Parents living in areas where all schools are co-educational may be able to demand free transport to single-sex secondaries in neighbouring boroughs in future.

Lawyers say that this could be a consequence of a recent High Court ruling on admissions (see TES, March 1 and 8). Mr Justice Collins ruled that Newham Council’s failure to take account of a Muslim father’s religious objections to mixed-sex schooling was a breach of his human rights.

Perhaps surprisingly, Newham in east London is not contesting the ruling even though it has major implications.

Eleanor Wright, an education specialist with solicitors Fisher Meredith, who represented the father, said: “The ruling recognises that every admissions authority must allow parents and carers to give religious and philosophical convictions as their reason for choosing a school and must take those convictions into account.”

This does not mean that admissions policies must give priority to parents’

beliefs. But LEAs that had ignored them will need to change their criteria. Ms Wright said. “I am sure that the judge did not envisage that more single-sex places must be provided, but a parent living in an area with no single-sex education could require the LEA to provide transport to a school in a neighbouring borough.”

Mr K, the father in the Newham case, wanted his 11-year-old daughter to attend Plashet school, one of the authority’s two girls’ secondaries. It was full, so she was offered a place at a mixed school. Mr K took his case to an admissions appeal panel and lost.

Until recently Newham’s application form did not ask parents to say why they had chosen a particular school. Instead, officers worked out parents’

preference for single-sex or mixed education from their first-choice school.

Mr Justice Collins’s February 19 ruling followed an earlier legal decision which held that, rather than drawing inferences in this way, LEAs must give parents the chance to express a preference. He said that the right to respect for religious convictions under the 1998 Human Rights Act meant that all LEAs must take these convictions on board in their admissions policies.

Mr K won his second appeal on March 15 when the panel found that the LEA had not originally applied its own admissions criteria correctly.

Explaining why it will not contest the ruling, Newham said: “The reason the court found against the LEA was because, even though the applicant’s religious reasons were discussed... (at appeal) there was no mention of this... when the decision letter was sent to the family.”

The authority has changed its forms to encourage parents to give religious reasons for choosing a school. But it says these reasons only have to be considered on appeal. However, as Ms Wright says, Mr Justice Collins stated that “the LEA initially and the appeal panel on appeal” must give weight to parents’ religious convictions.

“It would clearly be unreasonable if parents are forced to go to appeal as the only means of having their religious convictions taken into account.”