My son, who will be four years old in March, is
not baptised. He has been rejected from all four national schools in our
area – Dublin 6.
I put his name down for all of them, two of them religious schools, when he was a baby.
The little Church of Ireland
school, which is the nearest one to our home, has had his name on its
application list since he was six weeks old. In its letter last month
the board of management “regrets to inform” me that my application has
been “unsuccessful”.
“Your child is currently number 177 on our
waiting list . . . All offers of places were made in accordance with the
school enrolment policy.”
The criteria according
to which children can get in the queue are then set out. There are 11
categories, the first being “Church of Ireland children of the [local]
parishes,” followed by “COI siblings/Protestant siblings” followed by
COI children from outside the parishes.
Next in are COI children from
inter-church marriages, then other Protestant children, then other
siblings, then children of inter-church marriages where the child is not
COI, children of staff, Roman Catholic Children, Orthodox children and
last, the category into which my son falls, “other children”.
This
school will take any child of almost any faith from anywhere in the
country before they will take an unbaptised child living around the
corner.
The Roman Catholic school is a little
further away. My son is 117th on the waiting list. His name has been
down since he was a baby, but date of application is not relevant there,
the principal told me. The letter turning him away from there said
siblings of current pupils were prioritised. This is understandable and
“all 17 such applicants are being offered places”.
“The
remaining 17 places are being offered to Catholic children resident
within the Catholic parish . . . We regret that we are unable to offer
your child a place in our junior infant class for 2014.”
The waiting game
The waiting game
The other two other schools, one a non-denominational Gaelscoil and the other multi-denominational, should surely be more welcoming and as I had his name down with the multi-d since he was three weeks old I was hopeful. However when I called I was told he was “about 220th on the list”.
The enrolment secretary told me parents travelled from across
Dublin to enrol their children there, such is the demand. Again at at
the Gaelscoil, with parents travelling from across the city to get their
kids in, he’s 239th on the waiting list.
There
is clearly huge demand for school places in Dublin 6, not helped by
parents – including myself – applying to several schools, and this
affects all families. What is also clear however is that denominational
or faith schools’ enrolment criteria impact in a gross and
disproportionate way on children such as my son, by excluding them
simply because they have not been baptised.
To be clear, these
State-funded faith-schools – which account for 96 per cent of primary
schools – are allowed to direct a religiously based exclusion at
children as young as four.
This is unacceptable. It is particularly
heinous in a democracy which describes itself as a Republic.
Is it any wonder that every single one of my
friends who has children has had them baptised – and not one of them to
my knowledge attends church outside such events as weddings, funerals or
first Holy Communions?
The Irish State has been repeatedly castigated for allowing this discrimination against children to continue, by the United Nations
in 2006, 2008 and again in 2011, when its Human Rights Committee noted
with concern that the dominance of denominational education was
“depriving many parents and children who so wish to have access to
secular primary education”.
In 2011 the Irish Human Rights Commission called on the Department of Education to end schools’ religious discrimination against children in admission policies.
In no other area of society, where a public
service is funded by taxpayers is such discrimination permitted. One can
only imagine the outcry if a public hospital announced it would only
treat ill Catholics; or if the local Garda station announced it was only
going to investigate crimes committed against people of faith.
The
churches controlling our schools argue that their ethos requires
special protection. The Equal Status Act 2000 protects their right to
protect their ethos of exclusion.
Although religion is named as one of
the nine grounds of discrimination illegal in public life, section 7
allows schools to exclude children if “it is proved that the refusal is
essential to maintain the ethos of the school”.
No, Minister
No, Minister
In September the Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn, launched a public consultation on inclusiveness in primary schools. He said: “Schools should be welcoming places for all children from the local community. We all know that Irish society has changed a lot in recent years.
Our
education system needs to adapt, to make sure that, as well as
continuing to cater for children with more traditional religious
beliefs, there is also respect for children of different traditions and
beliefs.”
However, his department is also
consulting on a new Education (Admissions to Schools) Bill, the draft of
which maintains schools’ right to keep out children with the ‘wrong’
religion, or none.
Yesterday the Ombudsman for Children published her advice on the Bill.
She
says: “... no child in general should be given preferential access to
publicly-funded education on the basis of their religion”, subject to
limited exceptions and with the Minister’s permission.
Mr
Quinn is legally obliged to vindicate the right, possessed by every
child, to their education.
Schools are places for numbers and letters,
not for icons.