A body representing Catholic schools is going to court to defend a controversial new admissions procedure that allows oversubscribed schools to demand a priest’s certification of religious practice from pupils.
The Catholic Education Service (CES) will be taking its admissions process to judicial review in the new year, after the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) claimed it was “not an objective measure” of religious practice.
In a series of judgments, the OSA said that the procedure often involved meeting a parish priest to discuss the certification process. It judged that these meetings would breach the schools admissions code because they would constitute “unlawful” interviews.
The OSA added that the process left parents subject to the whims of individual priests: “It seems to me entirely plausible, indeed almost inevitable, that different parish priests will apply slightly different standards when deciding if a family should be issued with a Certification of Catholic Practice…potentially affecting admissions to the same school.”
Pupil-by-pupil basis
The certification allows parish priests to determine on a pupil-by-pupil basis whether children come from practising Catholic families. It replaces the requirement to show commitment to the religion by attending mass regularly. The CES has said that some parents - for example, those who work on the weekend - might not be able to attend mass regularly, despite their commitment to the religion.
A spokesman for the CES said that the certification system was fairer than one requiring prospective pupils to demonstrate regular church attendance. “What all parties are looking for is clarity for schools in their admissions policies,” he said.
“The central issue here is how to determine whether a pupil is from a practising Catholic family. Within the Catholic community, it is accepted that parish priests are best placed to confirm this.”
It argued that the certification process ensures that measures used to determine Catholic practice are the same across diocesan boundaries.
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