Oratory School takes fight to preserve Catholic ethos to High Court

The London Oratory School made representations at the High Court this week to defend its faith-based admissions criteria against a government body’s ruling that it said would endanger its Catholic ethos, writes Liz Dodd.

The move is the latest in an on-going row between the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) and the school in Fulham, west London.

In July 2014 the adjudicator backed a complaint by the British Humanist Association that the Oratory School breached the admissions code when it gave priority to Catholic children.

The school, attended by the sons of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and currently educating the son of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, has contested the decision and at the High Court this week complained that the adjudicator, Dr Bryan Slater, far exceeded the concerns of the original complaint to make a “sustained ‘root and branch’” attack upon its admissions criteria for 2014 and 2015.

The Oratory School, which is massively oversubscribed and had almost 1,000 applications for 160 places in Year 7 this year, said that faith-related criteria such as requiring parents to submit their own baptismal certificates helped it to preserve its Catholic ethos.

It accused Dr Slater of making “basic errors of reasoning” to determine that those admissions criteria discriminated against minority and less-well-off children and said that in many places he fundamentally misunderstood the school’s criteria.

Charles Béar QC, who is representing the school, told Mr Justice Cobb this week: “The school view is that altering the faith-based criteria will alter the composition of the intake and damage the school ethos.”

In addition, the school argued that faith-based oversubscription criteria actually made the school more diverse, because it resulted in students being recruited from a wider geographical spread.

It acknowledged that the school’s ethnic diversity was lower than that of neighbouring Catholic schools but argued this was because of its particular religious tradition, its reputation for Latin teaching and traditional Church music.

While the school has changed its 2015 admissions policy to reflect the OSA’s judgement it now seeks clarification on whether these revised arrangements for 2016 are lawful.

The hearing continues.