the school's current arrangements was "undoubtedly to 'select' only the most devout Catholic boys with equally devout and supportive parents".
The philosophy of the diocese "and indeed the Catholic church itself" was to involve all baptised children regardless of their level of observance and draw the lapsed back into fold through schooling.
Parker concluded: "The position adopted by the school seems to betray a lack of confidence in the strength of its own character, that it fears recruitment of anyone but the most devout will 'undermine' its ethos."
A brief notice on the school website said its legal team was considering the adjudication, and the current chair of governors, Patti Fordyce, said it would be inappropriate to comment before she had met with her colleagues in the new term.
However the former chair of governors, who openly fought with the Catholic hierarchy over attempts to change the admissions policy, described the church's victory as a "betrayal" of committed Catholics.
Sir Adrian Fitzgerald said: "We are duty bound to make sure that we are getting the right people in, not fair-weather or occasional Catholics.
"The adjudicator has made the assumption that the church does not mind if lapsed Catholics come in. I am very angry and disappointed. They are going to regret it. I don't know what they're playing at."
It is not the first time the Vaughan has clashed with the Catholic hierarchy. In the 1980s Cardinal Basil Hume attempted to close down the sixth form, but backed down after a parental revolt.
Several years later there was a disagreement between him and the then headmaster Anthony Pellegrini about the proposed closure of the Inner London Education Authority.
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