Oratory wins latest round in selection battle

A leading Catholic school has temporarily won back the right to select students based on the Catholicity of their parents after the Government overturned a complaint by the British Humanist Association, writes Liz Dodd.

According to government lawyers, an “error in law” invalidated the decision, reached last August by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, that the London Oratory School, in Fulham, west London, kept unfair admissions criteria when it ranked students according to the services that their parents provided to the Church, such as reading at Mass and flower arranging.

The prestigious boys’ school, which regularly gets 800 applications for 160 places and admits girls to its sixth form, educated three of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s children and recently enrolled the eldest son of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg as a pupil.

The decision on the admissions complaint was quashed last week because in his ruling the adjudicator incorrectly stated that Westminster Diocese does not provide guidance on what religious activities should be considered in the admissions process.

The diocese’s guidance states that ranking students according to their parents’ service to the Church is “not acceptable”. “Under no circumstances may governing bodies receive applications and then produce a ‘rank order’ based on their own assessment of each applicant’s Catholicity instead of using the priest’s reference,” the guidance says. “Any rankings determined by reference to financial contribution, participation in parish committees, service in church ministry in any capacity or the like are not acceptable.”

Westminster Diocese said it would be inappropriate to comment until the Office of the Schools Adjudicator came to a final ­decision. The British Humanist Association maintains its complaint that the selection criteria are illegal. A new ruling is expected in April, the deadline for schools to submit their admissions criteria. The organisation said that the ­original ruling was quashed on the grounds of “an inconsequential technicality” and attacked a disparity between the school’s practice and the archdiocese’s guidelines.

“The school is happy to go along with the decision being quashed because that gives them another roll of the dice. I think the school and the archdiocese are clearly not on the same side of this, but I think they’re willing to let us do the work for them,” a spokesman said.

The London Oratory was not available for comment.